How to priceyour artwork

You sell a small piece for 400 € in the studio. A month later a collector asks about a similar size. You hesitate, then say 550, because they came through a gallery contact. They thank you and never reply. The price was not the problem. The hesitation was.

A price is a signal. When the same piece is 600 on Instagram, 800 in the studio and 1,200 in a gallery, the buyer who paid 600 feels taken, the gallerist cannot anchor the higher number, and you decide again at the next negotiation, usually a little lower.

The damage is rarely a single lost sale. It is the slow erosion of a professional posture. Galleries notice, collectors talk, and the artist who shifts prices to please the room becomes the one whose prices nobody trusts.

Take the dimensions of the piece in centimetres and multiply by a personal coefficient. The linear version is price = (height + width) × coefficient. Some painters use height × width, a true surface area that rises faster on large pieces. Pick one and keep it: the point is internal consistency, not which arithmetic you prefer.

A worked example. An oil on linen, 80 × 100 cm, at a coefficient of 12 is (80 + 100) × 12 = 2,160 €. At a coefficient of 25 the same piece is 4,500 €. A smaller 30 × 40 cm canvas comes out to 840 € at 12, or 1,750 € at 25.

The pattern is the useful part. Inside one coefficient you have a grid: every size has a price, every price has a reason, and the reason is always the same. If a collector asks why one canvas is 840 € and the next is 2,160 €, you answer in one sentence.

The coefficient is where your career enters the formula. Career stage matters: an artist with a single group show is not at the same coefficient as one with eight years of solo shows and a gallerist who places work.

Sales history is the most reliable signal. If your last ten pieces sold at a given coefficient within a reasonable time, the number works. If half are still in the studio after a year, the market is telling you something else.

Medium and labour move it too: a painter working in oil over months sits at a different coefficient than one working in ink over hours. So does demand: a waiting list and a gallery asking for a new series give the coefficient room to move; pushing pieces that never come back does not.

As a rough sketch, emerging painters fresh out of art school often sit between 10 and 15 on the linear method. Artists with consistent gallery representation tend to sit around 25. Established names sit at 40 and above. These ranges are indicative: look at peers at your stage and adjust.