Some may be interested in a London Art Week talk I attended back in March, concerning “forgotten masters” and the direction of the art market. Sounds grandiose and brings to mind John Kenneth Galbraith’s “market forecasts exist to make astrologers look professional”, but it was an interesting way to spend an hour. Here are some notes:
Decline of sleepers
Sleepers were only ever a small and sporadic market, and in my view the golden age of say five years ago, was made possible because the internet was still comparatively young, for the art market at least. Auction records grow, year on year, so I suppose the means for unearthing them also grow. The paradox being that if things are easier to find, and easier to research, they are generally difficult to buy. It’s a bit like if one person stands up at a football match, they get a better view, if everyone else stands up, then everyone gets a worse view.
Unearthing sleepers was one half of the process, the other was obtaining an upgraded attribution. The upgraded attribution generally depended on research undertaken in archives and libraries (which closed during the lockdown period) and the decision or opinion of an academic authority.
Museums have policies in place which make it increasingly difficult for their experts to offer opinions, especially when it comes to pictures with a financial interest in them. So I guess it was natural that the trade sought alternatives, hence I suppose the longer-term projects on overlooked artists.
Questions and Answers
1. Primarily because we are not omniscient in our capacity to recognise talent. The history of art is crowded with talented figures, temperamentally unsuited to success, whose artistic ambitions fell to the demands of life and to the wishes of their clients.
Certain periods are also less conducive to artistic success than others. We take the 2 world wars, where entire generations of artists lost key years in their development, and in some cases quite a lot more. Periods of economic depression will also lead to periods of artistic infertility.
I also think we can see the history of art, largely as an exponential growth in participants, from the highly compact market of the renaissance and early modern period, to a much wider web of artists, collectors, dealers, etc in later periods. More people are becoming artists, because more people can afford to buy paintings. I suppose the issue then becomes that the more people jostling for reputation and status, the increased likelihood that some of them will be overlooked.
2. There’s nothing new about resuscitating forgotten artists. This was always possible. I just think the need to do so has become more urgent recently. But I agree, the means for research have also increased; the internet has grown, online archives, newspaper records are now more extensive
3. A good story can make a difference, but a dealers first concern should be for the immediate visual merits of a painting. Museums buy for rational / academic reasons. Private clients typically form emotional attachments before finding rational justifications.
4. It is perhaps more difficult than it has ever been to be a young collector. But I think the problem is more fundamental than disposable income, and collecting as a pastime seems to be diminishing.
5. Photograph the signature and distort the contrasts and colours in photoshop. This can sometimes reveal areas of the signature invisible to the naked eye. Also have a notepad to hand and scribble an approximate version of the signature, try to work out what letters they might be attempting.
6. El Greco, Botticelli, Johannes Vermeer were almost entirely forgotten in the early 19th century and owe some of their current status to the diligent efforts of critics, academics collectors and dealers of the Victorian period. It is a bit like a snowball accumulating mass, but it helps to have some momentum to begin with. See essay.
7.
8. Try and put yourself in a position where you will see as many paintings as possible. Certainly it isn’t a cheap pastime, but patience is a virtue. Also don’t be afraid to visit these private galleries; they are intimidating from the outside, but the people inside them aren’t.
9. Unlike established masters, whose works are valued for their rarity, scarcity of output in forgotten masters is generally an impediment. This is because academics and dealers prefer to devote their efforts to artists with larger outputs. It’s very difficult to write extensively on artists who are little known / understood. And it is impossible to build a market for an artist with a miniscule output. But you are absolutely right; some artists painted too many bad paintings, (for immediate financial gain) at the expense of their legacy.
10. Artprice is cheap and a good place to begin.
11. Statement
12. Answered
13. Agreed.
14. Dominicfineart !
15. Largely by accident, art dealing happened to be a way of knitting-together a selection of middling talents.