What erotic art costs

Two things are for sale, at genuinely different prices

They are different objects, not two tiers of the same object.

Which of the two is the right buy for you is worked through in original or signed print: which should you buy?, and what a print actually gets you is in what €35 buys.

How the price of a painting is set

Each price is a value assigned to that one painting by the person who painted it. It is not calculated.

That is worth stating plainly, because the obvious assumption is that a bigger canvas costs proportionally more, and it does not. Two paintings of the same size can sit at different prices, and one price can cover several different sizes. What moves it is what the painter thinks the finished work is worth: how it came out, how much of it survived the weeks it took, whether it does the thing it was trying to do.

What follows from that:

• Nothing is negotiable. The price is the price, and it is the same price for everyone.
• Nothing is made to order at a size you choose. Each painting already exists; the price belongs to that painting. A commission is the separate route for work that does not exist yet.
• There is no edition of an original hiding behind it. One canvas, one price, and when it is sold it is gone.

The longer version, with what does and does not move a price, is in what an original erotic oil painting costs, and why.

If the lower end is the interesting one

That is a normal place to start, and it is not a lesser purchase.

At the €250 to €500 end you are buying a smaller original: the same oil on canvas, the same one-of-one, the same certificate. At €35 a hand-signed print is the least expensive way into work like this, and it is sold as a print rather than dressed up as something else.

What a budget of €250, €500 or €750 actually reaches is set out in affordable original erotic art under €1000, and the full case for the prints is on prints and editions.

Whether it holds its value

Nobody selling art can tell you what it will be worth later, and anyone who does is selling you something other than a painting.

What can honestly be said: the work is one of one, it is documented, and it is not reprinted. Those are the conditions under which value can hold. They are not a promise that it will. Buy it because you want to look at it — that is the only part of the transaction you control. The argument in full is in does erotic art hold its value?

Commissions

The third route: your own photograph, painted in oil, priced in the same range as the originals. A few each year. The process, the price bands and how discretion is handled are on commissions.

One difference worth knowing before you start: a commission is made to your order, so it falls outside the fourteen-day right of withdrawal that applies to catalogue works.

Questions people ask

How much does an original erotic oil painting cost?

Originals in this studio run from €250 to €900. Each canvas carries its own price, set as the value of that one painting rather than calculated from its size. Signed prints of a number of the paintings are €35 plus shipping.

Does a bigger painting cost more?

Not reliably. Two paintings of the same size can sit at different prices, and one price can cover several different sizes. The price is a value assigned to that one work by the painter, not a formula applied to its dimensions.

Are the prices negotiable?

No. The price is the same for everyone, and it is the price of that one painting. Nothing here is made to order at a size you choose — each painting already exists. A commission is the separate route for work that does not exist yet.

What is the least expensive way to buy?

A hand-signed print at €35 plus shipping, in an edition of no more than fifty, printed once and never reprinted. It is sold and described as a print. The least expensive originals start at €250.

Will the painting be worth more later?

Nobody selling art can tell you that, and anyone who does is selling you something other than a painting. The work is one of one, documented and never reprinted, which are the conditions under which value can hold — not a promise that it will.