I was writing a piece for State of Art, the new quarterly news magazine, when I was reminded of The Skin of the Bear. More properly La Peau de l’Ours, this was the brainchild of Parisian financier Andre Level. He set up an art investment fund with that title, persuading a dozen other art lovers to contribute 250 francs each year to buy modern paintings. The investors would hang the works in their homes during the ten years before the fund cashed in by selling off the collection.
Level kicked off The Bear in 1904. By the time the ten years were up, the prices of work by Picasso and the other selected artists had soared nearly out of Level’s reach. The sale catalogues produced in 1914 are now themselves worth more than The Bear’s original investment in works by Picasso or Braque. The great sale narrowly went ahead before the First World War broke out, and huge profits were pocketed - so large that the investors were happy to donate a fifth of their loot to be shared between the artists.
Pablo Picasso Family of Saltimbanques, 1905
Chester Dale Collection
National Gallery Of Art, USA
In fact, The Bear backers had quadrupled their money in the decade. The stars of the show were Picasso and Matisse, with the former breaking all records for the moderns by selling his great Saltimbanques (shown above) for 12,650 francs: it had cost Level a mere thousand in 1908. The story is doubly relevant for me. First, the subject of my article was the droit de suite - a levy on resales of artworks through dealers and auction houses which enables artists to share in the money made by rising prices.
This came into force throughout the EU on New Year’s Day and will shortly become UK law. The droit starts with works at €1000 and is charged at 4% up to a price of €50,000. There’s then a sliding scale down all the way to a quarter of a percent, with a cap of €12,500 - for which you need to have sold the work for €1 million. The scheme is controversial, but it’s here to stay. I don’t foresee any great impact on the secondary market, or on artists’ financial wellbeing for that matter.
My second point is that the precedent of The Bear still stands. Level’s investment strategy remains excellent. The buying power of a group can take individuals into price realms which they wouldn’t dare to enter on their own. Although I knew nothing of The Bear, I joined in a similar effort at Jesus College, Cambridge in the 1950s. Art-loving undergraduates chipped in small sums which collectively added up to enough money to purchase worthwhile art (including a Ben Nicholson view of St Ives which hung in my rooms for a whole year - nobody else wanted it!).
A point I’ve stressed before can’t be over-emphasised. The great percentage gains are made by buying artists’ work when they are on the threshold of success. You won’t find another Picasso, naturally, but there are always opportunities. The Bears, of course, were really backing Level. You should do likewise: latch on to somebody who knows what they are doing and whose judgment you can trust.
Why ‘the skin of the bear’? It came from a La Fontaine fable about two hunters planning what they’ll do when they skin the bear. As the animal says to them, ‘first catch your bear’!
To register for free copies of STATE OF ART, contact Michaela[@]flowerseast.com (remove square brackets)
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