18th Century, Europe, Auction Houses

Table of Contents

Introduction
Collecting before the Renaissance
- Europe
- East Asia
The Renaissance
- The 15th century
  - Venice and Florence
  - The Low Countries and Iberia
- The 16th century
  - The rise of Rome
  - Northern Europe and the Austrian Empire
The 17th century
- Rome as an art center
- The rise of Antwerp and Amsterdam
- London
- Spain and France
- European trade with East Asia
The 18th century
- The role of the Grand Tour
- Central and Eastern Europe
- The rise of Paris
- The rise of London
The 19th century
- The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars
- The rise of the “antique”
- Orientalism
- England
- France
- The growth of the auction market
- Museums and their impact
  - British museums
  - German museums
  - Museums as agents of change
The 20th century
- To World War II
  - The United States
  - Paris
  - London
- The latter half of the 20th century
  - New York City
  - The internationalization of the European auction houses
  - East Asia
  - Art as investment
The 21st century
Bibliography

The 18th century

The role of the Grand Tour

Veduta della Piazza di Monte Cavallo, drawing from the series Vedute di Roma by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, c. 1748–60; in the British Museum, London.

Courtesy of the trustees of the British Museum; photograph, J.R. Freeman & Co. Ltd.

In the 18th century the so-called Grand Tour became a rite of passage for aristocratic young men. The journey typically involved three or four years of travel around Europe and included an extensive sojourn in Italy, as Rome was considered the ultimate destination for what might now be characterized as cultural tourism.

Marble sculpture of three reclining, headless female figures, likely Hestia, Dione, and Aphrodite, from the Parthenon east pediment, displayed in the British Museum.

Female figures, interpreted as (left to right) Hestia, Dione, and her daughter Aphrodite or (right to left) Thalassa (the Sea), resting against Gaia (the Earth), and an unknown figure, section of the east pediment of the Parthenon at Athens, 438–432 bce; part of a collection sometimes called the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum, London.

The Scottish painter, archaeologist, and art dealer Gavin Hamilton, one of the era’s cultural power brokers, championed the idea that “the most valuable acquisition a man of refined taste can make is a piece of fine Greek sculpture.” Hamilton’s opinion was widely accepted and spurred the development of a highly lucrative antiquities market. The British end of this market was largely dominated by Hamilton himself and by two dealers, Englishman Thomas Jenkins and Scot James Byres. The most notable collector was Charles Townley, though his collection was later overshadowed by the so-called Elgin Marbles, collected by the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Thomas Bruce, 7th earl of Elgin.

There were also important continental participants in the Roman art market, including German archaeologist Baron Philip von Stosch and Italian artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi. To Rome’s south the presiding figure was Sir William Hamilton, the British envoy to the Neapolitan court. His collection of Greek vases, a catalog of which was published by the Society of the Dilettanti, was of seminal importance to Neoclassicism.

Venice also continued to be an important art market during the 18th century. Notable dealers included the British consul in Venice, Joseph Smith, the principal agent for Canaletto, and Italian intellectual Francesco Algarotti, who acted on behalf of Frederick II (the Great) of Prussia. There was also a significant trade in fans and Venetian glass. Florence also had a lively grand tourist market, particularly for pietra dura and scagliola table tops; all’antica bronzes by Giovanni Zoffoli, Francesco Righetti, and Giovanni Francesco Susini; and Old Master paintings.

Central and Eastern Europe

The ornate green and white facade of the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, stretches along the riverbank with ice floating on the water in the foreground.

Apart from the British, the most acquisitive 18th-century collectors were Augustus II (the Strong), king of Poland and (as Frederick Augustus I) elector of Saxony; the aforementioned Frederick II of Prussia; and Empress Catherine II (the Great) of Russia.

Augustus was a notable collector of Old Master paintings, including Raphael’s Sistine Madonna—the most expensive painting in the world in 1754. Frederick acquired some of the greatest paintings by Antoine Watteau, including the The Signboard of Gersaint. Catherine founded the Hermitage Museum in 1764 and acquired Sir Robert Walpole’s tremendous collection of Old Master paintings in 1779 via James Christie (founder of Christie’s auction house). She was also a notable patron of Josiah Wedgwood and the Sèvres porcelain factory.

The rise of Paris

Fêtes Vénitiennes, oil on canvas by Antoine Watteau, 1718–19; in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh. 55.90 × 45.70 cm.

Courtesy of the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh; photograph, Tom Scott

During the reign of Louis XIV, the French crown tightly controlled artistic patronage. This broke down in the closing years of his reign. Significantly, Watteau—perhaps the greatest French painter of the era—worked almost exclusively for dealers, such as Edme-François Gersaint, and for private clients. Gersaint pioneered the dealer’s catalog, and his shop was immortalized in Watteau’s late masterpiece The Signboard of Gersaint (1721).

At the same time, the connoisseurship of Old Master painting was becoming increasingly professionalized. This change was reflected in the more scholarly approach used by dealers such as Pierre-Jean Mariette and, toward the end of the century, by Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Le Brun, later an art adviser to Napoleon I. The increasing body of art-historical and critical writing was reflected in the Salon criticism of Denis Diderot, whose pivotal role as a commentator on the contemporary art world anticipated that of John Ruskin in Victorian England.

Meissen porcelain candelabras and clock, 19th century

Dimitri/Ivory and Art Gallery, Tel Aviv

Decorative arts dealers, known as marchands merciers, were allowed to surmount the French guild restrictions that forced craftsmen to specialize and prevented, for example, cabinetmakers from supplying the brass mounts on commodes. The marchand mercier therefore became a pivotal entrepreneurial figure in French furniture making, supplying capital, negotiating with customers, working with teams of specialist craftsmen, controlling the quality of the finished product, and very often assuming responsibility for the design. This is nowhere better expressed than in clocks where diverse elements—figures of Meissen porcelain, flowers of Vincennes ware, elaborate ormolu mounts and casing, and the movement itself—would be integrated in a complex confection involving many different craftsmen. Probably the best known of the 18th-century marchands merciers were Lazare Duvaux and the partners Simon-Philippe Poirier and Dominique Daguerre, all of whom had shops in the fashionable rue Saint-Honoré. Daguerre played a central role in the Anglo-French art market in the 1780s, acting simultaneously as the agent for Wedgwood in Paris and the Sèvres factory in London.

By the 18th century auctions were a familiar ingredient in the Paris art trade, many of them captured in the drawings of Gabriel de Saint-Aubin. Unlike in England, where auctioneering was largely deregulated by the 18th century, auctions in France had to be conducted by an official called a commisseur-priseur. The medieval privileges accorded to this office survived a myriad of historical events, from the French Revolution to the world wars, before yielding to European Union legislation in the year 2000.