Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 283, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 December 1911 — Poor Artists Pay Big Sums for Their Pictures [ARTICLE]

Poor Artists Pay Big Sums for Their Pictures

A statistician has busied himself since the opehing of the various salons, which are now going full blast, compiling an estimate of raw materials bought by artists annually in France. •.''.x . i. At the various salons he estimates that at least 80.000 pictures are exposed each year. As many more, at the smallest estimate are rejected or not offered for exhibition. That would make 100.000 canvasses. The average bne would be about 8 feet square. With the wooden "chasls” such a canvas costs |6. After the picture is finished It must be framed, for, without a frame no salon would accept a painting, no matter how excellent. This would mean at least |2O. Next the art-critic statistician goes to paints. A tube of cadmium-yellow costs |1.25, one of yellow-ochre 12c. 11.25, one of yellow-ochre 12 cents. The average cost of paints on the canvas is put. therefore, at lift. He adds to this an average, of four sittings by* a model, at |1 per sitting—both low estimates—making another 14. The average patating costs, it Is seen, about |4O. tn materials alone, the pictures hung eaeh year in the various French salons cost the “poor artists'* |l,200,000. - Tho KO,OOO pictures painted annually in France cost in raw materials alone*just |«,500,000. " The expert expresses himself amazed at his oirn figures. "poor artist" who spends 80 cents tpr.aa exceptionally rich dinner ion htak-blrthday scrapes up isuch/aasim Is beyond him. Let no one say. he ends, that art Is dead In France!