Art and the Market by Goodwin Craufurd D.; Fry Roger;

Author:Goodwin, Craufurd D.; Fry, Roger;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Michigan Press

A Sale at Christie’s

There is a common idea that in the matter of art posterity is right. We habitually look to it to redress the wrongs and injustices that each generation inflicts unwittingly on its great artists. And it is a corollary of such an idea that ultimately the price which the works of any given artist will fetch at Christie’s corresponds more or less accurately with what one may call the real value of the works. That is to say, corresponds to the amount and importance of their contribution to the spiritual heritage of mankind.

The classic instance which lends plausibility to this theory is the case of Rembrandt, who went bankrupt just when he was beginning to produce his finest masterpieces, and died in poverty and neglect, having struggled through his latter years on the precarious proceeds of a little old curiosity shop. And now the very works which were so entirely unsaleable when he painted them range round the hundred-thousand-pound mark, and threaten to go to even more dazzling heights. Cézanne’s pictures, now in the tens of thousands, provide another good case, seeing that all through his life his sales hardly covered the cost of his colours and brushes. In fact there are plenty of vivid and picturesque stories which all support this agreeable theory.

But every now and then certain facts come to light which scarcely fit in with this view. Facts which none the less insist on being faced if we are to understand the position and function of art in the social system. Thus a little time ago at Christie’s three Turners brought over £13,000; a Raeburn group £5,000; a Zoffany nearly £2,000; a Romney £2,000; two Paters £1,700; a small Hubert Robert £1,800; and even a Gilbert Stuart £1,000. Now I do not say that any of these prices were sensational. Some of them were slightly less than the same pictures brought some time back, but none the less they scarcely fit in with the theory that posterity looks to pure esthetic value as a criterion.

For none of the artists here mentioned belongs to the first rank. Pater is nothing but an understudy of Watteau, who caught nothing but what was of minor importance in his exemplar’s art. Stuart was only a feeble echo of the art of Sir Joshua Reynolds, which itself has little more to show than agreeable and polite arrangements of the qualities of more genuine artists. Raeburn was a vulgar virtuoso, and Romney lacked even virtuosity—was, indeed, a man who barely concealed his incompetence by the dull persistence with which he pulled his pictures through to a superficial completeness. Zoffany was a better painter than either of these, but at best an uninspired and competent third-rater. No one could pretend that what he adds to our experience is of serious importance. About Turner alone is there the possibility of division of opinion among critics conversant with the whole range of European painting. His genius is so patent. The zest of his

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