COEUR D’ALENE, Idaho – Fans of Thomas Kinkade’s sentimental paintings soon will be able to do more than hang them on the wall.
They can hang them on the wall of a house designed to look exactly like one of Kinkade’s paintings.
The California artist, beloved by middlebrow America but reviled by the art establishment, has signed a deal with developers in this resort city to help design five lake-view homes that are copies of homes in paintings such as “Beyond Autumn Gate.”
The homes will cost $4 million to $6 million, as part of an explosion of mansions being constructed around Lake Coeur d’Alene as this once-fading timber and mining town is remade by tourists and retirees.
“I had clients for years tell me, ‘I’d like to have a house like this,’ and show me a Kinkade painting,” said Rann Haight, the architect who is designing the homes. “I said, why not?”
While it is easy to snicker at the work of the self-proclaimed “painter of light,” millions of people collect Kinkade paintings.
Mark Nash, a real estate expert from the Chicago area, said it’s nevertheless a bold move to market extremely expensive homes to Kinkade fans.
“The Kinkade art style has never been positioned as a luxury one,” Nash said. “It might be a stretch to make a Rolls-Royce out of a Buick. But money has not always been able to buy you taste.”
Robert Niles, who created the satirical Web site “Reuben Kinkade, Painter of Stuff,” complete with a photo of the fictional manager of “The Partridge Family,” said fans of Thomas Kinkade’s art can be single-minded in their devotion.
“Kinkade’s stuff is as cloying as a box of Lucky Charms,” Niles said in an e-mail. “I just was amused by the misguided fans who thought his stuff was high art and a great investment.”
If Kinkade is crying, it’s all the way to the bank, because his paintings and spinoff products fetch some $100 million a year in sales, and are in 10 million homes in the United States.
Works by Kinkade, who labels himself the nation’s most collected living artist, generally depict tranquil scenes such as country homes and churches, lighthouses, lush landscaping and cottages with streams nearby.
Kinkade was too busy to be interviewed, said Jim Bryant, a spokesman for Thomas Kinkade Co. in Morgan Hill, Calif.
Details of Kinkade’s financial involvements were not disclosed.
The artist does appear in a video promoting the development. “People tell me they often wish they could enter into one of my paintings,” Kinkade said in the video. “Now you can.”
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