A gallery took 50% and I still said yes, twice
The number was 2 400 euros. A still life, peonies and a copper pot, a bit larger than what I usually accept. The gallery in the 6e took fifty percent. I did the arithmetic on the metro home and it came to about eleven euros an hour for the six weeks, before the panels and the lead white. I said yes anyway, and I said yes again the following year, because the wall credit is real and I am not going to pretend otherwise.
What I did not say yes to was the framing. They wanted it in a gold leaf moulding that cost me 380 euros, and the commission on the sale did not cover it. Nobody warns you that the frame is your problem and the gallery's aesthetic.
So now I quote the frame separately, always, in writing. It reads as fussy. It has saved me a small fortune.
The part I still cannot decide: the client who buys through the gallery pays 4 800 and thinks that is what the painting is worth. The client who comes to the studio pays 2 400 for the same work. I have no clean answer for that and I am not sure I want one.
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The framing part hit me. I did a local show last fall and the woman running it wanted everything in matching black float frames, which was going to run me more than I'd sold the previous year total. I said no and felt like a cheapskate for a month, but the work sold fine in what I had.
The 11 euros an hour thing is rough to read though. I get why you said yes, and honestly I probably would have too for a real gallery wall. Do you feel like the second year did anything for you beyond the credit, like did it bring people to your other work? I keep going back and forth on whether that kind of exposure actually converts or if it just feels good in the moment.
Honey, don't you carry that cheapskate feeling one more day. Matching frames for somebody else's wall is their taste, not your work. I've watched folks put a quilt behind glass in a frame that fought it the whole way, and it never once made the piece better.
Far as the credit question, I'll say this much from my own sewing. The thing that finally moved my work along wasn't the fancy room, it was one person in that room who remembered my name and called me two years later. So I'd ask what a show like that actually leaves behind. Names, or just a line on a resume. If it's names, worth it. If it's the line, mm.
"Names, or just a line on a resume", c'est ça, exactly. And I can answer it for my own case: the two shows left behind one collector who still writes to me, and one name. The rest was a line on a page.
But I'll push back a little on the frame, because you're kind and I don't fully agree with you. The gold leaf wasn't their taste imposed on me, it was me being lazy about a decision I should have made myself. A frame is part of the object. A bad one can kill a painting the way a bad hem ruins a good dress, and I let someone else choose it because I was tired. That's on me more than on them. The 380 euros I still resent. The lesson I keep.
Your quilt behind glass, though. That I'd like to see done right. Some things want to breathe without a sheet of anything between them and the eye.
You were right to say no, and the fact you felt bad about it for a month says more about the art world than about you. A frame that costs more than your year's sales is not a frame, it is a tax. And you sold fine anyway. Voilà.
To your question, honestly: the second year brought me one collector who came back for a smaller piece, and she came because she had stood in front of the peonies for twenty minutes at the first show and could not stop thinking about them. So yes, it did something. But it was that one person, not a wave. The rest of the credit was just that, credit, a line on the CV that opens a door to a slightly better conversation. If you are going back and forth, my honest read is that it depends on whether you can afford the eleven euros an hour without resenting the painting while you make it. The first year I could. The second year I was tired, and I think it shows in the edges. That is the real cost, not the money.