Sports Art Has Carved a Market Niche But Rarely Makes Museum Canon

Generalizing, one can both say that art depicts life, and that for many people, sports are life. Yet sports are rarely the subject of works found in art galleries and museums. Indeed, it is a theme many artists actively avoid. Stadiums, ballparks and arenas may sell countless posters of athletes and teams—images montaged by painters and reproduced in the thousands—but these fall into the realm of merchandise, not fine art. At the Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia, where the Masters tournament is played, you can buy posters from the Lee Wybranski Collection or the Steve Lotus Collection, which depict fairways and greens. These prints sell briskly, but it is doubtful that curators at the Whitney or the Museum of Modern Art would ever have considered either Wybranski or Lotus for exhibition.

Case closed? Can we generalize, too, that sports art isn’t serious art? Perhaps, but the story is more complicated. Sports as a subject of art is not unheard of, though examples in major museums are few. In 1816, Francisco Goya published a 33-work series of etchings on bullfighting, “La Tauromaquia,” and Claes Oldenburg’s 101-foot-tall baseball bat sculpture, the 1977 Batcolumn, stands in downtown Chicago. The International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island, has an entire art collection—its highlight is a screenprint of Chris Evert by Andy Warhol. One of the most famous sports paintings in art history is George Bellows’ 1923-24 Dempsey and Firpo, which commemorates a boxing match won by Jack Dempsey, even though the painting shows him being knocked through the ropes.

Other artists turned to sporting imagery on occasion. Benjamin West painted five cricket players in his 1763 The Cricketers, which sold for £1.2 million in 2022 and now hangs in Lord’s Cricket Ground in London. Thomas Eakins created his 1871 Max Schmitt in a Single Scull (now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art), and Raoul Dufy painted and printed scenes of horse racing. These, however, were singular efforts rather than central themes in their work.

Perhaps the most celebrated artist to make sports a specialty was LeRoy Neiman (1921-2012). He painted football, baseball, boxing, horse racing, car racing and portraits of athletes, and he was the official painter of five Olympic games spanning from 1972 to 2010. His works, originals and reproductions alike, often appear at sports-themed auctions, though less at international houses like Bonhams, Christie’s, Phillips or Sotheby’s and more at regional houses in the U.S. Chicago-based Freeman’s | Hindman has sold dozens of Neiman’s works, ranging from an undated lithograph of a matador (Matador) that sold for $750 to a 1973 billiards painting (Ball Break) that reached $51,200.

In 2023, Heritage Auctions in Dallas sold a 10-foot painting of basketball players created for the cover of the 1977 NBA All-Star Game program (Legends of Basketball) for $186,000. Norman Rockwell’s 1948 painting of three umpires debating whether to call a game for rain (Tough Call), used on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post the following year, sold for $1.68 million at Heritage in 2017. Rockwell was never a sports specialist, but he treated the subject with a seriousness others avoided.

Seattle’s Greg Kucera Gallery has for years held summer exhibitions devoted to baseball art. Earlier this year, the Norton Museum of Art staged “Strike Fast, Dance Lightly: Artists on Boxing,” which featured works by Eadweard Muybridge, George Bellows,  Ed Paschke and Jonas Wood, though nothing by Neiman. “Get in the Game: Sports, Art, Culture,” which debuted at SFMOMA, opens at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art on September 13 with works by Ernie Barnes, Derek Fordjour, Julie Mehretu and Hank Willis Thomas and runs through January 26.

Likely, no artist sets out intending to specialize in sports, but commissions can shift careers. Debbie Sampson, a painter in Kissimmee, Florida, entered a contest for a ticket to a Florida Marlins game and later painted one of the players based on a program photo. When she offered the painting to the team, “suddenly other players on the team were asking me to do paintings of them.” Word spread, leading to commissions from Carolina Panthers players, and eventually Sampson moved from martial arts subjects to full-time sports paintings sold at games.

Gender bias complicated her career. “People loved my work, but when it was time to pick an artist for a commission, they always chose a man,” she told Observer. “I started signing only my last name on paintings, so that people wouldn’t know I was a woman.”

Other artists’ careers developed in similar ways. Brian Fox of Fall River, Massachusetts, became an official Commemorative Artist for Major League Baseball. British-born, Los Angeles-based sculptor Andy Scott began with traditional animal forms but drew commissions from soccer clubs including Glasgow Rangers and Manchester City FC.

Fox told Observer that had to “figure out how to make a living,” but commissions linked to the Boston Red Sox and New England Patriots solved that problem. His connection to the Patriots, in particular, came about through Matt Light’s Light Foundation. Fox painted portraits of Tom Brady and Wes Welker and donated them for fundraising, which led to introductions across the organization. He later did similar charity work for causes tied to Curt Schilling, gaining press coverage and new commissions. “I made sure to be on stage when my paintings were being auctioned off, so that people could see who did it.” Soon after, Major League Baseball selected him as the official All-Star Game artist for three years running. His work later extended to horse racing and fundraising commissions for celebrities like Steven Tyler and Mark Wahlberg.

Original works by sports artists can reach into five and six figures. Fox’s paintings often fetch anywhere from $8,500 to $60,000. Charles Fazzino, who has created art for more than 25 Super Bowls, 20 MLB All-Star Games and numerous other sporting events, prices his works between $20,000 and $150,000. His hand-painted baseballs and football helmets sell for anywhere from $1,200 to $10,000. “We consider Charles as having been the contemporary to pick up the ball from LeRoy Neiman,” Julie Maner, Fazzino’s director of business affairs, told Observer. Institutions such as the International Olympic Museum in Lausanne and the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown have acquired his works.

That said, the secondary market for sports art remains thin. “There is a secondary market for my work,” Fox said. “I know people buy them and sell them. I just don’t know who or where.”

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