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

Analysis of Sales at The Pastel Society Annual Exhibition 2025

After the annual exhibition of the The Pastel Society (PS) and my review of the exhibition comes my metrics post!

• Which price ranges achieved the best sales? 
• Is this the same for members and those selected from the Open Entry - or does it vary?

This is another of my regular posts reviewing sales and prices after the annual exhibition. It covers:

• General commentary on 
• sales of artwork and how and when art is sold
• Buyers at the Mall Galleries - where the PS hold their annual exhibition
• Sales at the 2025 Annual Exhibition of the Pastel Society focusing on:
• the number of sales and 
• the prices that pastel artwork sold for 

The reason I'm writing this post is because I'd like to see:

• more artists do better
• more artists make sales
• more artists improve their annual income from their artwork
• THROUGH more intelligent pricing of their artwork

Bottom line, the most realistic price for your artwork is the price which enables a sale. Otherwise, why bother pricing at all?

General Commentary on Sales of Artwork

How and when art is sold

These days art sales are typically generated in one of three ways

• the associated online website for the artwork - and the fact this goes online before the exhibition in the gallery opens
• sales at the Private View - where it's a common expectation that a goodly proportion of artwork will be sold given this is an opportunity for artists to be nice to collectors!
• sales while the exhibition is open to the public.

In the past, art societies used to have Buyers' Views for people:

• who were known collectors and/or
• had previously bought at the exhibition.

Art Societies don't seem to be doing these as much these days. Maybe because of the online exhibition - which is published well in advance of the exhibition opening and the fact people are more used to online sales. It's certainly the case that artwork regularly sells before an exhibition opens

Nevertheless, I still think there's a case to be made for the "pampering time" for previous art buyers/collectors when they don't have to fight for space with the legions of "friends of the artist" and can actually see the work properly.

I don't go to as many private views as I used to, mainly because to my mind they should be artists and buyers and "influencers" in the absence of a private view. 

I left this one early because of the crush - see Review: The Pastel Society 126th Annual Exhibition (2025) 

It's nice to have an event for friends of the artist BUT if it creates such a crush that it causes people to leave and/or deters sales, then that is a problem. 

My solution would be to introduce a constraint for all members and those selected via the open entry of strictly one friend only at the PV.

After all, friends can come any time, but artists typically only come once and it's on PV day! Plus buyers and collectors do like to meet the artist - and I see precious little effort by art societies generally to making sure that can happen. 

On the day of the PV, it's perfectly possible to stage manage a different focus at different times eg buyers at lunchtime; members getting together in the afternoon and friends allowed in the evening. That way we might actually get to see some art. I find I always have to go back if I go to the PV - just to be able to look at the art properly.

Sales have also been less than usual due to the constraints on people's budgets in the last couple of years. It seems to be easing slightly - but sales are still not yet back to where they used to be - and it's worth thinking about how to help them along....

Who are the buyers at the Mall Galleries?

Essentially annual exhibitions at the Mall Galleries are about AFFORDABLE ART for most of those who visit, view and buy art.

This is about my well known mantra characterising buyers at the Mall Galleries. 

Typically they are essentially "middle class, middle aged and middle income"

They typically like buying artwork priced at less than £1,500 - and they like it even more if it is priced at less than a £1,000.

You should bear this in mind as you review the charts and commentary below and as you check the profiles of the price ranges of artwork sold in the charts below

Sales at The Pastel Society Annual Exhibition 2025

This is a chart of the sales at the recent Open Exhibition 2025 of the Pastel Society.

I got my numbers by going through the data on sales available from the online exhibition.

Analysis of the number of artworks sold by price range
in The Pastel Society Annual Exhibition 2025

The Pastel Society exhibited 382 artworks and sold 84 paintings (22% of the hung artwork). 

This is a marked improvement on the 2024 performance (see below).

RI Annual Exhibition 2023: Analysis of art sales metrics and pricing artwork for the future

This is my third post about pricing in recent art society exhibitions. Today it's about the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours (RI) Annual Open Exhibition 2023 at the Mall Galleries in London in April 2023. 

The exhibition is the biggest exhibition of watercolours in the UK. This is my review of the exhibition Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours Annual Exhibition 2023 in which I indicated I'd be doing this exhibition metrics post after the exhibition had closed.

Sales for this exhibition take place:

• during the exhibition - to visitors
• online - before, during and after the exhibition in the Mall Galleries

Below you can find charts I've produced from a lot of careful counting of artworks hung in the exhibition and which ones sold.

Plus some fairly robust comments.....

Exhibition Metrics: Artwork Exhibited and Artworks Sold

The purpose of the post is to illustrate some points about pricing which I've been making for some time - which are again underlined by the results I got from my analysis

This post considers three aspects

• the number of artworks exhibited and sold in each price range - analysed between member and non-member artworks
• observations on sales - in different price bands - for both members and non-members.
• pricing lessons for:
• the RI and Mall Galleries
• member artists
• artists selected via the open entry - when entering in 2024.

My charts reveal

• which are the most popular price bands for sales.
• which price bands have the most unsold work!

There are a number of important points - about which I'll comment more below - which, in summary are:

• Price point hurdles are VERY important determinants of sale 
• Affordable art sells well
• There's an effective ceiling limit at the Mall Galleries - above which few artworks will sell
• Excessive prices rarely generate sales for unknown artists - you need to be aware of the audience an exhibition attracts
• Expensive artworks are harder to sell during a period of economic uncertainty

All/any pricing ALWAYS needs to take economic context into account. This is particularly relevant to some members who normally sell and sold no work in this exhibition.

I'm uploading larger versions of my pricing/sales charts to a post about them on my Facebook Page.

Overall:

• 449 artworks were selected for hanging in the exhibition
• 68 artworks sold - represented 18% of the artwork hung
• open artists sold more artwork than RI members
• 40 by RI members (17% of artwork hung)
• 43 by artists selected from the Open Entry (20% of artwork hung)
• most sales were for less than £1,500 - which has been a really important hurdle price for a very long time.

[NOTE: This post has been corrected for an error I made which I spotted this morning in the comments immediately after the first chart - and updated.] 

What proportion of artwork sold - across different price ranges?

Two price ranges saw the most sales - and there were few sales after £1,500

RI Annual Exhibition 2023
Comparison of total numbers of artworks sold and exhibited

• Under £500: 36% of artworks hung sold - and most of these relate to small/smaller artworks by open entrants
• £501-£750: 24% of artwork hung sold - again mostly in relation to smaller artworks

This is not untypical of what happens in an economic context of uncertainty such as 

• the current cost of living crisis and 
• concern around increases in interest rates - which has NOT abated (i.e. this applies to all upcoming exhibitions too)

Exactly the same thing happened when we had the banking crisis in 2008 - which is when I started monitoring prices and sales. Sales were much better at the "affordable art" end and basically sales crashed among the more expensive price ranges. Interestingly I could spot established artists on the wall who had learned the hard lessons of 2008 and adjusted what they submitted accordingly. (In 2009 we had a LOT of "play it safe during the recession" exhibitions and this is what I've been expecting to see this year)

Other observations which can be made are:

• the first four price ranges have a similar number of artworks hung
• however the number of sales in the first four price ranges DIMINISH as the price rises
• after £1500 (a VERY important price hurdle observed by me in numerous FBA exhibitions)
• the numbers of artworks hung drop off dramatically
• the drop in sales is even more dramatic
• only 6 artworks sold above £1500
• nobody sold above £5,000

I am absolutely certain there are artists who would have sold or sold more if they'd had better information about 

• how sales work relative to prices in these galleries - and 
• how best to price in relation to price hurdles
• how best to price in a time of economic uncertainty

What are the price hurdles?

RWS Open Exhibition 2023: Analysis of prices and sales of selected artwork

This is the second in my series of posts about pricing for art society exhibitions relates to the annual RWS Open Exhibition of the Royal Watercolour Society (RWS)

View of the RWS Open from outside the Bankside Gallery on the South Bank

The RWS holds its exhibitions at the Bankside Gallery (next to Tate Modern) which despite being a very decent space for many exhibitions is not actually big enough to hold a combined member and non-member exhibition. It does however have an extremely good footfall outside - if they can be attracted down the steps.....

Consequently, the RWS holds 

• two member exhibitions each year in the Spring and Autumn
• a Christmas small works show
• PLUS an Open Exhibition for non-members and those aspiring to become members of the RWS (see my blog post Call for Entries: Royal Watercolour Society Open 2023)

This post relates to that latter show - the RWS Open held in the Bankside Gallery in March 2023. You can browse the artworks hung in the exhibition here

View of part of the exhibition

In order to produce this post this is what I did

• I visited on the afternoon of the last day (19th March) and went around the Gallery and very carefully identified all the sales and marked these up on the list of artworks with the sames
• I then analysed the sheet which listed all artworks in terms of price ranges
• I then compared the number of sales in each of those price range and produced an excel spreadsheet with the results tabulated and charted... which you can see below.

This chart compares the number of artworks hung to the number of sales. It shows you 

• (light column) the distribution of prices - between price ranges - of the artworks selected to be hung in the RWS Open. 
• (darker column) the distribution of sales in those same ranges.

My observations can be found below

153 artworks were hung. Of these just 17 sold (11% of work hung).  It needs to be remembered that this is an exhibition of artists who are not as well known and many will lack followers and collectors. Hence I would not expect a high percentage of sales. 

In the various price ranges the chart above demonstrates a very pronounced bias towards more affordable art with the £500 and under category accounting for over 70% of the sales. This is the category commonly considered to be one which accounts for a lot of "impulse buys" which is a very important part of any gallery sales.

RWS Open at the Bankside Gallery

If looked at in detail, in terms of percentages:

• £500 and less: 46% of the selected artworks hung and 71% of total sales
• £501-£750: 22% of artwork hung and 12% of total sales
• £751-£1000: 14% of artwork hung and 12% of total sales
• £1001-£1500: 8% of artwork hung; NO SALES
• £1501-£2000: 5% of artwork hung; NO SALES
• £2001-£2500: 1% of artwork hung; 6% of sales (i.e. the one painting in this category sold. This was The Shed by Stewart Smith who also won the Dry Red Press Award)
• £2500-£5000: 4% of artwork hung; NO SALES

This analysis certainly reinforces the importance of having a price range in an open exhibition below £500.

There's a conventional view that watercolours are worth less than paintings in oil. It's certainly true that oil paintings typically sell for more than watercolours. 

RBA Annual Exhibition 2023: Analysis of art sales metrics & Recommendations about pricing artwork

This week I'm focusing on pricing art - and looking at sales in three recent exhibitions I've visited.

This post is about the sales of artwork - by members and non-members - achieved in each price band at the Royal Society of British Artists Annual Exhibition 2023.

This post considers three aspects

• the number of artworks sold in each price range - analysed between member and non-member artworks
• observations on sales - in different price bands - for both members and non-members.
• pricing lessons for:
• the RBA and Mall Galleries
• member artists
• artists selected via the open entry - when entering in 2024.

My charts reveal 

• which are the most popular price bands for sales. 
• which price bands have the most unsold work!

Plus I comment on a well-established rumour about the Mall Galleries raising the future minimum price of an artwork - from £300 to £500 - and why this would lose money for the artists, society and the Mall Galleries. i.e in my opinion, a major rethink is required if the rumour is true!

(NOTE: 

1. A number of you know I'm a qualified accountant and an ex-Finance Director who loves crunching the numbers to reveal what might not be obvious to those artists who are less happy with numbers! I've done quite a few exhibition metrics posts in the past.
2. All charts and tables EXCLUDE any unframed sales of prints)

Sales at the Royal Society of British Artists' Annual Exhibition 2023

Number of artworks sold in each price range

Below is a chart which compares the number of artworks sold (97) to the total number of artworks exhibited (nearly 500) - by price range. 

In other words approximately 20% of the artwork on the wall was sold either at the Mall Galleries or online.

This chart does not examine whether artworks were by RBA members or open entrants. It purely focuses on:

• the distribution of total artworks hung by price band (pale column)
• the distribution of total artworks sold by price band (blue column)

The percentage of artwork sold in each price band has a very pronounced distribution.

From this, some obvious conclusions can be drawn:

• the most popular price bands are all below £1,000 - with under £500 being the most popular (for what I commonly refer to as "impulse buys")
• for the three price bands below £1,000 identified above the percentage of sales achieved for artworks hung is between 23-30% - which looks like a good result to me
• by way of contrast over 90% of artworks in the top two price bands (above £2,000) failed to sell. (i.e. 7 sales out of 93 hung = 7.5%)
• That's very expensive wall space for a very low return on the 90%
• I have been saying - for a very long time - that the only people pricing above £2,000 in the Mall Galleries should be artists with an established track record in reputable art galleries for sales above this figure. 
• The artwork might be great - but if financial targets have to be met then pricing needs to be sensible and sensitive.

How to find an art gallery for your art

This is a checklist of questions for how to find an Art Gallery which provides a good fit for both your artwork and your achievements to date - and offers you good prospects.

I saw a query today on Facebook from somebody who was looking for suggestions of suitable art galleries for his art.

I provided a short cut answer. This is the longer version.

Interior of an art gallery in Chelsea

How to find an art gallery 

It's worth doing your homework and looking at the options and opportunities - and the competition.

A suggested approach and checklist

Here's my suggested approach and checklist of questions - which is based on my preference for finding out as much as you can BEFORE you have a conversation or email them.

How to find an art gallery in your area

Make a list of art galleries near you 

• Go to Google Maps
• Put your address in to get a starting point
• now add add "art gallery" to the "nearby" search button
• this will generate flags with a palette icon of all the art galleries near your home
• you can also add "art galleries" and this will generate a different list - of those with 'Galleries' in their name
• the number of galleries will vary depending on what you call your location (eg your local village / town / county / region etc)

Review: 207th Exhibition of Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours

The 207th Exhibition by the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours continues in all three galleries at the Mall Galleries until 18th April 2018.  411 paintings have been hung in total

Cover of the RI Catalogue
is a painting by Lillias August of some of the Archive
The painting is to be auctioned in order to raise funds for the conservation of the archive
which have been deposited with the Victoria and Albert Museum.

All the exhibition information is on the Mall Galleries website - including

• an online version of the 2019 catalogue
• pics of selected works (scroll down - and then work your way through several pages to see all the pics)
• listing of the events each day during the exhibition
• It's Painters Question Time tomorrow at 2.30pm

Members of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours; Rosa Sepple, Shirley Trevena, Jean Noble and Ian Sidaway form a panel answering your questions on everything to do with water media and the Institute.

Admission to the Exhibition is £4 and Free to Friends of Mall Galleries, Friends of the RI and under 18s

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: I've visited twice so far - on a very well attended Private View and the following day when coachloads arrived and filled the gallery.

• It's an exhibition which is on for just over two weeks across all three galleries. 
• Given the number of visitors it attracts it is one of the premier exhibitions at the Mall Galleries all year.  (You can see visitors to the Gallery in posts in the News section of the RI website) 
• It's also attracting very positive comments from those who have visited on Facebook

"Fabulous exhibition and so much to see"
"A lovely exhibition. Do see it if you can"
"I saw the exhibition yesterday and loved it. Such a high standard."

I've already highlighted the artwork winning awards in RI Annual Exhibition 2019 - Awards and Candidates - plus included a photo of the Candidates Wall.

I've also highlighted "gallery view" photos of the exhibition in an album on my Making A Mark Facebook Page - which can be viewed by anyone irrespective of whether or not you have a FB account. Click the pics to see larger versions. (Anybody wanting credit for a body of work please let me know - and include the URL for the specific pic)

What follows below is a review of the exhibition - including an indication of exhibition metrics and sales - which I'll be analysing in more detail next week at the end of the exhibition.