Originally Posted by
stlukesguild
I'd find out how many hours he put into them...
That seems like a logical approach... but it does not always work out that way. Certainly, if we are considering two artists of equal reputation, the prices of one may be considerably more than those of another if, for example, the one artist paints rapidly executed watercolors, while the other spends 4 months on a highly detailed oil painting. But time is not in any way the prime measure of worth. Van Gogh often completed his paintings in a single session of but a few hours, and yet his works command prices higher than paintings that took months to complete. At the same time... it is generally frowned upon for an artist to differentiate the prices of works of equal size/medium/technique based upon the time involved... or even based upon the artist's opinion as to which piece is better. Some times we get lucky and a painting virtually falls together. At other times the process is painfully drawn out. The buyer is not merely paying for the labor on one specific work... but for the skill/talent that took years to develop so that at times a piece can just fall together. To differentiate the price of two similar and equally-sized works is also dangerous in that it imposes the artist's opinion upon the buyer. If I have two paintings for sale and one is priced 25% less than the other... merely because I feel it is not as good this immediately conveys my opinion as to its lesser merit to the audience... and this may actually conflict with the buyer's opinion. The buyer may have found the less expensive painting to be far superior, but by underpricing it, you convey the notion that his or her opinion is somehow wrong. Prices in art are largely based upon what the going rate is for art of the same or similar scale and medium by an artist of similar reputation and experience.