How is Market Value in Fine Art Created
& Measured?
Name of the Artist: Who
is the artist and what is his/her history or reputation? Do museums exhibit their work? Do galleries market their work to
collectors? Does the artist have an active following with collectors? If the answer to these three questions is yes, then
the artist’s work is likely to have significant market value.
The market for a given artist’s work is
created in several ways: (1.) Directors and curators of cultural institutions, such as museums, hold exhibitions of an artist's
work; (2.) Influential tastemakers, such as 'pioneer' dealers and collectors take a financial risk on an emerging artist,
and actively promote the artist's work to the rest of the world. Famous examples include: Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O'Keeffe;
Peggy Guggenheim and Jackson Pollock; Gustave Caillebotte and the French Impressionists among others, and in terms of developing
taste for historic painters, Joseph Duveen's creation of a market for European Old Masters in America.
The degree to which a work of art can be assigned
to a given artist also can have a dramatic effect on market value. For example, auction catalogs often use the terms "by";
"attributed to"; "after"; "circle of"; "student of"; "follower of" and "in the manner of" to identify the degree to which
an artwork is believed to be by the hand of a given artist. With each degree of distance from the named artist, market value
drops.
Position of an Artwork within an Artist’s
Oeuvre: How does a specific piece fit into an artist’s larger body of work? (1.) In terms of degree of completeness:
a sketch on a cocktail napkin vs. a finished oil painting on canvas; (2.) In terms of aesthetic merit (a sometimes contentious
judgment); (3.) In terms of period or style, student vs. mature career; (4.) In terms of subject matter (for example, a E.
I. Couse French pastoral landscape vs. a Couse Taos Indian by firelight). All of these criteria affect market value.
Provenance: If there is a catalogue
raisonné for the artist’s work, is the subject piece listed? If not listed, is there a logical reason? Has the artwork
been included in any public exhibitions, or published in a book or article? Is the artwork from a well-known collection? A
desirable provenance, or the history of ownership for a given artwork, enhances the value of artwork.
Condition: Is the artwork currently
in good (stable) condition? Has the artwork been subjected to a restoration treatment in the past that has caused damage or
is irreversible? Previous treatment is sometimes only detectable by professional conservators. Some examples of conditions
that can negatively affect the market value of paintings include: (1.) The application of shellac to the surface of an oil
painting (irreversible condition: the same solvent that removes shellac also removes the oil paint); (2.) A painting on canvas
that has been poorly glued (not wax-lined) to a canvas support (glues are often animal-based and very difficult to remove,
and the protein in them can also attract pests); (3.) An oil painting that has been ‘skinned’ or over-cleaned
(in the process of removing an old layer of varnish, a layer of oil paint has also been removed).
Measuring Market Value of Fine Art:
Measuring market value of fine art involves both objective and subjective criteria. Object criteria include researching market
data for comparables, through publicly available art auction records (available through Internet subscription database services
such as artnet.com, askart.com, artfact.com, artprice.com and others), and through requesting private sales data from knowledgeable
galleries and dealers. Opinions of value can then be formed from the analysis of available market data.
Sometimes, however, market data is not widely
available, and opinions of value must be made based on more generic and subjective criteria: to which general category of
art does the subject work belong? What level has the artist’s career reached, and what is the market value for works
by other artists who have achieved comparable levels of market success? How successful (aesthetically) is the subject artwork?
There are no firm answers to many of these questions, and a reasonable opinion of value is built on both available market
data and logic based arguments regarding the type and quality of artwork. Other types of value that can be related to market
value include historic value and sentimental value (examples: a plaster model of the Lincoln Memorial on the Mall in Washington,
D.C. by Daniel Chester French would have significant historic, sentimental and market value; a beloved antique family portrait
by an anonymous painter could have great sentimental value but little market value.)
