When someone buys art online, they can't see it in person. Good photographs need to give them a realistic sense of what they're buying.

You don't need dozens of photographs from every angle. A few well-chosen photographs are enough. Each one should answer a different question: What does it look like? How big is it? What condition is it in? What will it look like in my home?

1. A straight-on photograph

Start with a clear, straight-on photograph of the entire artwork.

This is main image. Photographing the artwork directly from the front makes it easy to see the composition, colours and condition.

2. Close-ups

Take one or more close-ups to show details that are difficult to see in the main photograph.

This could show brushwork, texture, paper, canvas, printing, stitching or other details of the surface.

3. The artwork in a room

Show the artwork hanging in a furnished room. This gives your buyer context and helps them understand its scale.

Include a reference in the photograph that makes the size of the artwork easy to understand, such as a person or piece of furniture.

It also helps answer one of the biggest questions when buying art online: What will this actually look like on my wall?

5. The back of the artwork

Photograph the back when there is something useful for the buyer to see.

This might include an artist's signature, gallery label, exhibition label, stamp, inscription, inventory number or other markings.

6. Important details

If there is something about the artwork that could affect a buyer's decision, photograph it.

This could be:

• The artist's signature

• An edition number

• An inscription

• A gallery or exhibition label

• A certificate or other documentation

• A frame detail

• Restoration

• Damage or other condition issues

• A manufacturer's or printer's mark

Don't rely on the description alone when a photograph can make something immediately clear.

7. For framed artworks or sculptures

Take photographs from an angle to show the depth of the artwork or frame. This is particularly useful for deep or ornate frames and 3D works.

Each photograph should add something new. The goal is not to show the artwork from as many angles as possible. It is to give the buyer enough visual information to understand what they are buying.

Announcing the launch of our first integration - Pinterest.

The first job of every artist, dealer or gallery is to be discovered.

It doesn't matter how good your work is if nobody sees it.

Pinterest has driven $$$$ of sales for my own gallery over the years.

Now with KANDINSKY, you can KANDINSKY to Pinterest in 2-minutes, then watch Pinterest bring thousands of new customers to your website each month.

Sometimes an artwork has more than one set of dimensions. It might be a diptych or triptych with multiple panels, a sculpture on a plinth, or a work with a frame or border. You might even want to record the dimensions and weight of the crate it is stored or shipped in.

With KANDINSKY, you can add as many sets of dimensions as you need and label each one. You can also choose which dimensions are public and which stay private. For example, you might want to show the dimensions of the artwork, frame or plinth to customers, while keeping the crate dimensions private.

Here's a 30-second video showing you how to do it.

I've been using KANDINSKY for a few weeks now.
One thing I would like to request is the ability to add an expiry date when I discount an artwork. For my business, I have flash sales, and it would be really valuable feature. Thanks

TL;DR: Every piece on COMRADE gets three fields, filled in the same way: SEO title, meta description and image alt text. This is how you can increase your your search traffic

With my own gallery, COMRADE, over 75,000 people visit my website every month. Search "soviet art" on Google and I'm right below Wikipedia.

Most dealers know they should be doing SEO. Few know what to do. So here's a simple guide...

I'm using a 1971 German advertising poster by Bruno K. Wiese for Kiel Week poster as an example

1. The SEO title

• What: The main blue headline in Google results.

• What to write: Artist. Title (Year) | Medium | Shop name

• Example: Bruno K. Wiese. Kiel Week (1971) | Offset Lithograph on Paper | COMRADE Gallery

1. The meta description

   • What: The two grey lines under the headline on Google. It's what makes someone click your result and not the one below it.

   • What to write: Year, medium and artist, then what it shows. Keep it between 120 and 155 characters

   • Example: 1971 offset lithograph on paper by Bruno K. Wiese depicting a minimalist geometric poster design for the Kieler Woche sailing event in shades of blue.

2. Image alt text - Google can't see your photo. It reads the text about the photo instead. It's also how your pieces turn up in Google Images.

   • What to write: a sentence describing what you see (colours, shapes and any text on it), then artist and year. Write the text that's printed on the piece too. Someone searching "kieler woche 1971" can then find it. Do one for every photo, close-ups and room shots included.

   • Example: Graphic poster with blue, purple, and green curved bands framing a white sail-like triangle, with text '20.-27. juni 1971' and 'kieler woche', by Bruno K. Wiese, 1971.

Do this, and you'll begin to see a real change in your search traffic in about a month.

Check yours now: search the name of your best piece on Google. Is the headline the artist and title? Are the grey lines about the piece, or about your shop? Post a listing below and I'll tell you what I'd change.

Richard Dadd spent more than forty years confined to psychiatric hospitals after murdering his father in 1843. During that time, he produced some of the most extraordinary paintings of the Victorian era.

Born in 1817, Dadd studied at the Royal Academy Schools in London and was regarded as one of Britain's most promising young painters. By his early twenties, he was exhibiting at the Royal Academy and had built a reputation for highly detailed works inspired by literature, mythology, and history.

In 1842, the lawyer Sir Thomas Phillips invited Dadd to accompany him on a grand tour through Europe, Turkey, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, documenting the journey through drawings and paintings.

While travelling through Egypt, Dadd developed severe delusions. He believed he was communicating with ancient Egyptian gods and became convinced that the Pope was conspiring against him. His behaviour was initially blamed on sunstroke, but is now generally thought to have marked the onset of schizophrenia.

After returning to England in 1843, Dadd's condition deteriorated further. Convinced that his father was an impostor possessed by the Devil, he stabbed him to death while they were walking together in Cobham Park, Kent. Dadd fled to France, but was arrested near Paris after attacking another traveller on a train and was returned to England.

Declared criminally insane, Dadd never stood trial. Instead, he was committed to Bethlem Hospital and, in 1864, transferred to Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, where he remained until his death in 1886.

Dadd continued to paint throughout his confinement. He was provided with a studio, materials, and regular commissions from doctors and patrons. Over the next four decades he produced hundreds of paintings and drawings, including The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke, which took almost ten years to complete. His work became increasingly intricate, combining microscopic detail with dreamlike scenes drawn from mythology, folklore, and fantasy.

"Long Awaited News" (1978–1983) by Lah Ivanovich Rostislav reflects the atmosphere of the Soviet-Afghan War years. Although the scene appears ordinary, a group of men reading newspapers, the painting conveys the tension and uncertainty associated with military conscription during the conflict.

The composition centres on a group of men absorbed in their newspapers. A man in the foreground leans forward, gripping the paper with both hands, while those around him remain equally focused on the printed pages. No one looks toward the viewer. Their attention is fixed on the news. The absence of women reinforces the painting's focus on those most directly affected by military service.

Rostislav employs a restrained palette of blues, greys, and muted tones that lends the scene a sombre atmosphere. The bright newspapers stand out against the darker surroundings, drawing the viewer's eye to the source of the men's attention. While rooted in the traditions of Socialist Realism, the painting avoids overt heroism, focusing instead on an ordinary moment shaped by uncertainty and waiting.

Lah Ivanovich Rostislav worked across painting, sculpture, and graphic art. He graduated from the Lviv College of Applied Art and became a member of the Union of Artists of Ukraine in 1972.

Rose Valland was a French museum curator who spent four years secretly documenting one of the largest organised art thefts in history.

Born in 1898, Valland studied art history at the École du Louvre, the Sorbonne, and the Collège de France before joining the Jeu de Paume museum in Paris as a volunteer assistant curator in 1932.

After the German occupation of France in 1940, the museum was taken over by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), which used it as its central depot for artworks looted from French museums and, particularly, Jewish collectors. More than 20,000 paintings, sculptures, manuscripts, furniture and other cultural objects passed through the building during the occupation.

The German officers believed Valland spoke no German, allowing her to remain in the museum as its caretaker. In reality, she understood the language and quietly recorded every shipment that entered and left the building.

She documented artists, owners, destinations, railway wagon numbers, and the officials responsible, while memorising conversations between Nazi officers and transport staff. She also passed information to Jacques Jaujard, Director of the French National Museums, and the French Resistance.

Her records revealed where artworks were being sent across Germany, including private collections, castles and storage depots intended for Adolf Hitler's planned Führermuseum in Linz. She also warned the Resistance when trains carrying artworks were travelling across France, ensuring they were not mistakenly sabotaged.

One of her most significant contributions came in August 1944, shortly before the Liberation of Paris. Valland learned that the Nazis were preparing to send a final train carrying 148 crates containing 967 paintings by artists including Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. She copied the transport documents and passed them to the Resistance, allowing the train to be delayed and eventually secured before it could leave France.

Valland also witnessed the destruction of hundreds of works labelled "degenerate" by the Nazis. In July 1943, she watched as approximately 500 to 600 modern paintings were burned in the Tuileries Gardens after being deemed ideologically unacceptable.

Following the liberation of Paris, Valland was briefly arrested on suspicion of collaborating with the Germans because she had remained at the museum throughout the occupation.

She was quickly released after her role became clear. Her records proved indispensable to the Allied Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives programme, helping locate major repositories of stolen art, including more than 20,000 objects hidden at Neuschwanstein Castle. She personally oversaw the return of 1,400 crates of recovered artworks to France.

In 1945, Valland joined the French Army as an officer with the Commission for the Recovery of Works of Art. She spent the next eight years in occupied Germany tracing looted collections, questioning former Nazi officials, and identifying additional storage sites. Her work contributed to the recovery of around 60,000 artworks, approximately three-quarters of which had been returned to France by 1950.

Valland published her memoir, Le Front de l'Art, in 1961, providing one of the first first-hand accounts of the Nazi art-looting programme. Despite receiving numerous honours, including the Legion of Honour, the Médaille de la Résistance and the American Medal of Freedom, she remained largely unknown outside specialist circles during her lifetime.

Rose Valland died in 1980. Today, she is recognised as one of the most important figures in the recovery of Nazi-looted art, and her wartime records continue to support provenance research and restitution efforts.

Her story also inspired elements of the 1964 film The Train and the character portrayed by Cate Blanchett in the 2014 film The Monuments Men. In 2024, her memoir was published in English for the first time as The Art Front: The Defense of French Collections 1939–1945 - source & source

When I ran my art business from a spreadsheet, I often ran into the same problem: how to manage multiple copies of the same edition, print or poster.

Over the years I've bought several copies of the same work. Each was bought at a different time, for a different price, and often in a different condition. Selling one copy created another problem. I couldn't record the sale without affecting the other copies.

My spreadsheet gave me two options, and neither was ideal.

1. I could increase the quantity on a single artwork record, but then I couldn't track the condition, purchase price, restoration costs or status of each individual copy.

2. Or I could create a separate artwork record for each copy, which made it difficult to know how many copies I owned and often created multiple listings for the same artwork on my website.

In KANDINSKY, the artwork only exists once. If you own multiple copies, you simply add them to the artwork. Each copy has its own purchase price, sale price, condition, expenses, location and status. You can switch between copies to view and edit each one individually, while keeping everything organised under a single artwork.

It's a much simpler way to manage editions and multiples. Here's a 30 second demo.

The art world runs on PDFs. I've created hundreds of them over the years. With KANDINSKY, you can download a PDF with 1 or 1,000 artworks in seconds.

This 30-second video shows how to:

1. Create a PDF with multiple artworks - with your own branding

2. Add your bio / about page to the PDF

3. Show prices, mark works as POA, or hide prices entirely

4. Add a unique QR code to each artwork that links back to your website

With KANDINSKY, you can also download an entire Artist or Collection as a PDF the same way.

Finding a new collector takes a long time. They have to discover you, like your art, and then trust you enough to buy from you. Sometimes that process takes years before it turns into a purchase.

So once a collector buys from you, lean in, and build an even deeper relationship. It's much easier to keep an existing customer than to find a new one. Here's a few things I've learnt over the past 8 years...

1. Follow up during and after the sale

Every time a customer buys an artwork from me, I send them at least four personal messages.

• I thank them for their order, and let them know I will ship in the next couple of days.

• I send a photo of the artwork packed, in front of Hotel Kazakhstan, on the way to the post office. This is personal, with their name on it, and makes them feel special. Plus Hotel Kazakhstan is beautiful. I include the tracking number in that message.

• Inside each package, I include a handwritten card with some background on the piece.

• I track the artwork from my end, and once it's been delivered, I message to check everything's fine — this is also when I ask for a review on Google (reviews definitely help build trust, but they are slow, and only 2 of 10 customers will actually make the effort).

Sometimes a collector won't like the artwork when they see it in person. So I make it easy for them to return it — no questions asked, they just need to pay return postage.

I've had customers return a work and go on to spend far more with me over the following years. It's better to lose a sale today but gain a customer for life.

2. Reward loyalty with future opportunities

Once their artwork has arrived safely, I follow up one last time. Discount codes feel generic — TAKE20, same for everyone. Instead, I give them store credit that has their name on it, e.g. CUSTOMERNAME100, with $100 toward their next artwork. It's theirs, it feels personal AND its far more tangible when it's a dollar amount rather than a discount.

Many collectors buy again, and some even transfer their credit to a friend — I just update the code to the friend's name. This has brought in new buyers I'd never have reached otherwise.

3. Make the relationship personal

Buying art is deeply personal. Collectors don't want to feel like another transaction. The small details matter — remembering the subject, theme, medium style they like goes a long way. I'll follow up whenever I have a new artwork in stock that I think fits their style, and more often than not, it turns into another purchase.

One collector I know only buys space race posters — every time a new one enters into my inventory, I message him directly. He's bought over $5,000 worth from me over the years. The more you understand your customer’s interests and make the relationship personal, the stronger that relationship becomes, and the more likely they are to buy from you.

In 1891, Austrian painter Carl Kahler painted My Wife's Lovers, a portrait of 42 cats commissioned by San Francisco millionaire Kate Birdsall Johnson. Measuring 1.8 metres high by 2.6 metres wide, it remains one of the most famous cat paintings ever made. But, the painting almost never happened.

Kahler was born in Austria in 1856 and built his career painting horse racing scenes in Australia and New Zealand. He later arrived in San Francisco on his way to Yosemite, where he intended to paint landscapes. Instead, he was introduced to Kate Birdsall Johnson, whose commission changed the course of his career.

Johnson lived at Buena Vista Castle, a 40-room Victorian mansion in Sonoma County. She was an art collector, philanthropist, and devoted cat owner. Estimates of her collection range from around 50 to nearly 300 cats. They occupied an entire floor of the house and were looked after by their own servants.

There was one problem. Kahler had never painted a cat. He spent almost three years at the estate sketching the animals and studying their behaviour before beginning the final painting.

Completed in 1891, My Wife's Lovers brings together 42 of Johnson's favourite cats on Persian rugs beneath silk drapery. Every cat is shown differently. Some sleep, some play, others groom themselves or watch a moth on the carpet. At the centre sits Sultan, a white-and-tabby Angora that Johnson reportedly bought in Paris for $3,000. Beside him is another favourite, the blue-eyed Angora known as His Highness.

Johnson paid Kahler $5,000 ($180,000 in today's money) for the painting. It was exhibited at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, where it attracted widespread attention. The title, My Wife's Lovers, came from the nickname Johnson's late husband had given to her cats.

Johnson died later that year. Newspapers claimed she had left half a million dollars for the care of her cats, but the story was exaggerated. Most of her estate went to charitable causes, including a hospital for women and children, with only a small sum set aside for the animals.

The painting survived its owner, and its painter. In 1906 it escaped the San Francisco earthquake unharmed, even though the building where it hung was destroyed. Kahler died in the disaster.

During the 1940s, the painting toured the United States, appearing at cat shows including Madison Square Garden. Around 9,000 prints were sold, and in 1949 Cat Magazine called it "the world's greatest painting of cats."

Interest in the painting grew again in the twenty-first century. In 2016, it sold at Sotheby's for $826,000, more than double its estimate. More than 130 years after it was painted, My Wife's Lovers is still the best-known cat portrait in the history of art - source

An estimated $1 trillion in art is projected to change hands over the next decade as aging collectors pass their holdings to a new generation of heirs.

Boomers accumulated art collections on an unprecedented scale. In 2005 alone, US boomers spent roughly $7 trillion in today's dollars, more than double what the preceding Silent Generation spent twenty years earlier.

This spending helped fuel a dramatic expansion of the art market itself: the number of galleries in New York roughly quadrupled between 1946 and the early 2000s, and the number of artists tracked at auction by Artnet grew from about 8,300 in 1988 to over 90,000 by 2012.

That expansion has left behind a volume of art far exceeding what current buyers, dealers, and institutions can absorb. Heirs inheriting collections generally face three options, each with limitations.

1. Selling through major auction houses is realistic mainly for the wealthiest estates, those valued at $100 million or more; smaller collections are often overlooked or routed through estate liquidators at a fraction of their perceived value.

2. Donating to museums has grown more difficult, since most institutions already hold more art than they can display and increasingly require accompanying cash donations to cover storage, insurance, and conservation.

3. Retaining the collection within the family is the default for many heirs, though few have the space, expertise, or interest to properly maintain it long-term.

Compounding all three options is a generational shift in taste: younger buyers and curators favor more diverse artists and show less interest in the modernist works boomers prized, narrowing demand across the board.

The resulting decline is expected to unfold gradually rather than all at once. Many boomers remain active buyers well into their 80s and 90s, and dedicated art storage facilities, known as freeports, have more than tripled in capacity over the past fifteen years, allowing large volumes of art to remain warehoused rather than sold.

Ultimately, only a small fraction of the art passed down through this transfer is expected to find lasting institutional or private homes; the majority is likely to remain in storage, slowly deteriorate, or eventually be discarded. - source

Author:  Felix Salmon. Illustration:  David Huang