Keynes – the economist with an eye for an art bargain

The economist John Maynard Keynes was an avid art collector – and a savvy one, too

Cézanne’s L’Enlèvement: the most expensive piece in Keynes’s collection
(Image credit: Credit: Artepics / Alamy Stock Photo)

It’s well known that John Maynard Keynes was one of the 20th century’s most important practitioners of the "dismal science" of economics. Less well known is that he was also an avid collector of fine art – and quite a successful one at that. The economist spent £12,847 on building up his art collection between 1917 and 1945. That collection, according to “Art as an Asset: Evidence from Keynes the Collector”, a study from the Cambridge Judge Business School, is today worth £76.2m, representing an inflation-adjusted return of 6.1% a year.

True, if Keynes had sunk his money into British stocks and reinvested the dividends, his beneficiaries would be sitting on around £90.2m. But share certificates don’t look half as good on the wall; not compared with Georges Seurat’s Study for La Grande Jatte (1884), bought by Keynes for £400 in 1919 while he was writing The Economic Consequences of the Peace following World War I. Keynes’ most expensive purchase was Paul Cézanne’s 1867 canvas L’Enlèvement (The Abduction), bought for £3,500 in 1935, while he was working on The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. The ten most expensive paintings in his 135-piece collection accounted for 80% of his total expenditure.

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Chris Carter
Wealth Editor, MoneyWeek

Chris Carter spent three glorious years reading English literature on the beautiful Welsh coast at Aberystwyth University. Graduating in 2005, he left for the University of York to specialise in Renaissance literature for his MA, before returning to his native Twickenham, in southwest London. He joined a Richmond-based recruitment company, where he worked with several clients, including the Queen’s bank, Coutts, as well as the super luxury, Dorchester-owned Coworth Park country house hotel, near Ascot in Berkshire.

Then, in 2011, Chris joined MoneyWeek. Initially working as part of the website production team, Chris soon rose to the lofty heights of wealth editor, overseeing MoneyWeek’s Spending It lifestyle section. Chris travels the globe in pursuit of his work, soaking up the local culture and sampling the very finest in cuisine, hotels and resorts for the magazine’s discerning readership. He also enjoys writing his fortnightly page on collectables, delving into the fascinating world of auctions and art, classic cars, coins, watches, wine and whisky investing.

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