Tracking Down Artists' Valuations

From the Art History inbox:

I am currently enrolled in a Modern Art Class and enjoying every minute of it.

My question for you is, my group from Art class has been given an assignment to compare the works of Auguste Renoir and Henri Matisse. We are doing well in the research portion of these great painters; however there is one area I can not seem to find an answer to. Is there a web site where I could find the value of their paintings as of today? The value of both Matisse and Renoir is a topic we would like to cover. So far I have only stumbled upon reproduction prices. Any information you can provide for my hunt would be greatly appreciated.

Carmen

Great question, Carmen! Finding this information online is not even remotely easy unless you're willing to pay for it. There are a number of art auction database subscription sites. Useful things, these, as they sort hundreds of thousands of auction results by artist and present them to you in an easy-to-navigate format. Keep in mind, though, that "subscription" in this context means "you'll need to provide credit card information before you can actually see dollar figures."

Speaking only for myself, I would rather do a little (or a lot of) sleuthing in an effort to put less stress on yon tight household budget. So here is what I did for you, and you may replicate at will.

First, I went to FindArtInfo.com, where anyone can search the database for free. If you want advanced info on any particular search result, well, you'll have to pay for it. BUT, the basic database FindArtInfo provides is quite thorough. For example, you need prices for Matisse and Renoir so I plugged in "Renoir" for my first search.

I got seven categories for "Renoir," but the only one I wanted was "Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) France" with 1567 auction results. Clicking on that, I got 53 pages of items. Obviously, this needed to be narrowed down, so I clicked on "Medium" hoping to head to "Oil." (Why? When dealing with painters, oils always command the highest prices at auction.) It took a fair amount of scrolling and loading "Next >" pages to get to "Oil," but eventually I was able to ascertain that Renoir's Dans Les Roses (Madame Leon Clapisson) sold for 23,528,000 USD in May of 2003. This was the highest $ amount listed within oils for Renoir.

(Note: All that are listed here, for free, are sale date, work title and sale price. You cannot see which auction house held the sale, further details or a picture of the work without subscribing. More on that later.)

Now, since you wish to compare Renoir to Matisse, I repeated the same search process with Henri--not "attributed to," not "school of" but the artist himself. Here, I got 60 pages of auction results. Because it's always ideal to compare apples to apples, I lathered, rinsed and repeated with "Oil." After a bit of speed reading, it became clear that the highest gavel price listed for a Matisse canvas was 33,641,000 USD for L'odalisque, Harmonie Bleue in November of 2007.

Cutting right to the chase then, we end up with:

Matisse: 33,641,000 USD
Renoir: 23,528,000 USD

Does this mean that Matisse commands higher prices than Renoir? Not necessarily. The Renoir was at auction four years before the Matisse. Prices have escalated in the intervening years--years during which there hasn't been a major Renoir canvas on the market. Matisse did more lithographs than Renoir; Renoir did a gajillion etchings. It's important to stick to one medium for comparison's sake. And I'll tell you this for free: "hotness" is cyclical. Ten years ago you could snap up a Francis Bacon for relative peanuts, but in 2008 you'd best not even have to think about parting with millions. For these reasons, it will be most helpful to you, right now, to compare criteria that are as specific as possible.

I did mention that the FindArtInfo.com's free offerings were incomplete without subscribing, and that is true. However, they do give you some marvelous starting points for further searching. With the Renoir, I was able to take "Renoir," "Dans Les Roses" and "2003" to Google and discover that Sotheby's had held the auction in question. Sotheby's (as does Christie's) lists archived auction results, often including lot details with provenance. Other media outlets covered the May, 2003 auction and, too, have been archived online. You can take this as far as you'd like; it all just involves a bit of time and digging.

For your purposes, Carmen, I hope this helps in the short term--and am dead certain it's more useful than wading through reproduction prices. Best of luck with your project. The absolute bottom line here is that I'm delighted you're enjoying every minute of your Modern Art class. That should definitely be the core reason that both of us care what Renoirs and Matisses are fetching these days. Thanks so much for writing and asking!

Image credit:

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841-1919)
Dans les roses (Madame Léon Clapisson), 1882
Oil on canvas
39.3 x 32 in. (99.7 x 81.3 cm).
Image courtesy Sotheby's New York