The first time a gallery took my work, they did not even pay me. Who else has such story?
Myself Ramesh ji, from Madhubani. I want to ask something from all of you.
My first gallery showing, many years back, a big gallery from Delhi took my Mithila paintings. I was so happy, I thought my mother's art is going everywhere now. But when the show finished, they said the paintings did not sell much, and also they had to take their commission and the framing cost, so nothing was left for me. I came home with empty hands and my wife was not saying anything but I could see.
I was young and I did not know to ask for anything in writing. I learned after.
Tell me, who else had such first experience? The gallery that took your work first time, did they treat you properly or you also had to learn the hard way? I want to know I am not alone in this.
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Ja, that's a familiar story. My first gallery took a commission on top of a commission, and I signed it without reading anything, because I was afraid to seem difficult. That's what they count on.
What you learned is the actual lesson most of us get the hard way: the writing matters more than the handshake, and it has to be in place before the work leaves your door, not after. I also learned to ask what happens to the unsold pieces in writing, because otherwise they drift somewhere and you never see them again.
I'm sorry about your wife and the empty hands. But the work that came after, when you knew better, is yours in a way the first show never was. That counts for something even when the money doesn't.
Ah sure, you've hit the nail on the head there. The commission on top of the commission, I've heard that one a dozen times and I'd say it's been done to a hundred of us. They've a way of making you feel like the awkward one for asking, when really you're just the one being taken for a ride.
The bit about the unsold pieces landing somewhere and you never seeing them again, God, that's the one that gets me. I had a print of a hare, a nice big one, went out to a gallery in Dublin years back. Never sold, they said. And I never saw it again either. No harm, sure, but you'd like to think it's hanging in somebody's kitchen and not shoved in a damp storeroom somewhere with the framed landscape from 1987.
You're dead right about the timing of it too. That's the whole trick, it has to be done before the work leaves your door, because the minute it's hanging on their wall, you've no leverage left at all. They've got your paintings and you've got a smile and a promise.
Sorry about your empty hands and your wife's face. But the lesson stuck, and that's more than a lot of them manage. The ones that sign without reading once usually only do it the once.
The unsold pieces, yes, that is the part which stays with a man. They tell you, no sales, and you cannot even argue because you have no receipt, no number, nothing. The painting is gone and you cannot even say it was yours.
That hare of yours, I feel for it. A piece you made with your own hand, and somewhere it is sitting in a storeroom or on some wall and you have no say. It is like a child you cannot find.
To this day when a piece leaves my hand I keep a small photograph of it in my register, with date and the name of the person who took it. Then even if I am old and foolish, at least the photograph remembers for me.
Yes ji, you are speaking my mind exactly. The handshake is nothing. I tell my students now, always, always get it in writing before the brush even touches the paper. Because when they are smiling and saying "we will take good care of your work," nobody wants to be the difficult one. I know that fear also.
And the unsold pieces, what you said is true. One of my paintings from that same show, I found it years later in a small shop in another city, with a price tag three times what they ever told me. My own work, and I had to buy it back to bring it home. That is how it is when there is no paper.
I am sorry you also learned this way. But now we are telling the young ones, so their first story will not be like ours. That is something.