This can make a big difference for investing in art

Study says there's something you must know about the artist

This can make a big difference for investing in art
Steve Randall
Many of the world’s wealthiest people boast incredible art collections, but an academic study says there’s a key element that investors in paintings need to know about the artists who work they collect.

How were they feeling when the painted it?!

The study by by Kathryn Graddy of Brandeis University and Carl Lieberman of Princeton University found that paintings created during an artist’s period of bereavement see a drop in value of up to 35% compared to their other work.

"Our analysis reflects that artists, in the year following the death of a friend or relative, are on average less creative than at other times in their lives," said Graddy. "Paintings that were created in the year following a death fetch significantly less at auction than those created at other times in an artist's life, and are significantly less likely to be included in a major museum's collection."

The authors studied more than 10,000 works by 33 French impressionist artists and more than 2,000 paintings by 15 American artists between 1900 and 1920.

They considered the time the works were created in relation to the death of the artists’ loved ones; and then analysed the sales prices of those works between 1972 and 2014.

The paintings done within a year of the death of a friend or relative of the artist experienced up to 35% lower prices than their other works.

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