Ratings and values of paintings by Cecily Brown

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Rating and value of artist Cecily Brown     

Cecily Brown is a well-known artist among modern and contemporary art lovers. Now, prices for her works are rising at the auctioneers' gavel.

Her oils on canvas are particularly prized, especially by American buyers, and the price at which they sell on the art market ranges from €35 to €5,107,780, a large delta but one that speaks volumes about the value that can be attributed to the artist's works.

In 2023, his work Free Games for May, an oil painting dating from 2015, sold for €5,107,780, while it was estimated at between €2,760,960 and €4,601,600. Its price has risen sharply.

Order of value from the most basic to the most prestigious

The works and style of Cecily Brown

Cecily Brown is an artist born in 1969. She is a contemporary British painter based in New York, renowned for her large-scale works at the crossroads of abstraction and figuration.

She works mainly with oil on canvas as her main medium, which is sometimes enhanced with acrylic. She favors monumental formats, canvases several meters in length, which creates a visual immersion. The artist also works on paper for preparatory studies, otherwise on classic stretched canvas.

Her brushwork is often broad, with rapid, gestural strokes, sometimes close to action painting (Jackson Pollock, Janet Sobel). She superimposes pictorial layers, alternating opaque zones and transparent glazes, leaving the traces of her gesture apparent (impastos, colors, erasures) that build the dynamic of the canvas.

Her work is vibrant and energetic, and the material seems in constant motion. Her compositions are often all-over structured, with no central hierarchy, influenced by Pollock and Abstract Expressionism.

There's a deliberate ambiguity in her production between figuration and abstraction, with forms suggesting bodies, landscapes or scenes but always fragmented and unstable. She uses the dissolution of forms, allowing the viewer's gaze to shift from abstract reading to the recognition of figurative fragments.

The palette is rich and saturated, dominated by reds, pinks, oranges and browns combined with contrasting whites and blacks. The colors are applied in bursting masses, generating visual tension.

Cecily Brown is influenced by the Baroque painting of Rubens in the sensuality of warm, carnal colors. She makes constant references to the body, with human and animal figures emerging and disappearing in the material. She paints themes linked to sexuality, flesh, desire, violence and eroticism.

Her production is a blend of classical iconography (inspired by art history, from Rubens to Goya) and a contemporary gestural vocabulary. She is heir to American abstract expressionism, with de Kooning in particular, but also dialogues with the European figurative tradition (Velázquez, Géricault...).

Her work is inscribed in a dynamic of post-modern painting, reintroducing narrative and the body into an abstract language. She is recognized as a major figure in contemporary painting, capable of reconciling gestural intensity and iconographic density.

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The life of Cecily Brown

Cecily Brown was born in 1969 in London, into a family linked to art and literature. Her father, a writer and critic, introduced her to visual culture. She trained at the Slade School of Fine Art (University College, London), graduating in 1993.

Her early work was marked by a strong interest in the Old Masters, including Rubens and Goya, and abstract expressionism. His first exhibitions took place in Great Britain in the early 1990s. Her style was quickly noticed for its fusion of figuration and abstraction, with themes linked to eroticism and the flesh.

She worked in London until 1994, when she moved to the United States. She arrived in New York in 1994, where she found a fairly favorable environment for the realization of her monumental paintings, in vogue in the city at the time.

She thus joined the New York contemporary art scene, influenced by the legacy of American abstract expressionism. She developed links with major galleries (notably Gagosian, who represented her). In the 2000s, her work was exhibited at major institutions such as the Whitney Museum, MoMA and Tate Modern.

Her paintings, blending sensuality and violence, attracted the attention of critics and collectors alike. She acquires an international reputation as one of the major figures of contemporary painting. The artist continues to live and work in New York.

Cecily Brown has regular solo exhibitions in major international galleries. Her work can be found in prestigious collections (MoMA, Guggenheim, Whithney, Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou).

She is considered an heir to abstract expressionism reinterpreted through a contemporary, feminine sensibility, inscribing her work in a constant dialogue between European pictorial tradition and gestural American painting.

She is recognized today as a leading artist on the global market, representing a new generation of painters capable of reaffirming the power of painting.

Market segmentation and artist's rating

Monumental paintings by Cecily Brown with large formats and key works make up the ultra-premium segment of the artist's sales. Iconic works such as Suddenly Last Summer and The Girl Who Had Everithing have sold for between $2M and $7M, with records reaching $6.78M in 2018.

Medium-format paintings are also in high demand, often ranging from $400,000 to $3M, depending on provenance, period (1990 - 2000) and selling gallery.

For works on paper (drawings, monotypes), the market is solid, with monotypes and etchings around €10,000, with some exceptional examples fetching up to €250,000. His prints - multiples or smaller works, meanwhile, cover an accessible segment, with prices ranging from $5,000 to $40,000, depending on the edition, medium or format.

The auction record is held by Suddenly last Summer (1999), sold for $6.78m in May 2018. The Girl Who Had Everithing, meanwhile, went for $2.39M in 2017, with a significant rise to follow.

In 2021, its auctions reached $35.5M in total, with 31 lots sold, a 77.5% completion rate and an average price of around $1.1M per work.

The median sale for large formats is in the sub-$1M range. Smaller works generally sell for between $0.4m and $0.7m, depending on visibility and auction house. Market indicators are positive, with over 400 lots sold, high turnover (33.3%) and bids regularly above estimates.

Museum institutions are indirectly reinforcing market demand, and international private collectors are strongly engaged. Cecily Brown is considered one of the contemporary blue-chip artists ; with stable value, strong visibility, and the rising market for women artists.

She is among the strongest living female artists on the market, with a steady progress since the 2000s.

Her signature

Not all of Cecily Brown's works are signed.

Although there are variations, here's a first example of her signature:

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