Thomas Kinkade - The Painter of Light?

As appraisers many of us have come across Thomas Kinkade "paintings" and "art". Depending on the intended use of the appraisal and the standard of value assigned, many time the paintings on the secondary market are worth very little, especially when compared to the cost from a Kinkade gallery. LiveAuctioneers has many Kinkade's in their sold listings, with many framed prints selling for under $100.00.

Kim Christensen of the LA Times runs an interesting and in depth article on Kinkade. Kinkade is now in arbitration with two past owners of Kinkade Galleries in VA. An arbitrator has ruled against Kinkade's company Media Arts Group and awarded the gallery owners $860,000.00. The article also goes into Kinkade's personal life, who holds himself out as a Christian but with a reported lifestyle that, at least from the articles point of view is hypocritical. One quote from a coworker of Kinkade was as a "Jekyll-and-Hyde character, whose behavior worsened as the alcohol flowed." Kinkade is reported to have made over $50 million between 1997 and 2005.

Christensen reports Kinkade has spun a hugely lucrative career from his distinctly romantic, idealized images of street scenes, lighthouses, country cottages and landscapes. It is a world without sharp edges, all warm and fuzzily aglow with setting suns and streetlights and luminescent windows.

Critics have described Kinkade's works -- with titles such as "Sunset on Lamplight Lane" and "The Garden of Prayer" -- as little more than mass-produced kitsch. But that has not deterred the multitudes who pay from a few hundred dollars for paper prints to $10,000 or more for canvas editions he has signed and retouched.

"It's mainstream art, not art you have to look at to try to understand, or have an art degree to know whether it's good or not," said Mike Koligman, a longtime fan who with his wife owns Kinkade galleries in San Diego and Utah.

Karen de la Carriere feels the same way. Framed Kinkades fill her living room walls and have transformed a long hallway into a veritable gantlet of glowing lithographs. Kinkade's art is both a personal passion and a business for the Los Angeles resident, who deals in the resale market for Kinkades, selling more than $25,000 of his works each month on eBay and her website.

Christensen continues Kinkade, who co-founded the company as Lightpost Publishing in 1989 and took it public in 1994, bought it back in 2004 for $4 a share. Investors who had put their faith and their fortunes in the Painter of Light -- a moniker he trademarked -- were left holding a mostly empty bag.

"I took a bloodbath, an absolute bloodbath," said De la Carriere, the Los Angeles art dealer, who said she invested her inheritance in Media Arts Group stock at more than $20 a share.

But even as the company ran aground, Kinkade and others in top positions prospered, according to testimony.

From 1997 through May 2005, Kinkade earned $53 million for his work, the company's assistant controller testified. That figure includes $11.8 million from top-of-the-line "studio proofs," small-edition canvas prints that Kinkade personally retouched, or "highlighted"-- with as much as 65% of the profit going to him.

Kinkade wasn't the only one who got rich.

Barnett, then head of retail sales and now an executive vice president, also made millions as the Signature galleries were failing. Unbeknownst to the dealers, he reaped commissions on all art sold to them at wholesale, averaging more than $2 million a year for 1999, 2000 and 2001, according to testimony.

To read the full LA Times article click HERE.