Susanna Avery-Quash

Christian Huemer

Showcasing diverse methodologies, this volume illuminates London's central role in the development of a European art market at the turn of the nineteenth century. In the late 1700s, as the events of the French Revolution roiled France, London displaced Paris as the primary hub of international art sales. Within a few decades, a robust and sophisticated art market flourished in London. London and the Emergence of a European Art Market, 1780–1820 explores the commercial milieu of art sales and collecting at this turning point. In this collection of essays, twenty-two scholars employ methods ranging from traditional art historical and provenance studies to statistical and economic analysis; they provide overviews, case studies, and empirical reevaluations of artists, collectors, patrons, agents and dealers, institutions, sales, and practices. Drawing from pioneering digital resources—notably the Getty Provenance Index—as well as archival materials such as trade directories, correspondence, stock books and inventories, auction catalogs, and exhibition reviews, these scholars identify broad trends, reevaluate previous misunderstandings, and consider overlooked commercial contexts. From individual case studies to econometric overviews, this volume is groundbreaking for its diverse methodological range that illuminates artistic taste and flourishing art commerce at the turn of the nineteenth century.

London and the Emergence of a European Art Market, 1780-1820

Barbara Pezzini

As a result of the Napoleonic wars, vast numbers of Old Master paintings were released on to the market from public and private collections across continental Europe. The knock-on effect was the growth of the market for Old Masters from the 1790s up to the early 1930s, when the Great Depression put an end to its expansion. This book explores the global movement of Old Master paintings and investigates some of the changes in the art market that took place as a result of this new interest. Arguably, the most important phenomenon was the diminishing of the traditional figure of the art agent and the rise of more visible, increasingly professional, dealerships; firms such as Colnaghi and Agnew's in Britain, Goupil in France and Knoedler in the USA, came into existence. Old Masters Worldwide explores the ways in which the pioneering practices of such businesses contributed to shape a changing market.

Susanna Avery-Quash

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