01The number behind every transaction in the primary market
When a gallery sells a work, the money does not belong to the gallery. A portion of it does — and agreeing in advance exactly what portion is the foundation of the commercial relationship between dealer and artist.
The standard split in the primary market is fifty-fifty: half to the gallery, half to the artist. That figure is so embedded in the trade that it is often treated as natural law, but it is a convention, not a rule, and it varies at every edge. Established artists with substantial demand can negotiate sixty or even seventy percent of the sale price. Early-career artists, particularly those taken on by a gallery that is actively building their market from nothing, may work on a sixty-forty split in the gallery's favour. Institutional programme galleries — publicly funded spaces that do not operate on a commercial basis — sometimes take nothing at all, though that arrangement is rare and almost always temporary.
The split applies to the retail price: the number at which the work is offered, whether it appears on a price list or is communicated verbally. It is not applied after costs are deducted. That distinction matters enormously, because costs are substantial and the question of who absorbs them is entirely separate from the headline percentage.
02Who pays for what
The gallery's share of the proceeds is expected to cover what the gallery does: the exhibition, the installation, the opening, the printed materials, the staff hours, the relationship maintenance between shows, and the art-fair booth fees that can run to six figures for a major event. None of those costs are typically itemised against the artist's share. The gallery absorbs them from its fifty percent — or whatever its percentage is — across all the sales it makes.
Shipping is the exception that most consignment agreements address explicitly. The convention is that the artist delivers the work to the gallery at the artist's expense, and the gallery returns unsold work at the gallery's expense. That is the baseline. In practice, especially where international fairs are involved, the costs become large enough that many agreements are negotiated individually for each situation. A gallery that flies a work to an overseas fair and back will frequently ask the artist to share that freight cost, particularly if the work did not sell.
Framing, crating, and insurance in transit are each their own negotiation. Insurance coverage from the moment a work leaves the studio until it reaches its next wall is standard practice for galleries working at any serious level, but whether that premium is shared or absorbed by one party should be written into the agreement, not assumed.
Shipping is the exception that most consignment agreements address explicitly.
The one cost the artist never bears through the split is the gallery's commission on a sale — because the commission is the split. What the artist should watch for are the softer costs: edition printing if the artist works in multiples, photography for catalogue purposes, and framing to a gallery's specification. These can accumulate to meaningful sums and can effectively reduce the artist's net return well below the nominal percentage.
03What the split does not cover
The split governs a sale. It does not govern what happens if a work is damaged, stolen or lost while in the gallery's possession — that is a question of insurance and liability, addressed separately. It does not govern how the gallery prices the work, which edition sizes are authorised, or how the gallery may represent the artist in other contexts. Those terms all belong in the broader consignment agreement, of which the split is one clause among many.
The percentage itself is often the easiest part of that agreement to reach. What takes longer — and matters more — is clarity about everything around it.
Consignment is an independent publication about the art market. It is not a gallery, dealer, auction house, fair or advisory service.