For centuries artists were relatively unsung.
Museums are stuffed full of astounding works of genius attributed to the likes of The Master of Flémalle.
These men (and they were usually men) were undoubtedly respected craftsmen.
But that’s about the extent of it.
That started to change with Giorgio Vasari, who published The Lives of the Artists in the 1550s.
Vasari, the first man to make artists into stars.
After he put the spotlight on them, some Italian renaissance painters became the first to have individual stardom, and perhaps to be recognised as special people - the birth of the genius.
Cultural historians reckon what we now call celebrity culture can be found from the late 19th century as cheap magazines, the growth of photography and film combined with upheavals as new money earned in the industrial revolution started to get some social clout.
And as it did so artists became a natural focus for celebrity attention. For their work. Sometimes for their lives.
And here are 10 who time - and the markets - have decided deserve that status.
Not only is their work collectible, but they are collectible too.
10 - Francis Bacon
Bacon in his studio, a starting point for many a Soho adventure. Image by John Deakin.
With a Tumultuous life to match his churning imagery, Francis Bacon fascinates as a person as well as a creator.
His lovers, his drinking, his place in various London scenes are all part of the story.
His art is undoubtedly shocking and significant, with Three Studies of Lucian Freud his most valuable work, selling for $142.4 million in New York in 2013.
A simple autographed letter went for £4,000 earlier this year and first editions of his published letters can be worth hundreds of pounds.
Head II by Francis Bacon, a typically tortured work.
9 - Claude Monet
Monet late in his long life, the deterioration of his vision was a key factor in his art.
Monet was a much quieter chap than Francis, though there was plenty of tragedy in his long life - he lost a son and was deeply affected by World War I.
It is the single-minded dedication to his art and his extraordinary output that makes his life worthy of study.
His paintings are famously valuable. The record is Meules (Haystacks) a single piece from one of his many series that realised $110.7 million at auction in 2019.
In 2023, a two-page letter signed by Money sold for £25,000, nearly 10-times its estimate.
A Monet signature on a letter is highly valuable. Click through to own it.
8 - Caravaggio
Handsome, dashing, troublesome, possibly mentally unwell in some way and extremely fascinating. Caravaggio in the 1620s.
Caravaggio produced intensely dramatic art and lived a live just as engrossing and dangerous - he probably murdered a man in Rome and may have been murdered himself.
His artistic influence is enormous, and his works still look very modern today.
He has the distinction of being the subject of a modern biopic (Derek Jarman’s 1986 Caravaggio) and his use of light is an influence on modern film.
It’s hard to pinpoint his most valuable work because they auction so rarely, but estimates of value tend to be well north of $100 million for well-known pieces.
He has a cult-like following online, drawn to his dashing, dark persona.
Film light is still influenced by his work, this intense piece shows Francis of Assisi.
7 - Walter Sickert
Walter Sickert is a good artist but not on many lists of all-time greats. Something else fascinates.
Walter Sickert is a pretty good artist, who is represented in national and well-known private collections.
He had a colourful private life by the standards of his era, and, for a while it was claimed he might have been Jack the Ripper.
The theory is not that popular, but the fact that main proponent of it was American mystery writer Patricia Cornwell, who made a film expounding it, gave it enormous prominence.
Cornwell went so far as to buy and reportedly destroy one of Sickert’s paintings in an attempt to find DNA evidence of his guilt.
The so-called Ripper Case remains one of the most notorious unsolved murders and a huge number of enthusiasts follow it. Sickert’s papers are in library collections, but any new discoveries would undoubtedly attract a feeding frenzy.
The Camden Town Murder by Sickert. People have looked for clues to a terrible secret in his work.
6 - Toulouse Lautrec
A trick photo shows Lautrec painting himself. He did have a somewhat divided persona.
Despite his rather ritzy background, Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa, has become something like an archetype of the starving, troubled, misunderstood artist.
His disability somewhat alienated him from his aristo family, and he lived a rather free, artistic life in the demi-monde of Paris. He is heavily associated with the Moulin Rouge, with hanging out with sex workers, dancers, and celebrating ordinary working class Parisians.
He had a real live-fast, die-young life story and was just 36 when alcohol and syphilis finished him off.
In that short life he had completed getting on for 2,000 pieces of work and is still an influence on graphic design to this day.
La Blanchisseuse, a typically democratic picture of a laundry worker, made $22.4 million in 2005.
His autograph can go for several thousand pounds on a good document.
Some of Lautrec's best and most influential work was done for commercial clients.
5 - Banksy
A Banksy in its natural habitat, this one in the East End of London.
Who?
Well, there’s the question.
You can easily enough find out who Banksy probably is if you want, but the pseudonymous artist made his persona a central part of his story.
And that made him interesting.
Where would he strike next?
Is that graffiti really by Banksy?
There are all sorts of exciting copyright and ownership stories around Banksy’s work, but authentic works are worth a pretty penny.
Earlier this year a a piece owned by Blink-182’s Mark Hopus made $5.5 million. But the best Banksy piece, and the one most appropriate for our angle is the painting he designed to shred rather than sell. It only partially worked and the semi-shredded image became an even more valuable work.
Banksy lives in an age of mass production and that's how much of his work is seen.
Will the mystery ever be definitively solved and something like the Banksy Papers come to market? Stranger things have happened.
Political subjects aren't an occasional thing for Banksy, it's the core of his work.
4 - Leonardo Da Vinci
The Vitruvian Man by Da Vinci.
Leonardo Da Vinci is a very early example of a celebrity artist. He might be the first.
King Francis I of France went to considerable trouble and expense to temp the Italian master to his court as a stamp of artistic approval.
Of course, Leonardo was no mere painter, and his extraordinary breadth of work took in architecture, anatomy, war craft… he was a useful addition to any political project.
His most valuable work would be the Mona Lisa if that were ever sold. The slightly disputed Salvator Mundi was sold for over $450 million to become the world’s most expensive painting in 2017.
Bill Gates owns the Codex Leicester, a collection of Da Vinci’s writings. He paid over $30 million for it in 1994 and it’s priced at around $130 million today.
Some of the Codex Leicester, now owned by Bill Gates.
3 - Andy Warhol
Warhol's name on a Monroe image. Perfect. See more by clicking through.
Andy Warhol made himself a work of art and dedicated considerable time to creating Superstars around him.
He was extremely original, though much of his work isn’t strictly so: it's prints and often made by assistants in order to up his output.
He moved into pretty much every medium available to him, founded a magazine, made films, appeared in adverts, steered the seminal Velvet Underground and was ever in and around the limelight.
His works are extremely collectible and valuable. The Shot Blue Marilyn sold for $195.4 million in 2022.
And he’s definitely a celebrity. Instantly recognisable and collectible as an autograph too that's worth thousands at the least.
The inspirational image. Because Warhol's world was so huge there is a lot of material somehow connected to him and his work.
2 - Salvador Dali
Dali, left, in a typically strange pose.
Dali was something of a performer too, and it’s well worth searching out some film clips of him in full flow.
He didn’t just produce surrealist works of art, he lived a surrealist life. And he took his heavy symbolism into films, architecture, animation, design and fashion.
He got a castle out of it, but his decision to live in Franco’s Spain was too much for many of his former artistic comrades, including Picasso, who reportedly refused to speak his name for decades.
Dali’s autograph, almost always accompanied by sketches of some sort is always worth thousands of pounds.
His more formal work peaked with the sale of the Portrait de Paul Éluard for around $21.7 million in 2011.
A signature as large as the picture. See more about this exclusive Dali original by clicking on the picture.
1 - Pablo Picasso
A face as recognisable as some of his best-known works. Pablo Picasso in 1962.
Picasso is a brand. He is almost certainly the most famous artist of the 20th century and for many critics the most important and most accomplished too.
He lived a huge life, including some very intense relationships, and has left a huge legacy.
Both Anthony Hopkins and Antonio Banderas have played him on screen, and he’s probably the name most people would come up with if you asked them to name a modern artist.
His paintings are sold for huge fees: $104 million food Garcon a la pipe in 2004; $95.2 million for Dora Maar au Chat in 2006; and $179.3 million for Women of Algiers to set a world record in 2015.
Letters, documents, photographs and fragments with his name or work on them head towards $10,000 in value.
What a clear, handsome signature. Click on the image to explore the picture further.
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