Painter in 1432: Van Eyck completes the Ghent Altarpiece — Section 725: Van Eyck completes the Ghent

Do you need to go to art school to become a painter? No — painting has no license anywhere, and history is full of successful painters who trained outside schools: Vincent van Gogh was largely self-taught, and China's Qi Baishi learned by copying a borrowed painting manual by lamplight. But most gallery-represented painters today hold a BFA or MFA, and university teaching posts — the trade's steadiest salary — effectively require an MFA.

By stacking income streams: gallery sales, typically split 50/50 with the dealer; direct sales and commissions; prints and editions; teaching; grants and residencies; and, for many, unrelated day jobs. Surveys in the UK, Germany and Australia repeatedly find that income from artwork alone averages well under a living wage, which is why almost every working painter runs several streams at once.

What does a gallery do, and what cut does it take? The standard commercial-gallery split is 50 percent of each sale, worldwide. In exchange the gallery pays for exhibition space, openings, art-fair booths that can cost tens of thousands of dollars, promotion, and — most valuably — access to its collector list. Most galleries take work on consignment rather than buying it, so the painter is paid only when a piece actually sells.