The gallery takes 40% and I finally did the arithmetic on it

I spent an hour yesterday with a calculator and a list of everything I sold through a gallery in the last two years. Should have done it sooner. Probably I knew.

A 30x40 figure, framed, six weeks of work, sold at €2,200. The gallery takes 40%, which is standard enough, nobody is robbing me. But then there's the frame, the canvas and linen, the medium, the model's sitting fee, and the delivery across town in the car. What actually stayed with me was under €900. Six weeks, and it comes out at something a decent plasterer would laugh at.

And the thing that annoyed me most wasn't the 40%. It's that I set the €2,200 four years ago and never touched it, because the gallery suggested a price and I said yes like a polite girl. The commission rate is not the problem. My silence is the problem.

I'm raising the tag to €3,200 for the next one and telling them next week. Two paintings a year at that price beats three at the old one, and I'd rather have the time. I'll let you know how the conversation goes. I suspect it will be short and I will be the one sweating.

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Ramesh Jha·2h

Sir, the arithmetic you did is painful but it is honest, and I respect you for sitting with the calculator instead of avoiding it. In our Mithila work we have the same trouble with the middleman, only here it comes as the buyer who says folk art should be cheap because it is "village work." Six weeks of fine line work and natural colour, and they want to pay the rate of a printed poster.

But one thing I would say kindly. The 40% is not only rent for the wall. It is also the name they have built, which the buyer is trusting. In our cooperatives we lost many good artists because no one was doing that part, so the work sat folded in a trunk. What hurts is not the share, it is that the share is not written clearly before you begin. If the terms are open from the first day, a man can decide with his eyes open.

Your skill is not in question, only the counting. I hope you keep making the work and also keep the calculator nearby. 🙏

Camille LaurentOP·1h

The "village work" thing is worse than the 40%, honestly. At least the gallery names its cut out loud. Nobody says the price of a poster to my face, they just look at the frame and go quiet.

And I'll take your point on the name, partly. A gallery that sells you well is worth something real and I've had one that did. But when they build the name on your six weeks of work and then the name is what the buyer is paying for, the artist has to eat that arithmetic eventually. What did your cooperatives do about the ones who left? I'd like to know, because I don't have an answer here.

Niall Doherty·2h

the hour with the calculator is the worst hour in the trade and everybody knows it and does it anyway eventually. i print linocuts so my overheads are a lot lighter than yours, no model's fee, no canvas, but the framing still ate me alive for years until i copped that i was pricing the print and letting the frame be this separate sad thing i just absorbed. now the frame is in the price, named, and if someone doesn't want it they can have it unframed and carry it out themselves. funny how quick the conversation changes when the frame is a line item instead of a favour.

the 40% i've made a sort of peace with, not because it's fair but because i decided what it's actually buying. if the gallery sells it, fine, that's the cost of the room and the person who talks to buyers all day. if they hang it for six months and it gathers dust, that's a different transaction and i don't think it should cost me the same. what's the bit that annoyed you more than the 40%, the thing you cut off at? that's usually the real wound in these sums.

Camille LaurentOP·1h

The frame as a line item. Yes. That's the whole thing, isn't it, I was absorbing it as if it were a courtesy I owed the buyer. Named on the invoice, it stops being my private shame and becomes their decision.

For me it's the model's fee that does the same trick. I used to just swallow it, and then one day I wrote it into the quote as "sitting hours, charged at cost" and nobody blinked. The price of the painting went up by about two hundred euros and not one person walked.

Your overheads being lighter doesn't make the lesson different, it just makes it cheaper for you to learn. Linocut or oil, the frame eats you either way.