Hunter Biden’s Paintings: Not Quite the Refuge He Sought

As Hunter Biden’s life and business dealings have come under increasing scrutiny in recent years, leading to this week’s trial on gun charges, the president’s son has said he hoped to keep one part of his life unscathed: his art.

It hasn’t worked out that way.

Mr. Biden, who began to paint in earnest as he lifted himself out of a crack cocaine addiction, started attracting attention for his art three years ago after a Manhattan gallery selling his works claimed that they were being offered for up to $500,000 apiece.

That high price tag — rare for a novice artist — raised questions about whether the works could attract buyers seeking to curry favor with the Biden administration. The art sale spurred news reports, assurances by the White House that there was a plan in place to avoid potential conflicts of interest and, earlier this year, a congressional inquiry.

But in the end, Mr. Biden’s paintings fetched far less. His New York gallerist, Georges Bergès, testified to Congress in January that the widely reported $500,000 asking prices that were attributed to his gallery — including in two emails to The New York Times, one of which was sent in Mr. Bergès’s name — had not been accurate. He said the top price he had received for Mr. Biden’s work had in fact been only $85,000. In all, the gallery sold about $1.5 million worth of his art, according to a tally that was cited during the congressional hearing that Mr. Bergès did not dispute.

Mr. Biden’s earnings proved more modest than the early hype had suggested: He reported $130,984 in gross income from art sales during the first two tax years that he was represented by the gallery, according to his tax returns from those years.

In an interview last week, Mr. Bergès blamed a representative of his gallery, the Georges Bergès Gallery in SoHo, for the reports of inflated asking prices. But he added that Mr. Biden’s art was well worth its cost.