Art Auctions And Dealers

This collection of essays presents a status quaestionis concerning the dissemination of Flemish and Dutch art during the period 1400-1800, and highlights the role art auctions and dealers have played in this process. Auctions emerged as the primary channel for art sales at the end of the seventeenth century in the Low Countries and during the eighteenth century, countless local art collections were broken up and put up for auction. Especially (old master) paintings exchanged hands in great numbers at these public sales, and the finest pieces frequently ended up in foreign holdings. The activities of the professional art dealer form the focus of several essays. These intermediaries played an instrumental role in the commercialization and expansion of the art trade in early modern Europe. They had a profound impact on the history of collecting as they mediated and even influenced taste. Naturally, the role of art dealers changed over time. Therefore, the historians, art historians and economists who contributed to this volume have approached this phenomenon in an interdisciplinary fashion in order to properly understand how art markets functioned. In doing so, these essays explore the various ways in which art dealers helped shape markets for art, and how they facilitated the increasing volume of exports of Netherlandish art from the sixteenth century onwards. Hans Vlieghe is professor emeritus at the University of Leuven. He has published extensively on Flemish art of the 17th century, especially on Rubens and his circle. Filip Vermeylen is assistant professor of Cultural Economics at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. His current research focuses on the history of art markets. Dries Lyna works at the Center for Urban History (University of Antwerp), where he is currently preparing a Ph.D. thesis on art auctions in eighteenth-century Antwerp and Brussels.

Record prices and substantial profits have been and still are being achieved on the art market. Yet anyone who wants to get involved needs to be informed: what distinguishes the English type of auction from one in the Netherlands? What differentiates a vintage from a period, modern, or estate print? Dirk Boll, managing director of Christie's in Zurich, explains this and other technical terms while providing us with insight into the rapidly changing art market: the increasingly symbiotic relationship between auctioneers and art dealers, the strategies used by the big auction houses, recognizing and creating trends, the profiles of the individual art fairs, promising new areas for collectors, and the future development of the art market are just some of the fascinating themes the expert knowledgeably and humorously deals with in concise chapters. A trained lawyer, Boll is as competent at shedding light on the legal parameters regulating the acquisition of art as he is in elucidating the difficulties surrounding looted art and restitution procedures. (German edition ISBN 978-3-7757-2814-0) Language: English

Volume III in the 'Studies in the History of Collection' series, published in association with the Beazley Archive in the University of Oxford. 14 papers on The Mechanisms of the Art Market 1660-1830 presented at a symposium at the Wallace Collection, London in December 2003. Contents: Introduction (Neil De Marchi); 1) The Art Trade and its Urban Context: England and the Netherlands compared, 1550-1750 (David Ormrod); 2) The Auction Duty Act of 1777: the beginning of institutionalisation of auctions in Britain (Satomi Ohashi); 3) The Almoneda: the second-hand art market in Spain (Mari-Tere Alvarez); 4) The Market for Netherlandish Paintings in Paris, 1750-1815 (Hans J. Van Miegroet); 5) Le tableau et son prix a Paris, 1760-80 (Patrick Michel); 6) The System Governing Appraised Value in Ancien Regime France (Alden R. Gordon); 7) The Marquis de Vasse Against the Art Dealer Jacques Lenglier: a case-study of an eighteenth-century Parisian auction (Francois Marandet); 8) Pierre Sirois (1665-1726): le premier marchand de Watteau (Guillaume Glorieux); 9) The Purchase of the Past: Dr Richard Rawlinson (1690-1755) and the collecting of history (John Cherry); 10) John Anderson and John Bouttats: picture dealers in eighteenth-century London (David Connell); 11) Sir Godfrey Copley as Patron and Consumer, 1685-1705 (David Mitchell); 12) The Rise and Fall of a British Connoisseur: the career of Michael Bryan (1757-1821), picture dealer extraordinaire (Julia Armstrong-Totten); 13) 'In Keeping with the Truth': the German art market and its role in the development of connoisseurship in the eighteenth century (Thomas Ketelsen); 14) Abraham Hume e Giovanni Maria Sasso: il mercato artistico tra Venezia e Londra nel settecento (Linda Borean).

In this study of Amsterdam's Golden Age cultural elite, John Michael Montias analyzes records of auctions from the Orphan Chamber of Amsterdam through the first half of the seventeenth century, revealing a wealth of information on some 2,000 art buyers' regional origins, social and religious affiliations, wealth, and aesthetic preferences. Chapters focus not only on the art dealers who bought at these auctions, but also on buyers who had special connections with individual artists.

Procurement analysis, sales planning, customer orientation, brand management—the art market is changing more rapidly than ever before. The price that a work of art commands influences its place in the art-historical canon. Auction houses have become dominant avenues of distribution, as have art fairs, galleries, and art dealers. Even today the ritual dramaturgy of the auction resembles an archaic competition, which can leave participants speechless and captivate bystanders. At the center of the action is the auctioneer, whose performance is increasingly critical to the success of the auction. With portraits of auctioneers, this volume tells the story of the art auction business. Key events that played out in cities such as New York, Paris, Zurich, Berlin, Stuttgart, and Pompeii come alive and show how the auctioneer is emerging from the anonymity of a service provider and stepping into the limelight as the star of the show.

Art Markets, Agents and Collectors brings together a wide variety of case studies, based on letters and detailed archival research, which nuance the history of the art market and the role of the collector within it. Using diaries, account books and other archival sources, the contributions to this volume show how agents set up networks and acquired works of art, often developing the taste and knowledge of the collectors for whom they were working. They are therefore seen as important actors in the market, having a specific role that separates them from auctioneers, dealers, museum curators or amateurs, while at the same time acknowledging and analyzing the dual positions that many held. Each chronological period is introduced by a contextual essay, written by a leading expert in the field, which sets out the art market in the period concerned and the ways in which agents functioned. This book is an invaluable tool for those needing a broader introduction to the intricate workings of the art market.

The Art Sales Index is used by auctioneers, dealers and collectors throughout the world to help determine the value of works of art.