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Tuesday, February 11, 2025

T&T art market alive and well

by

20101007

In­vest­ments, cash, in­fla­tion and "melt­down" are all the talk at this time. A re­cent ar­ti­cle in the Lon­don Guardian stat­ed that with cash in the bank pay­ing one per cent a year, and with a four per cent a year in­fla­tion, one was los­ing three per cent a year with cash. It was sug­gest­ed that in­vest­ing in art­work would bet­ter that fig­ure any day.

And look­ing at a paint­ing on your wall is pret­ti­er than look­ing at a de­press­ing file of your hold­ings. In Trinidad, in­vest­ing in art has proven to be a sound medi­um to long-term in­vest­ment as ev­i­denced in two sales of com­plete pri­vate col­lec­tions of art­works last year. The two sales re­alised over $2 mil­lion, sales were swift, and if more works were avail­able, they too would have sold.As an ex­am­ple, in 2004 I sold my col­lec­tion of five Isa­iah James Bood­hoo paint­ings for which I got $320,000. This mon­ey was in­vest­ed in mu­tu­al funds, now worth some $211,000. The paint­ings to­day would fetch about $500,000.

A client re­cent­ly called me to view a 2002 Bood­hoo paint­ing. She would on­ly sell it to me at 100 per cent markup (in 7.5 years). I im­me­di­ate­ly paid cash know­ing it was a very sound in­vest­ment.

But in­vest­ing in art has to be with the eye, the heart and with a sound "name" artist. Lead­ing names to­day, in my opin­ion, would be Caz­abon, Bood­hoo, Lisa Chu Foon and Hing­wan fol­lowed by Hold­er, Chang, At­teck and Al­ladin (of the de­ceased artists), and Clarke, Hink­son, Sun­di­a­ta, Har­ris, Glas­gow, O'Con­nor, Shep­pard and Sylvester (liv­ing artists).

More rare are works by Marce­lio, Bas­so, Stollmey­er, and Isaac, but works by them are so rare that to es­tab­lish a "his­to­ry of sales" that jus­ti­fies pric­ing is dif­fi­cult. It is said that orig­i­nal paint­ings in Trinidad are over­priced. On the con­trary, com­pared to prices re­alised re­gion­al­ly in Bar­ba­dos and Ja­maica, we are far be­hind; in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, we are pos­i­tive­ly cheap. For ex­am­ple, 101 Art Gallery has the ex­clu­sive rights to sell works from the Boscoe Hold­er archive. We make re­spectable sales lo­cal­ly, but our ma­jor mar­kets are in Ger­many, the US, Aus­tralia and Bar­ba­dos (where they sell for two to three times the TT price).

Bos-coe's works in stor­age num­ber some 100 signed paint­ings–that is the end of the stock–and sad­ly we in Trinidad are los­ing out on this po­ten­tial for in­vest­ment as most works sell abroad. Re­cent­ly Boscoe Hold­er's works have been ex­hib­it­ed for sale in Berlin and Lon­don at gal­leries that rep­re­sent the likes of Al­ice Neel, Pe­ter Doig and Chris Ofili. This week a show opened at The Gallery on The Green in Lon­don with draw­ings by Boscoe Hold­er, Chris­t­ian Hold­er and Oliv­er Messle. A Boscoe paint­ing pur­chased in 2004 would dou­ble your mon­ey to­day.

Cli­co is much in the news to­day. An­nu­al­ly, it has pur­chased 12 paint­ings for its col­lec­tion and its cal­en­dar. Over the years Cli­co has pur­chased 12 works each by Carlisle Chang, Boscoe Hold­er and Isa­iah James Bood­hoo that may well turn out to be amongst its most sound (if small) in­vest­ments.

Michel Jean Caz­abon (1813-1888) is per­haps our most re­spect­ed and know artist, both lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. An oil paint­ing of his cre­at­ed a sen­sa­tion at Christies Auc­tion house in Lon­don where it sold about 12 years ago (far high­er than the es­ti­mate) at some $750,000 (in­clud­ing com­mis­sion and vat there-on).

But that is a top-of-the-line in­vest­ment. At the sale and ex­hi­bi­tion "Pre­cious Paint­ings From Pri­vate Col­lec­tions" at 101 Gallery open­ing to­mor­row, you can get an orig­i­nal Caz­abon wa­ter­colour from $60,000 to $195,000. Oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ties are works by Bood­hoo from $14,500 and works by Ed­win Hing­wan for $42,000, all rea­son­ably priced sound in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties.


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