Let’s say King Charles III decides to scale back the Mountbatten-Windsors’ holdings and starts selling off its art. I know enough about supply & demand to know that this would result in the balance of priceless art in the marketplace being tilted in favor of the supply. But at the same time, each piece is unique: there is only one Boy Staring Blankly at an Apple, or whatever, and so the supply of each individual work is exactly one.
Long story short: would such a large supply of expensive, fine art destroy the market?
The opposite. Such an opening of the vaults represents opportunities to acquire top level, super-well provenanced art by acknowledged masters that have not been on the market in many centuries or in some cases ever, since they were the original commissioners.
There is a shortage of that very top-top level art which is not already in museums or institutions and effectively unavailable to the market. A lot of the churn in high level art is second-tier works by first tier artists, because that is what is available. The really really good stuff comes up rarely, and a single masterpiece can be the highlight of an annual auction. They are that rare, and the Windsors have a warehouse full of the stuff.
What having art of this quality and prestige made available for purchase can do is to allow:
new entrants into the market, who have the ready cash but have not had the goods to buy [Russian oligarchs, tech jillionaires, other dirtbags and rich shitpiles]
purchase of anchor pieces for museums that provide new meaning and improve the value and relevance of their existing good-but-ordinary masterpieces in their collections, by having a major work or two that puts them into context, allowing them to tell more complex stories, showing why they are important in their own right etc;
invigorating the market - high prices will encourage private owners to sell stuff they have squirrelled away, and so bring even more top pieces into the market which may have not been available for decades
some of the Royal Art Collection pieces are good enough to be a centrepiece to carry a museum in their own right, so there is a potential boost for the creation of new collecting and exhibiting institutions, and once they buy the tip now have to also acquire the rest of the iceberg to get a meaningful collection.
I don’t know the correct economic theoretical terms but the value of masterpiece art is not in how much it cost to buy them, but the asset value of having something that everyone else now wants, and our starting price will be what we paid x 1.5.
Does the Royal Family itself actually own the artwork or is it held in trust for them by The British government? Can they personally profit off selling it?
The last time this was tried - in 1649, following Charles I’s execution - it wasn’t exactly an unqualified success. Perhaps predictably, the very best pieces were bought up very quickly but in the end Parliament resorted to dumping the bulk of the collection on the former royal servants to pay off their wage arrears. This probably did depress the market in second-hand art across much of Europe for several years.
There is also a very important point rarely understood about the present Royal Collection. The collection does contain a very large numbers of works of the most superlative quality. But those are the exceptions. It also contains more than its fair share of the second and third rate. Those however tend not to be the pieces prominently displayed in the more public parts of the royal palaces. But then exactly the same can be said of the collections of the Louvre, the Prado and the Kunsthistorisches. That’s because they too were once royal collections and such collections, built up over generations, do tend to be very mixed bags.
And, anyway, the Royal Collection isn’t King Charles’s to sell. One could make a serious case for saying that no one is quite sure what its legal status actually is. But no one thinks that the King has the right to sell any of it off on a whim.
No, it’s held in trust ‘for their successors and the nation’. So come the revolution, it’s all going on display in the Buckingham Palace Museum and Art Gallery.
There are multiple types of ownership. Parts of the royal collections are part of the national patrimony, held “in right of the Crown” and Charles can’t sell them without causing a huge uproar. Parts, however, are private: purchased by the Queen and Philip, for example, or gifts to them personally. Those they can sell, and occasionally have sold bits and bobs.
Queen Mary’s Amethyst Tiara and Necklace, for example, was sold off at some point after her death; Anna Wintour has been pictured in parts of the parure in recent years. (There are various versions of the story; some say the Queen Mother inherited it but disliked amethysts; others say she needed money due to her gambling debts.) Meanwhile, Queen Alexandra’s Amethyst Tiara was inherited by her granddaughter Princess Maud, Countess of Southesk, and was auctioned after Maud’s death.
Sure, the royal family has personal possessions just like anyone else does (and plenty of cash to buy them). But the Royal Collection, which I’m guessing is what the OP is thinking of, ie the major, noteworthy artworks which have been in the monarch’s possession for often hundreds of years, is effectively the property of the nation. It was set up on the restoration of the monarchy after Oliver Cromwell had been flogging off the family jewels. I guess as a way of protecting the collection for the nation, lest we ever do become another republic or a future King Charles III goes rogue.
The Royal Collection is one of the largest and most important art collections in the world, and one of the last great European royal collections to remain intact. Comprising almost all aspects of the fine and decorative arts and running to more than a million objects, the Collection is a unique and valuable record of the personal tastes of kings and queens over the past 500 years.
Following the execution of Charles I in 1649, the greater part of the King’s magnificent possessions was sold by order of Oliver Cromwell, and the Royal Collection has largely been formed since the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660.
The most important additions to the Royal Collection were made by Frederick, Prince of Wales; George III; George IV; Queen Victoria and Prince Albert; and Queen Mary, consort of King George V.
The Royal Collection is held in trust by The Queen as Sovereign for her successors and the nation. It is not owned by her as a private individual.
And there are a range of Trustees and a management board beneath them to keep it all going and organise the exhibitions and tourist visits and the like. HM couldn’t just bring in a dealer or two without meeting resistance from curators and the like.
Although, to be fair, Blunt’s actual work as Surveyor of the King’s/Queen’s Pictures is generally considered to have been a huge success. He took what was little more than a single part-time position and began building an organisation with a scholarly reputation on a par with any of the major London museums.
When people complain “the monarchy costs us too much!!” this is the sort of expense that is involved (along with horse guards, heritage palaces and castles and other stuff). It’s not about keep Charles and Camilla in caviar and Rolls, it’s about managing a massive collection of heritage. Just imagine what the annual cost of insuring all those artworks is? Plus, after the fire in Windsor Castle, the cost of ensuring all the places these things are hung or stored are suitable?
(As I understand, the Royal Trust has the largest Canaletto collection in the world.)
The Royal Collection isn’t insured. The contents of the National Gallery, the British Museum, the V&A etc. aren’t either. Items are only insured when they are loaned to other institutions.
However my understanding is the Royal Philatelic Collection is entirely the private possession of the family and it is worth a pretty penny. Well, many pretty pennies.