We have become inured to the use of the term "attributed to" in the opposite of its proper meaning. Schwartz conducted a small-scale analysis of one auction sale to see whether this and other art-world euphemisms are used systematically by auction houses. He found that they are, but that buyers attach a different value to the terms than the house.
"…Mom stares at my auction find, a portrait of Lord Townley attributed to Romney. (Attributed to means Definitely not done by.) …", Patricia Volk, Stuffed: adventures of a restaurant family, p. 60.
Any auction-goer knows the truth of that peeved remark by an outsider. For some reason we go along with the cynical reversal in the art world of the meaning of the word attributed. We also accept auction-house denominations that falsely pretend to an historical dimension: School of, Follower of and so forth. These words do not mean, as they seem to, that the artist in question had a known school or had followers. They simply express a quality judgment. Instead of saying, "Badly damaged and inexpertly overpainted imitation of a well-known master by a third-rate hack two generations younger," the auctioneer says "School of."
Curious to see whether there is method behind this institutionalized insincerity, I checked the July 5th auction at Sotheby’s Olympia in London. an unpretentious sale of 265 lower-range Old Master paintings (in 230 lots), to see whether the house uses nomenclature systematically. I found that it does. "Attributed to" turns out to be a very favorable description in the eyes of Sotheby’s. If we assign the value 1 to the average low estimate for paintings given to named masters (actually £4843) and calculate the average estimates for the various euphemisms for "definitely not by," the following scale emerges:
1.00 Master
0.96 Attributed to…
0.95 Circle of …
0.76 Follower of …
0.61 Generic school (for example, Dutch school, 17th century)
0.45 Manner of …
0.27 After …
This means that Sotheby’s uses the terms "Attributed to" and "Circle of" quite aggressively. Taking their estimates at face value, they expect these lots to fetch about as much as accepted originals.
Then, of course, I wanted to know whether the house was right. To measure success, I divided the average hammer price per category by the total number of paintings in that category, whether sold or not, again assigning a 1 to paintings by named masters (actually £6095).
1.004 Circle of …
1.00 Master
0.90 Generic school
0.68 Follower of …
0.64 Attributed to …
0.20 After …
0.18 Manner of …
This measurement, which is based on a very limited sample, reveals a pronounced discrepancy between the model employed – perhaps unconsciously – by the auction house and the reactions of buyers. At the July 5th sale, buyers improved on the house estimate of "Circle of" but bid low on "Attributed to" and hated "Manner of." They liked generic school paintings far better than Sotheby’s thought they would. There is room here for a psychologist of art-world semantics to make a killing in the market, buying attributions and reselling them as "Circle of …" or generic school paintings. Any bettors?
Before putting good money on the line, you are advised to expand the body of material. The use of this Sotheby’s sale is arbitrary. All auction houses – and museums, for that matter – use the same euphemisms, each in its own way.
© Gary Schwartz 2005. Published in Loekie Schwartz’s Dutch translation in Het Financieele Dagblad, 13 August 2005
Responses to Gary.Schwartz@xs4all.nl