Peter Bartlow

• 
  
• Practical Experience as Education Developing an “eye” and academics vs. experience
• Academic education in History of Art in the 1970’s consisted of lectures with slide presentations and accessing slide files and books in the library. The scale and texture and often the color of the paintings is rather limited. I had the benefit of combining the academic education with the handling of thousands of paintings before I was twenty eight years old.
• In my first five years in the art business, extensive research was required in many cases to identify and price the paintings as they were coming from estates and old collections. Research materials such as the 14 volume set of Dictionnaire des Peintres, by Benezit, the classic French art encyclopedia and Graves, Dictionary of Artists and Christopher Wood’s, Dictionary of Victorian Painters were consulted on a daily basis. These were used together with subscriptions to Christie’s and Sotheby Parke Bernet auction catalogs to determine the value and often the creators of the paintings. This process of looking at paintings and identifying the artist was repeated at least 1000 times over the five years in that business. Estimating the value and knowing the artist or region and year just by looking at the painting became second nature.

Bartlow Art Appraisals is a subsidiary of Bartlow Art Services, Ltd.

The company offers a wide variety of services to private and corporate art collectors. These include appraisals for insurance and replacement, authentication, sales, and purchase brokering and advising.

• 
  
• In recent years I have focused more on art consulting and appraising.
• 1991-present STEIN-BARTLOW GALLERY which became BARTLOW GALLERY, Continued specialization in all previous areas with more of an emphasis on finding and promoting artists new to this market.
• Bartlow Gallery, Ltd. became the new name of the company in 1991, which I had originally joined in 1979.
• We engaged in extensive retail and wholesale sales of graphics by major artists and original paintings by well-known abstract expressionist artists. Samuel Stein was a leading dealer with international connections. This period included the tremendous art boom of Japanese buying 1988-1990.
• We bought many fine prints from dealers, collections and auctions, and we were well connected in the fine print world. My other role in the gallery was to find and develop markets for new painters.
• 
  

• The late 1970’s were a time of great interest in the fine prints of well-known artists, and there was probably no other place outside of the auction houses that sold more master prints than Merrill Chase Gallery at Water Tower Place. Chicago had a great affinity for Picasso and Miro, as well as Chagall, Calder and Toulouse-Lautrec. I was employed as a salesman on the floor and the inventory we had included the best prints of the above-mentioned artists.
• The enthusiasm and knowledge of fine prints that Ivo Kirschen shared with me and others in the gallery was responsible for at least 8 of my fellow associates and I to eventually lead our own galleries. We had an extensive art resource library, and every day was spent either selling or learning about fine prints.