Commissions go wrong in predictable ways. The client imagined something the artist never agreed to make. The artist assumed creative latitude the client never granted. Nobody discussed what happens if the finished work is unwelcome, and by the time that question arises there is a large object in the room and two people who cannot look at each other.
Almost all of it is preventable, and almost none of it is prevented by good intentions. It is prevented by deciding a short list of things in advance and writing them down.
Commission the artist you have, not the one you want
The foundational error is hiring someone whose work you like and then asking them to make something unlike it. A painter of quiet interiors asked to produce a bold abstract for a lobby will produce a competent piece by someone else’s standards and a weak one by their own.
Before anything else, look hard at the existing body of work and ask whether you would be happy with something that sits squarely inside it. If the honest answer is no, you want a different artist. Choosing correctly at this stage removes most of the risk from everything that follows.
The corollary for artists: decline commissions that require you to work against type. The fee rarely covers the cost of a piece you cannot show anyone.
What belongs in the brief
A good brief is specific about constraints and quiet about aesthetics.
Specify the things that are genuinely fixed. Dimensions, or a range. Orientation. The site and its conditions, including light, humidity, heat, whether it is public or private, whether children or animals will be near it. Weight limits and fixing points if it hangs or stands. The medium, if the site demands one. The deadline and what it is tied to, which matters because a date attached to an opening is different from one attached to nothing. The budget, as a number rather than a hint.
Then say what the work is for and what you responded to in the artist’s existing work. That is more useful than a description of what you picture, because what you picture is usually a memory of something else.
Do not specify composition, palette in detail, or subject matter arrangement. Clients who art-direct get worse work and pay the same for it. If you find you want that level of control, you do not want a commission, you want an illustration or a fabrication job, and those are legitimate but different transactions with different fees and different expectations about authorship.
Money and stages
The workable structure is thirds. A third on signature, before work begins. A third at an agreed midpoint, usually the approval of a design or maquette. A third on completion, before delivery or installation.
The first payment is not a deposit in the refundable sense. It buys the artist’s time to develop a proposal, and it should be non-returnable if the client withdraws, because that time is spent whether or not the piece is made. This one point, stated clearly at the start, prevents a large proportion of commission disputes.
Materials and fabrication on a substantial piece should be handled separately from the fee, either invoiced at cost or built in with a stated allowance. Artists frequently quote a single number, discover the casting or the framing eats half of it, and finish the job resenting the client. The client never knew.
Agree in writing who pays for transport, installation, insurance in transit, and any specialist fitting. On architectural work, agree who is responsible if the wall turns out not to take the load.
Approval, and how much of it
Approve the direction, not the execution.
The normal sequence is a proposal stage, which might be sketches, a scale drawing, a maquette or a sample panel, and a formal sign-off on it. After sign-off the artist works. Progress photographs are a courtesy, not a review process, and treating them as a review is the fastest way to produce something committee-shaped.
If the client needs more reassurance than that, build in one interim viewing at a defined point and be explicit that it is for information. What must be avoided is an open channel of comment across months, because it converts the artist into a service provider and the work into a compromise nobody chose.
The clause everyone avoids
Agree what happens if the client does not want the finished work.
The usual mechanism is that the client pays the full fee, or a defined proportion, and the artist keeps the piece and is free to sell it. It is uncomfortable to raise and it takes one sentence. Without it, the alternative outcomes are a client who feels forced to accept something they dislike, or an artist who absorbs months of unpaid work, and both destroy the relationship.
Related, and equally avoided: define completion. The work is finished when the artist says it is finished, subject to the agreed specification. Otherwise there is no end.
Copyright, credit and what the client is actually buying
Buying a commissioned work buys the object. It does not, by default, buy the copyright, and it does not transfer the right to reproduce the work commercially. A company that commissions a mural and then puts it on packaging is very likely in breach unless reproduction rights were granted in writing.
If the client needs reproduction rights, negotiate them explicitly, define the scope and duration, and expect them to carry a fee. If the artist wants to keep them, say so and offer a licence for the client’s ordinary uses, which usually means photographs of the site, press and marketing about the building or collection.
The artist retains moral rights in most jurisdictions, which broadly means the right to be identified as the author and the right to object to derogatory treatment of the work. In practice this bears on cropping, repainting, relocating and altering. If a client anticipates that a site may be redeveloped, that should be discussed at the outset rather than discovered later.
Also agree who may photograph the work, who owns those photographs, and whether the artist may include the commission in their portfolio. Artists should almost always insist on the last point. Clients with confidentiality concerns should say so before, not after.
Timelines that are true
Artists underestimate, consistently. Clients hear an estimate as a promise.
Build the schedule backwards from the date the work must be in place, and insert the things people forget: drying and curing times, which for oil paint can be months before varnishing; foundry or fabricator queues, which are not within the artist’s control; framing; transport; and a contingency of several weeks. Put the milestone dates in the agreement.
If a delay happens, say so early. Every client can absorb a delay announced at the halfway point. Almost none can absorb one announced in the final week.
A short contract beats a long one
You do not need a document that looks like a lease. One or two pages covering the parties, the description and specification, the fee and payment stages, the materials and expenses, the schedule and milestones, the approval process, cancellation and rejection, copyright and reproduction, credit, delivery and installation, and insurance will handle almost everything.
The purpose is not to prepare for litigation. It is to force both parties to have the four or five slightly awkward conversations at the point when they are cheap, rather than at the point when there is a finished work in the room and no agreement about what to do with it.
