RBA Annual Exhibition 2025 METRICS: Analysis of art sales & Recommendations about pricing

This is an analysis of the art sales at the recent Annual Exhibition 2025 of the Royal Society of British Artists. 

It contains a number of charts and tables which attempt to explain what can be learned by both members and open artists about sales compared to artwork hung.

The charts and tables include

• CHART 1: an analysis and comparison of the number of artworks sold by type of artist and price range
• CHART 2: a comparison of the number and percentage of artworks sold with the total hung hung - according to the Mall Galleries Price Ranges
• TABLE 1: an analysis of the distribution of artwork by media (numbers hung and sold) - and then ranked according to the percentage of sales for different media
• TABLE 2: An analysis is subject matter by media used

Looking at numbers in isolation does not however tell the whole story. It's only when we look at comparative data in previous years that the very obvious and very significant finding stands out.

This was a much bigger exhibition with much fewer sales when compared to previous years.  There were 554 artworks hung in the show split between:

• 275 artworks by members
• 279 artworks by open entry artists

This was my review of the exhibition - Review: Royal Society of British Artists Annual Exhibition 2025 in which I commented

The artwork selected comes from 3,843 submitted images. To give you a sense of what that represents it's bigger than the entry for some major art competitions.

Mostly it was good work, although it certainly included artwork I personally would have edited out at the selection stage.

You can see a much bigger version of the chart below on this post on my Facebook Page . Just click it to see the big version

Or get a magnifying glass out!

CHART 1: An analysis of the number of artworks sold
at RBA Annual Exhibition 2025
by type of artist (member or open) and the price range

The main findings of this chart are as follows

• A total of 63 artworks sold (just 11% of the artwork hung) which is VERY LOW 
• SEE SOLD ARTWORK HERE
• Previous sales figures for this exhibition 
• 2023:  97 sold (20% of the exhibition) - overall volume of sales was excellent
• 2024: however this year's exhibition is marginally better than the 52 sold from 491 hung (10%) last year - but only just (11%!!)
• in general the trend is the MORE artwork exhibited, the FEWER sales are achieved

How to assess entries for an open art society exhibition (Part 2) - marking artwork

Today's Part 2 of my focus on assessing entries for an open art society exhibition is going to focus on a method I've devised for giving every entry in an open exhibition a specific mark.

Yesterday I wrote about How to assess entries for an open art society exhibition (Part 1) which focused on the increased use of digital selection following the introduction of digital submissions and, in particular, the pandemic

The rationale behind a marking system

I have 100 marks to award to each of a very considerable number of artworks. 

The challenge for me is to 

• make the allocation of marks make sense to me 
• try and achieve consistency across all entries during the time required to mark each one
• ensure the marking is fair i.e. that each and every artwork ends up being ranked "correctly" in terms of my views of the relative merits of the different artworks

So how best to do this? 

My marking system

How to assess entries for an open art society exhibition (Part 1)

I think very many people might be surprised by how entries for an art exhibition get assessed by most art societies. 

I've written on this topic before in The agony and the ecstasy of art competition judging - which comments on the time involved in reviewing and judging 15,000 entries for the RA Summer Exhibition

This post comments on how the pandemic has influenced how artwork now gets judged.

How entries for open art exhibitions get assessed

In person versus digital

Traditionally, the practice has been to convene a selection panel which sits in a room as handlers bring artwork past. The speed with which the artwork moves depends on how many entries have been received and how much time has been allocated to the selection process. Bottom line it's not long.

Then we began to have digital entry - and selection of entries started to have a digital element to the process. Often with the "first cut" being done via digital assessment of the images submitted by artists, and then final assessment being made by a panel from the "longlist".

During the pandemic, efforts were made to keep annual exhibitions going and many switched to selection being wholly digital and online - and virtual exhibitions.

Interesting aspects of digital selection is that 

• Selectors will assess much more on the basis of what they as individuals think 
• "groupthink" is instantly eliminated (assuming no discussion between selectors). 
• Selectors will spend the amount of time they think they need to spend on selection. It's unlikely to be identical and there may be extremes.

A big benefit of digital selection is that

• it cuts expenses for art societies dramatically - given there is no need to reimburse people for travel to get to places where artwork is being judged. These expenses can be significant for national art societies and can be a welcome saving.
• once experienced, you need to come up with a very good reason to go back to being in front of the art to sift out the "no hopers" and "not quite good enough"

HOWEVER The main problems with digital assessment are:

• people who don't read instructions and submit images which are too small. They're an automatic "fail" in my book as I can't assess an image which is too small.
• people who digitally manipulate their images to make them look better than they are in reality. This typically affects colour and/or tone. It is possible to detect images where this has happened. Or at least I know how.... ;)
• It's really difficult to get a sense of the size of the work. I have to make an effort to check dimensions when assessing. Anybody who fails to provide dimensions end up leaning towards a a fail for me.

Sift and sort or mark and grade?

Then there's the issue of how much effort you put into decision-making

Pricing a Pastel and Pastel Society Annual Exhibition Metrics

The annual exhibition by the Pastel Society is the largest exhibition of artwork in pastels and other dry media in the UK every year.

The Pastel Society Private View

I reviewed the exhibition 10 days ago - see 121st Annual Exhibition of The Pastel Society

Following on from my review of other annual exhibitions by national art society last year - and the closure of the exhibition earlier today - I'm now going to review below the exhibition metrics (relevant performance data) for the 2020 Annual Exhibition:

• how open is this open exhibition - the ratio of members to non-members
• how well pastel artwork has sold - with specific reference to price bands

But first the prizewinners.

I didn't get back to the exhibition, because I acquired a cold and spent most of last week sneezing repeatedly and going through boxes of tissues. With the current scare re the coronavirus I decided I'd rather not be heckled for looking as if I might infect people - even if it was only a cold.

(NOTE: Metrics - I apply a standard system of measurement to all the annual exhibitions I review)

Prizewinners

The Mall Galleries has done an excellent review of the Pastel Society Prizewinners on its blog - which includes large images of the artworks.

• The Pastel Society Prize & Award Winners 2020: Part One
• The Pastel Society Prize & Award Winners 2020: Part Two
• The Pastel Society Prize & Award Winners 2020: Part Three

An Open Annual Exhibition

Malcolm Taylor sold three artworks - two of which are in this photo

Those aspiring to exhibit at the Pastel Society in 2021 should be reassured that this is a proper OPEN EXHIBITION

• 282 artworks were exhibited. Of these
• 170 are members (60% of artists)
• 112 are non-members (40%).
• 128 artists exhibited. Of these:
• 44 were members (34%)
• 1 was a deceased member
• 84 were non-members selected from the open entry (66%)

The one thing I find quite odd is that the total number of works exhibited in the same three galleris at the Mall Galleries is well below the number exhibited (for example) by the RI (which exhibited 411 artworks by 166 artists in April 2019).

I think once the Pastel Society have reviewed the sales figures in relation to price and size, they might want to think long and hard about whether next year's exhibition might be bigger - with maybe more smaller paintings.

I recommend this exhibition to all those aspiring artists working in dry media - bearing in mind that it's not just about pastels.  It's also very evident that works across a range of subject matter and styles can sell well - if priced to sell.

ALL ARTWORKS (including those by members) are reviewed by the selection jury.

The average number of paintings hung in this exhibition were

• Members: 3.9 paintings (not every member submits the 5 they are entitled to submit and not all get all works hung)
• Deceased member: 1 painting
• Non-members: 1.3 paintings
• Most non-members have just one and sometimes two paintings in the exhibition.
• Those who have applied to be a candidate for membership often have more than two paintings in the exhibition - and I suspect those who would be considered as a candidate if they'd only get round to applying!
• The implication for those applying to get work hung in this exhibition is that they MUST submit their BEST work - and two works might be the optimum number of works to submit (if not previously selected)

Sales at the Pastel Society Annual Exhibition

I'm going to start by saying I'm absolutely convinced that sales during the Pastel Society Annual Exhibition 2020 were undoubtedly reduced due to the absolutely appalling weather we have been having - which will in turn have reduced the numbers wanting to leave home and make the effort to travel to London for the exhibition.

Plus the fact that both Storn Chiara and Storm Dennis chose to arrive at the weekends!!!  This weekend there were a record number of flood warnings and alerts in England, according to John Curtin, the Environment Agency's head of floods and coastal management.

It's really bad luck for any art society when you get very bad weather during an exhibition - but to get it both weekends is really unfair!

Number of artworks sold in each price range

In total 62 paintings sold - 33 (53%) by members and 29 (47%) by open entrants.

The chart below records sales results for 62 sales recorded online at midday today on the Pastel Society website and the Mall Galleries website. I'm not 100% sure that all artworks listed in the catalogue were also listed on the website but my sample check indicated that they were and the numbers between catalogue and website also seemed to correlate.

Number of artworks sold by price range - pale blue = non-members

By way of a preamble, it probably goes without saying - but I'm going to reiterate this very important point - that DRY MEDIA drawings and paintings - like watercolours - typically sell for less than oil paintings.

Unless they look incredibly like oil paintings and are presented without a mat. So you need to bear this in mind when looking at the figures below.

I've number-crunched all the sales on my Excel spreadsheet and these are the sales metrics worth highlighting

My conclusions are: