Art As An Important Investment Asset Is Something That The Fine Art Fund,

Art as an important investment asset is something that the Fine Art Fund, based in London, recognises. One of Lord Hanson's last business ventures before he died in October 2004, the company mixes art with finance in an unusual and ambitious mix that has attracted a steady stream of investors for the past three years. Experts seek out established works they believe are undervalued and will appreciate rapidly in the global market, and as part of the deal loan Old Master works to investors to hang in their homes and offices.
The sectors the fund will invest in have shown between 8% and 12% compound growth over the past 25 years. Compare this with global equities and you can see that art is an interesting and untapped market.

The potential of the untapped art market is demonstrated by the British Rail Pension Fund who, in 1974, invested £40 million, or 2.9% of its portfolio in the art market. The works, which were sold off at the end of the 1980s, generated 11.3% compound growth.
The art of the Old Masters is clearly the most important sector of the art market, their worth reaching the thousands, even millions, both an invaluable investment opportunity and an endless source of pleasure and fascination for those who seek their seminal beauty. Transforming the Byzantine methods of mosaic and miniature, the pioneer Old Master Cavallini exchanged these rigid conservative methods for the spontaneity and energy of al fresco painting that has inspired generations of artists with the concepts and principles once stifled by the mediaeval church. Severing the barrier between gothic sculpture and art, Cavallini, Giotto and their multitude of Old Master successors developed the fundamental notions of space, volume, light, movement and perspective that has shaped the evolution of art history even unto the present day. The art of beautiful surfaces; the art of space and light; the art of realistic observation; the art of receding space and geometrical form; the art of al fresco and colour: this is the centuries-old legacy that the Old Masters have left and which will endure for centuries to come. It is 9.30pm in the Salle des Etats and the 'Mona Lisa' still has an audience, and while closing time fast approaches the night cleaner has begun to clear the mound of rubbish left by the endless hoards of bustling tourists at her invisible feet.