“Voyages Through Art”
Friday 10th January 2025
Museums & Galleries Marketing Ltd was the leading fine art publisher in the world for many years and David Howell was in the enviable position of being paid to visit museums, galleries and stately homes around the world in search of suitable images to be put on greeting cards, scarves, ties, jigsaws, wrapping paper and all sorts of other things. David was not an artist himself, although he did win a school prize or two for his poster designs, but he was happy to leave creating art to artists while he went to find suitable works to reproduce.
In 2017 the greeting card market was worth $1.7 billion. There are 1.5 million cards sold in the UK each year. 80% of these are bought by women. There is also gift wrapping and stationery to add to this lucrative market. In the early days museums and galleries did not appreciate the commercial value of all the art they held. It was Caroline Humby Teck who recognised the potential when she founded Museums & Galleries Marketing in 1985. Her ambition was to bring “fine art to a worldwide audience”.
Commercial greeting cards are printed on large off set printing machines. They are printed flat on A0 size sheets of paper, this means that any image or writing on the inside of the card requires another plate. These machines print 4 to 5 thousand sheets per hour. There has to be a minimum of at least 2,500 of any card to make it economic to do a print run .
It was Sir Henry Cole who printed the first Christmas card as seen above. It was of his family with charitable works depicted on either side. It was hand coloured and 1,000 copies were printed. He decided to sell the extra cards he did not want for himself for 6d each, quite a high price for what was seen as a luxury item. In 2001 one of these cards sold for £2,500 at auction.
It was essential to be aware of trends and changing public taste. ‘The Lady and the Unicorn’ from the Hotel de Cluny in Paris used to be quite popular but it is not so popular now. However, a detail such as the little rabbit still has appeal.
‘Signing the Register’ is a popular wedding card but it is reduced to focus only on the bride and groom. Nevertheless, the whole image is always be printed on the back of a card with the artist’s name and title.
David Howell had a long association with Leighton House and he knows that people expect to find this painting ‘Flaming June’ by Sir Frederic Leighton at the museum, but it isn’t. There is a story behind who owns it now. Andrew Lloyd-Webber found this beautiful painting in a bric-a-brac shop on the Kings Road. The painting was for sale for only £50, incidentally the frame was valued at £60! but Andrew Lloyd Webber couldn’t afford it at the time and was not able persuade his grandmother to lend him the money. It was eventually bought by Luis A Ferre the noted Puerto Rican industrialist and it became the property of the Ponce Museum in Puerto Rico.
Although the Pre-Raphaelites were popular this painting called ‘Dante’s Dream’ was not a winner. However, a preparatory sketch of the hands, circled in the painting above, which had clearly been done by Rosetti for this painting, proved to be a success with the public.
In the early days Museums & Galleries Marketing provided all the National Galleries cards. In the summer of 2005 the BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme conducted a survey to discover Britain’s greatest painting. The painting that came top was J.M.W. Turner’s ‘Fighting Temeraire’ but in terms of card sales it was Vincent Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’ that was the real winner.
David Howell’s objective was to find images that would sell well. Pictures of cats did well whereas dogs were less popular probably because cat people seem to like all types of cats while dog people have a preference for a particular breed. Portraits do not sell well whereas flower pictures prove ever popular.
Claude Monet is probably the most popular of the Impressionist artists. Christmas cards bring enormous sales of cards and Monet created at least 100 paintings on the them of snow. ‘La Pie’ or ‘The Magpie’ is a particular favourite although when it was submitted to the Paris Salon in 1869 it was deemed to be too pale, too fleeting without a smooth finish but more like a sketch.
David want on to describe some of the experiences he had with different clients and some of the difficulties he had encountered. For instance Americans always want a written greeting inside the card but Georgia O’Keefe would not allow this when her work was reproduced. Picasso’s signature had to be removed from a reproduction where it was prominent as it turns out that Citroen cars own the copyright.
The V&A Versace Exhibition was an example where V&A’s Licensing Department were hesitant about printing a set of 16 cards. Happily the Exhibition department were more amenable especially when a print run of 2.5 thousand cards sold out within 3 days.
Not only did David visit many of the biggest museums and art galleries in the world, he also went to the smaller ones. He also dealt with individual artists and artists’ estates. One of the issues he touched on was that of copyright. It is true that copyright in Britain lasts for 70 years from the December of the death of the artist. In America it is 100 years, in France for some reason there is dispensation for the war years. Interestingly there was an oversight when it came to dealing with Beatrix Potter’s estate because, through some oversight, Japan was omitted from the deal.
One of David’s favourite finds was the ‘Profusion of Flowers’ shown above. It is part of an 18th century Chinese scroll 14″ high and 25′ long with delicate flowers drawn in ink and colour on paper. He was right about it as the cards sold well.
There were many anecdotes and images that could not be included in this write-up which is intended to give a general account of David Howell’s talk about his interesting career in the card industry at a time when fine art was becoming increasingly valued. In 2002, Caroline Humby Teck died, and shortly afterwards David left the Museum & Galleries Company which now no longer exists.
Write up by Carole Head