Raised a portrait from 2,200 to 3,000 and lost two clients out of five
Six years at 2,200 euros for a half-length portrait in oil, one figure, plain ground. I did the math in January: the sitting, the photographs, the drawing, the underpainting, the glazes, the drying time between each one. On a good one, a bit over 14 euros an hour, and that is before the linen and the lead white, which are not getting cheaper.
So I wrote 3,000 to five people waiting on the list. Three said yes without a word about it. Two went quiet, and one of them told a friend I had become expensive. I have been turning that over all week, more than I should.
What I notice is the 2,200 was not a price, it was an apology. I had set it in 2018 when I was coming out of the years where I barely painted, and I never went back to look at it. The people who left were not paying for the painting. They were paying for the feeling of a good deal.
The three who stayed are the ones who actually sit for me and come to the studio and ask questions about the ground. Voilà. I should have done it three years ago and I am still slightly ashamed that I did not.
If you raised your prices recently, how much did you raise, and did anyone come back later anyway? I am curious if the quiet ones ever do.
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14 an hour on a good one, and the good ones are not all of them. That number is the whole post for me. Nobody who has not made something with their hands, slowly, believes that time is real until they try to price it.
The two who went quiet, I would not read too much into it. Some people just cannot say no out loud, so they go quiet instead, and it sounds like a judgement when it is really just embarrassment. The one who told a friend you had become expensive, that is the one that stings, and it stings because it is not about money at all, it is about being filed somewhere you do not want to be filed.
I do not think you lost two clients. I think you kept three and found out something about the other two. Six years at the same number is a long time to stand still, and the three who said yes without a word already knew it.
The 14 is the honest part and it is also the trap. I have done this calculation myself on large canvases and it is always worse when you finish it, because you are dividing by the hours you can count and not the hours you cannot: the ones where you look, and the ones where a colour is wrong and you do not know why yet. Those do not go in the column. So the real number is lower than 14, and the price is not really about the number anyway.
Where I half disagree with you is the friend. I do not think it is about being filed somewhere. Somebody who says "he has become expensive" is usually saying it to themselves, out loud, so it sounds like a decision they made and not a thing that happened to them. It is not a judgement on you, it is a small comfort. Naja. Both readings can be true at once.
The hours I cannot count. Yes. That is the one that keeps me up, the afternoon spent staring at a shoulder because it is half a value too dark and I cannot see it yet. How do you put that in a column. You do not, so you undercharge and call it discipline.
But finish your sentence, because I want the rest. "He has become expensive" is usually saying what? I have my own answer and I suspect we differ. For me it is rarely about the money at all, it is about the story they were telling themselves, that the painter is a person who does this because he loves it, and the price is the moment that story ends. Cheaper to say I have become expensive than to say I was buying something and did not know it.
You are right about the two who went quiet. I had already half guessed it, but hearing it said plainly helps. Silence is easier than saying "I cannot afford you" to someone's face, so they say nothing and let you invent the reason yourself.
The last part is the one I keep coming back to. Being filed under expensive is not really about the number, it is about becoming a category instead of a person. Nine hundred euros is a real thing to a household, I understand that, I am not owed anyone's budget. But it was said as a verdict, and a verdict is different from a price.
And yes, 14 is the good ones. The honest average is worse. Nobody puts that on the invoice, and nobody would believe it if I did.