Art Markets, Agents and Collectors

Susan Bracken is Associate Lecturer, Department of History of Art, Birkbeck University of London, UK.Adriana Turpin is Academic Director and Head of Research, Institut d’Etudes Supérieures des Arts, Paris, France.

All historians with a serious interest in how works of art were sourced, commended, valued and purchased in Europe and North America between the mid-16th and the mid-20th centuries will find much of interest and much that will surprise them among the profile portraits and succinct case histories in this volume. These include a connoisseur whose omissions from his doggerel survey of Venetian art still perplex us, the croney of a dissolute prince for whom the competition in the salerooms had something of the appeal of the gambling tables, a scholar and painter striving to become a museum director, a poet and his wife devising flagrant publicity stunts to promote a surrealist painter, and an Anglican Bishop helping to export grave goods excavated by railway construction in China. Introductory essays not only review what has been achieved but what remains to be investigated and what methodological equipment will be required in this relatively young and rapidly growing branch of academic research.

• List of platesList of figuresSeries editor’s introductionAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Baetens, Susan Bracken and Adriana TurpinPart I: Agents in the market, 1550–1720I Introduction: Agents in the art market, 1550–1720 Sandra van Ginhoven1 Hans Albrecht von Sprinzenstein: An Austrian art agent in the service of Archduke Ferdinand II of Tyrol Adriana Concin2 Marco Boschini and the artists of his time Linda Borean3 International art dealers, local agents and their clients in seventeenth-century Habsburg Inner Austria Tina Košak4 James Thornhill as an agent-collector in early-eighteenth-century Paris Tamsin Lee-WoolfePart II Agents in the long eighteenth centuryII Introduction: Hidden figures – agents in the long eighteenth century Bénédicte Miyamoto5 Scottish agents in Rome in the eighteenth century: The case of Peter Grant Maria Celeste Cola6 ‘An oracle for collectors’: Philipp von Stosch and collecting and dealing in art and antiquities in early-eighteenth-century Rome and Florence Ulf R. Hansson7 Shaping the taste of British diplomats in eighteenth-century Venice Laura-Maria Popoviciu8 Establishing honest trading relationships: Academic painters in the art market of eighteenth-century France Christine Godfroy-Gallardo9 The German art market in the eighteenth century Renata Schellenberg10 Playing the market: Lord Yarmouth, the Prince Regent and the role of the royal agent 1806–19 Rebecca LyonsPart III The agent in the modern European art market, 1820–1950III Introduction: The art market in Europe, 1820–1950 Anne Helmreich11 Edward Solly, Felice Cartoni and their purchases of paintings: A ‘milord’ and his ‘commissioner’ anticipating a transnational network of dealers c. 1820 Robert Skwirblies12 ‘To see once again the glorious picture by Moretto before it is forever lost for Rome’: How an artist’s position in the canon of taste was enhanced in the nineteenth century Corina Meyer13 ‘It is not my fault if in all the private collections, the Dutch paintings surpass all’: Thoré-Bürger’s promotion of Dutch art in the Parisian art market of the 1860s Frances Suzman Jowell 14 The Beurdeleys: A dynasty of curiosity dealers and their networks Camille Mestdagh15 Collaboration and resistance: The National Gallery, London, and the Italian art market at the end of the nineteenth century Elena J. Greer16 ‘I shall set at once about the work’: Some agents in China Nick Pearce17 Promoting themselves: Agents and strategies in early Surrealism’s art market Alice EnsabellaPart IV Agents in the market for American collectorsIV Introduction: Collecting alliances in the United States during the long nineteenth century Inge Reist 18 Can a leopard change its spots? René Gimpel, art dealer Diana J. Kostyrko19 Samuel P. Avery’s early career: The emergence of a successful art agent, art dealer and art expert Madeleine Fidell-Beaufort 20 Dealing with allegories of the four parts of the world: James Hazen Hyde (1876–1959) and his network Louise Arizzoli21 Laying the foundation: Harold Woodbury Parsons and the making of an American museum MacKenzie Mallon22 Convergences: Art history, museums and scholar-agent Martin Birnbaum’s transatlantic art for the public Julie CodellBibliographyAuthor biographiesIndex