The first rule of collecting is that you should like what you get. You’ll be living with it, after all.
But people don’t buy art just because they think it’s pretty, they also buy it based on the premise that it will hold or increase its value. And because of the sometimes nine-figure prices paid for 20th-century art, many aspiring buyers assume the best investment opportunities are in that sector: Where else can you make 350,000 percent profit in 25 years?
But those types of success stories represent a tiny fraction of the market, and often result from the careful work of powerful collectors and dealers who have spent years building up an artist’s prices. It's hard to quantify, but it’s a good bet that less than 1 percent of all contemporary art is ever sold more than once.
So where else is there an opportunity to see an art purchase appreciate in value?
One place to look for value is the most unfashionable of all: Victorian art, an umbrella term for English works from the mid-to-late 19th century, which were often lush paintings and drawings. That category’s earnest depictions of society, landscapes, animals, and moral themes such as hard work, charity, and fidelity are at odds with the slick detachment that characterizes today’s contemporary art.
Yet “if someone actually likes this sort of art, it’s a very, very good time to be buying it,” said Polly Sartori, the director of Gallery 19C in Los Angeles and the former head of 19th-century European paintings at Sotheby’s.
Next week, a 6-foot-wide landscape painted by Benjamin Williams Leader in 1874 is up for sale at Christie’s with an estimate of $22,000 to $30,000; a similar landscape sold 13 years ago at Sotheby’s for $293,400. “Some of the best work by Victorian artists is fantastic value compared to other sectors of the market,” said Matthew Green, a director at London’s Richard Green gallery.
The Uncool Factor
“People still use 'Victorian' as a pejorative term,” said Rupert Maas, a London dealer who specializes in 19th-century art. “There are two world wars between us and the Victorian period. We’re still not able to look at it dispassionately and understand it as the extraordinary period of endeavor that it actually was.”
Victorian art sold for immense sums when it was first created and then was swept away by the Impressionists and Modernists who followed. For decades, the entire genre was consigned to the dustbin of history.
Sartori points to Victorian “sporting” paintings by such artists as John Frederick Herring Sr. “There was an incredible market for painting the horses of wealthy people,” she said. “Herring is fabulous, and those pictures sold millions, but they’re way down right now.” Portraits that might have sold for $70,000 can now be found for $20,000.