ONE of the best things about being a journalist is the way it gets you into places that you wouldn’t normally be invited.
You get to knock on some strange doors, ask impertinent questions and to rub shoulders with people from all sections of society.
So, this week, bizarrely, I ended up in a private dining room beneath an auctioneer’s office in Edinburgh’s New Town, glugging wine and chewing beef and scallops in a room decorated with about £2 million of art.
In advance of its Rule Britannia sale in London in December, Christie’s had brought to Edinburgh a selection of Scottish Colourists paintings – and invited to dinner a small group of people that might be persuaded to buy one.
I am not likely to be buying important Scottish art any time soon, but I was very happy to spend time in such an elegant setting with such a lovely collection of paintings.
Dinner was excellent – and, ludicrously, I joined in the dinner party chat about which picture I might choose to take home. Would I like Peploe’s Still Life of Pink Roses and Oranges (estimated price between £200,000 and £300,000) or should I choose Francis Cadell’s The White Villa Cassis (which could fetch up to £500,000)? It may have been just pretend, but it was a good game.
As the wine flowed, I began to understand something about the irrational passion of the art collector. There was some interesting dinner table chat about how to buy at auction. The conventional advice for auctions is decide what you can afford to pay, set a budget and stick to it. However, the art-loving dinner party guests agreed the common sense approach spells disaster.
“When it comes to art, you should always pay far more than you can afford and only buy things you really love,” said one. “If you only buy things you can afford, you will just end up with a bunch of paintings you don’t really like,” said another.
When it comes to buying art, it seems, the prudent choice is rarely the best one.