An Evaluation of Reputation Using Online Auction Data for a Group of American Watercolorists

To understand the relation between artistic reputation and sales prices from popular online auction sites, we analyzed over 3,000 online auction sales of 87 American artists who had expertise in watercolor using the websites eBay, LiveAuctioneers, and EBTH. Traditional indexes of reputation were measured by museum placements, as well as archival holdings, and book references and we also included the number of Instagram mentions. We used hierarchical linear modeling to investigate the relation of reputation with average prices as well as price trends over time, controlling for individual painting characteristics such as size and medium. All of our artistic reputation indicators, including number of Instagram hashtag references, were positively related to the average sales price per artist. Our results extend the literature on the role of artistic reputation to account for social media via Instagram, as well as provide one of the first empirical investigations of popular online art auctions.