How We Might View Artists as Businesspeople

This essay suggests the roles artists and individuals in art-related businesses played as agents and actors in a capitalist society during the early national and antebellum period in America. Many artists and those in allied fields met and created demand for established and novel products, which depended, in part, on the introduction and timing of new methods and materials, and corresponding capital expenditures. Experimentation and innovation, calculated risks, and calamities were all familiar to those who created, produced, and circulated art. They also relied on ever-changing transportation and distribution networks for materials, supplies, and delivery of finished products. Although the fields of business and economic history can provide some models, art historians, too, have much to add to discussions of capitalism.