Art that could help keep your ship afloat
An art investment conference in London last week highlighted how investment conscious the market for modern and contemporary art has become. This ranges from The Fine Art Group with a minimum investment of $1million (£752,000), to Maecenas, a blockchain platform “democratising art ownership” with a minimum investment of $5,000 to own a share of a $10million work of art. These are investment schemes in what appears to be a rising market for people who don’t have to know much about art or even want to live with it.
In sharp contrast, the next day there was a memorial service in St James’s Piccadilly for William Drummond, an endearingly enthusiastic and knowledgeable dealer in 18th- and 19th-century English watercolours and drawings who employed Sarah Ferguson before she became Duchess of York. It was a nostalgic occasion, packed with old-school dealers for whom bitcoin means loose change, and who measure investment by the amount of pleasure a work gives a buyer. But they all remembered the Seventies and Eighties, when 18th- and 19th-century English watercolours and drawings went through a price boom.
According to auction data from analysts Art Market Research, average prices for a group of middle-market artists such as David Cox and Peter de Wint increased by nearly 12 per cent a year between 1976 and 1990. Popular enthusiasm was reflected in the Royal Academy’s 1993 blockbuster exhibition The Great Age of British Watercolours, 1750-1880, which subsequently travelled to Washington. In the catalogue introduction, Andrew Wilton of the Tate underlined how watercolour painting was “an almost uniquely British phenomenon”, describing the development of expressive qualities in the medium as it evolved from topographical description to romantic evocations of the sublime.
The heroes of this genre were John Robert Cozens, Thomas Girtin, Turner, Constable and Samuel Palmer. They still are, and can command six- and sevenfigure prices. But post-1993, many other artists in the same vein fell by the wayside. To underline the generational shift, Princess Eugenie works for contemporary gallery Hauser & Wirth.
Old English watercolours don’t feature in the new art investment schemes: their prices in some cases have still to recover peak 1990 levels; the old infrastructure has eroded. Although there is a Works on Paper fair, pre-modern art is in a distinct minority. Specialised auctions for 18th- and 19th-century watercolours no longer take place, and, with fewer galleries promoting them, the collector has to rummage around country sales or the tail end of London Old Master sales to find them. But there is actually no shortage of supply, just no market focus. So it is a good time to buy, and good examples can be had from £500 to £25,000.
A popular exhibition at the moment is being staged by Giles Peppiatt in St James’s in London. The majority of the artists featured were represented in the famous RA exhibition – artists such as John Sell Cotman, Thomas Rowlandson, David Cox, and William Turner of Oxford. Of these, 30 have sold already, including five by Cotman and six by Rowlandson. Prices range from £450 to £125,000 for a superb Cozens landscape, but most are under £10,000.
An exhibition to look forward to will be at the end of June at the Illustration cup board gallery, when former Sotheby’s and Spink watercolour specialist Karen Taylor is unveiling a collection formed in the 1830s by a French aristocrat, which reflects the close Anglo-french relationships of the time. One of the more expensive works will be a previously unrecorded, superbly atmospheric 1832 view of Cologne from the Rhine by Cotman, priced around £25,000.
Cotman’s prices are characteristic of the market in that a record £46,000 set at the height of the late-eighties was not equalled until 2012. Since then, his record has risen to £338,000, demonstrating how the very best English watercolours are advancing with the rest of the market.
Tempted to invest? Watercolour collecting is quite a rarefied, connoisseur’s pursuit compared to contemporary art. Prices are unlikely to go up or down as radically, but informed choices should hold their value. And you could, as one of Peppiatt’s clients does, form an excellent collection buying one work for £5,000 every year for 20 years, and watch it grow.
Watercolour painting was ‘an almost uniquely British phenomenon’