THE PRICE OF FAME

Munch, Tiger and Bear
Dürer, Five Lansquenets
Bonnard, Dans la Rue
Vuillard, La Couturiére
Bellows, The Hold-Up
Magritte, Oreille-Cloche
Canaletto, Landscape
Cezanne,     Self-Portrait at the Easel
Matisse, Repos du Modèle
Pissarro, Rue Saint-Romaine
Tiepolo, Three Soldiers
Rouault, L’Enfant de la Balle
Toulouse-Lautrec, Yvette
Jongkind, Jetée en Bois
after Brueghel, Saint Jerome
Blake, And My Servant Job
Chagall, Le Vixe
Piranesi, The Villa Albani
after Rubens, St. Mary Magdalene
Millet, La Fileuse Auvergnate
Beckmann, Jacob Wrestles
Corot, Environs de Rome
Tissot, Le Matin
Whistler, Little Dorothy
Géricault, Cheval Anglais
Ostade, The Barn
Hogarth, A Chorus of Singers
Watteau & Thomassin, Femme
Goya, Nanny’s Boy
Palmer, Herdsman’s Cottage
Delacroix, Arabes d’Oran
Sloan, Fifth Avenue Critics
after Boucher, The Snare
after da Vinci, Caricature Head
Baskin, Bird-Man
after Turner, In the Campagna
after Raphael, A Muse
Kirchner, Railway Curve
Daumier, Eh, Eh ? Petit Gredin…
Robert, Le Poteau
Rowlandson, Wood Nymphs
Doré, Lapplander Peasants
van Dyck, Portrait of Brueghel
after Constable, Mill Stream
Rosa, Woman Walking to the Left
Click on an image above or a title at the left to view the work.

Much of the media coverage of art (some of us would say, too much) is concerned with the astronomically high prices paid for certain works.  Edvard Munch’s The Scream, one of four versions of that subject,  recently brought close to one hundred twenty million dollars.  A watercolor study by Cezanne, over nineteen million.  A George Bellows pastel and ink drawing, over five million.  A Dürer engraving, $653,000.  A woodcut by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, $323,000.  An etching by Whistler, $264,000.  While there are a lot of different comments that could be made about this, we would like to confine ourselves to just two observations.  First, that the artists involved are all “household words” (if you haven’t heard of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, I’m sorry).  There are no works in this financial class by such artists as Bracquemond, Orlik,  Hans Beham or Buhot, for example, beloved as those names may be by a different class of art collectors

            The second thing we would like to point out is that while such staggering prices would seem to put works by famous artists completely out of the reach of people with only modest budgets for art, it does not happen to be true.  Coincidentally (or not so coincidentally), our current exhibit  contains an original work each by Munch, Cezanne, Bellows, Dürer, Kirchner and Whistler, the very same six, all offered for sale, together with the works of other famous artists, at less than $10,000 and some at way, way, way less.   The point we make is that original art, prints and drawings, even by world famous artists, is available to be purchased and at a far lower cost than most people would believe.

            Why would one buy a photographic reproduction for a few hundred dollars, which is worth nothing once you get it out the door, when, for the same price or a bit more, you can buy an original?   Why?  Because all too many people believe that all the originals are in museums or in the board rooms of billionaires.  It isn’t so.

            And so, we present our “famous artists” exhibit.  We don’t pretend that every work is a masterpiece, though every work is both authentic and interesting.  And we may even feel that we have in stock better or more interesting works, though by lesser artists.  But we’ve done those exhibits already; here are the “household words.”  We would add that there are many great artists who never made a print themselves, or made only a few or even one, but whose compositions have been engraved or etched by others, often under the direct supervision of the artist.  Raphael, for example, never made a print, but handed his drawings over to Marcantonio Raimondi to engrave.  Rubens and Van Dyck supervised a variety of artists to translate their conceptions to prints.  All the Brueghel prints, except one, were engraved not by him but by his associates.  These are also all original prints, though with a double authorship.  And once again, they allow ordinary mortals to collect works representative of great artists, for when you speak of original paintings or drawings by the likes of Raphael or Rubens or Van Dyck or Brueghel, you are speaking once again of astronomical prices.  The prices for these prints are  earthbound.

            As a back-handed compliment to the media fixation on dollar values, we have arranged this exhibit, not in historical nor even alphabetical order, but in order of price, from the most expensive (Edvard Munch, $8000) to the cheapest (Salvator Rosa, $150).  No conclusions are to be drawn from this.