What You Need to Know Before Investing in Art

Posted June 6, 2010 By admin

The Famous "Starry Night" by Van Gogh

A properly chosen painting can essentially increase in value in just a few years. And it is not as hard to choose a piece of art fitting in this category as it might seem at first.

Before investing any substantial amount of money in paintings, you should consider:

  • Why is there a difference in the price for different paintings?
  • How to choose a painting that will eventually increase in value?
  • What is the right price to pay for the painting and not overpay?
  • What factors influence the cost of a painting?

These and other questions are what you will have to consider when you want to buy a painting, be it to change or add to the decor of your house and / or to make a wise investment for your hard earned money.

The difference in price of paintings can be astonishing. For two almost identical paintings (the canvas, oil) in different places you could be asked to pay from $500 to $5000. How do you make the right choice in a situation like that? Often buyers simply don’t recognize the factors that price consist of. In the best-case scenario when you know an artist personally and you are buying a painting directly from him or her - the price practically equals the expenses of the painting. But it is not often that you would personally know a painter, although with the increased convenience of the internet these days, buying directly from painters are more possible.

If you buy a painting from an art gallery, the price is influenced by a number of factors. First of all - rent of the gallery space: the majority of galleries are located in nice places therefore have high rent; Salary of employees of a gallery who carry out the exhibitions; Cost of advertising (including expenses for posters, catalogs, invitations to opening of exhibitions, etc); Financing other non-commercial art projects, and many other things. You will have to pay at least twice as much than if you buy a painting from the painter directly.

Having said this, there are benefits to buying from an exhibition or through an art gallery. These places will generally offer you works of art that have already gone through preliminary selection and tough competition. You know for sure it is a good investment.

If you are buying a painting directly from an artist, all you can do is basically rely on your own taste and on some attributes of professionalism and success of the artist. For example, it is relevant to know whether the artist has had art education. Certainly there are some talented self-educated artists, but they are very rare.

There are some other questions you may want to ask your artist. For example:

  • Do they have any works exhibited in large museums?
  • Are they a winner of any art competitions?
  • Where was their recent exhibition? A list of exhibitions will tell you a lot about him or her.
  • Whether they a catalog of exhibitions, posters, booklets and other advertising material?
  • Do they have a professional looking website? A good website is also a sign of professionalism. Certainly not all talented artists have their own websites but most of them do.

If you are buying from a gallery or other reseller, it doesn’t hurt to ask them to point to you those artwork that are likely to rise in value in the near future or to tell you which of the artists they see as having potential to succeed.

If you have problems with going to galleries and attending the opening days you can do everything online. Search in Google or in any other catalog under the category “art” and look at the personal websites of the artists. You will definitely be able to obtain a lot of information online.  The only problem I see is that sometimes online you can’t really see what the painting really looks like in real life. To minimize this disadvantage, make sure you ask for a large picture of the painting so that you can see it in detail on your computer. Usually if you like what you see on the computer screen, the original painting will not disappoint you but like anything else, there will be that odd exception from time to time.

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Where To Buy Oil Paintings?

Posted May 2, 2010 By admin
We have a custom made replica oil painting displayed in our library.  It’s a portrait of a woman in the 1770s in Spanish Costume reading. Every single day I look at her and I am amazed as to what she might be reading and thinking, sometimes I feel as though the painting has changed somehow, maybe she’s turned a page, maybe the story in her book developed since yesterday. It gives new meaning every time I see it. Every person who has looked at it had a different interpretation of what she might be feeling, or what her story is. It sparks the imagination. It triggers your emotion and makes you think. Such is the power of portraits created by the brilliant artists.

The Woman Reading

Oil Paintings give visual appeal to any room in your home or work place. If you place a painting on a wall strategically it will create a serene and inviting ambiance to your home.  Our friends have always verbalized the fact that they feel very at ease and unusually at home at our place but couldn’t pin point what it was exactly that makes them feel that way. If this is applied in a commercial setting, it might even give you an edge over your competitors because your customers or clients feel at ease in your office!

Did you ever wonder how you could buy those high quality, stunning oil paintings? Most galleries present you with only a limited range of painting. Only the exclusive and famous artists have the opportunity to display the art in such places. The only place you could find work of art from both prominent as well as upcoming artist are real high quality websites. I have bought one of our paintings online (actually through eBay), but make sure you do your research before you hand over your money.

At first even I was of the opinion that online purchase of such work of art may not be the best-suited method to get genuine high quality work. But when I heard about custom designs from well-known artists that could be offered right to your doorstep I was just thrilled. There is also a money back guarantee if there is any dissatisfaction towards the delivered material. Obviously the money back guarantee is only useful if the seller is actually trust worthy. The eBay buying platform is good because it is based on a feedback system, so we bought from someone who has had good feedback from buyers who bought from them for paintings of similar price.

The purchased painting was shipped to us in sturdy tube containers for a small additional cost. Every care was taken to deliver the work of art safely to us. There was also a choice of framing services but we chose to frame the painting afterwards ourselves to save on postage costs.

We always used to worry that a transaction was not safe over the Internet. But now we think that if you are wary and do your due diligence, the chances of getting cheated are minimized. Online transactions are now quite protected with secure payment systems such as PayPal. So if you don’t end up receiving your painting I think you can dispute it through the secure payment system. If you paid by your credit card, you should also be able to get your money back by lodging a dispute with the credit card company with the details of the transaction and asserting that you did not receive your goods.

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