Read this Wildlife Art Journal article

By Eamon Murphy

Typically, when a well-known artist dies, the works he leaves behind increase in value -- after all, there obviously will be no more additions to their oeuvre. So anyone who has a Thomas Kinkade hanging over the sofa might well be wondering: Is it worth more today than it was before the artist died April 6, 2012 at age 54?

Kinkade, the American artist who promoted himself with the registered trademark "Painter of Light," was unique among contemporary painters: He established what the Associated Press rightly described as a commercialart empire, encompassing "franchised galleries, reproduced artwork and spin-off products said to fetch at their peak some $100 million annually and [to] adorn roughly 10 million homes." In addition to hand-signed lithographs and canvas prints, licensed Kinkade products include "books and posters, calendars, magazine covers, cards, collector plates and figurines" – even jigsaw puzzles.”


'The Good Life', one of Kinkade's popular prints

So what will be the financial fate of all that stuff, now that Kinkade's career is at an end?
"While he was probably the most financially successful artist in the United States, the resale value of his works [is] very, very limited," says Deborah Solon, an art historian who once participated in a symposium on Kinkade at New York University. "Most of what he did was in multiples; there are very few originals. Most were serigraphs or lithographs, and then sometimes he or somebody else would maybe hand...