Art Markets, Agents and Collectors: Collecting Strategies in Europe and the United States, 1550–1950 9781501348877, 9781501348907, 9781501348891

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Art Markets, Agents and Collectors

Contextualizing Art Markets This series presents new, original research that reconceives the scope and function of art markets throughout history by examining them in the context of broader institutional practices, knowledge networks, social structures, collecting activities, and creative strategies. In many cases, art market activities have been studied in isolation from broader themes within art history, a trend that has tended to stifle exchange across disciplinary boundaries. Contextualizing Art Markets seeks to foster increased dialogue between art historians, artists, curators, economists, gallerists, and other market professionals by contextualizing art markets around the world within wider art historical discourses and institutional practices. The series has been developed in the belief that the reciprocal relation between art and finance is undergoing a period of change: artists are adopting innovative strategies for the commercial promotion of their work, auction houses are expanding their educational programmes, art fairs are attracting unprecedented audience numbers, museums are becoming global brands, private galleries are showing increasingly ‘curated’ exhibitions, and collectors are establishing new exhibition spaces. As the divide between public and private practices narrows, questions about the social and ethical impact of market activities on the production, collection, and reception of art have become newly pertinent. By combining trends within the broader discipline of art history with investigations of marketplace dynamics, Contextualizing Art Markets explores the imbrication of art and economics as a driving force behind the aesthetic and social development of the art world. We welcome proposals that debate these issues across a range of historical periods and geographies. Series Editor: Kathryn Brown, Loughborough University, UK Editorial Board: Véronique Chagnon-Burke, Christie’s Education, USA Christel H. Force, Metropolitan Museum of Art, USA Charlotte Galloway, Australian National University, Australia Mel Jordan, Coventry University, UK Alain Quemin, Université Paris-8, France Mark Westgarth, University of Leeds, UK

Published Volumes in the Series: Art Markets, Agents and Collectors: Collecting Strategies in Europe and the United States, 1550–1950, edited by Adriana Turpin and Susan Bracken Collecting Prints, Posters, and Ephemera: Perspectives in a Global World, edited by Ruth E. Iskin and Britany Salsbury Corporate Patronage of Art and Architecture in the United States, Late Nineteenth Century to the Present, edited by Monica E. Jovanovich and Melissa Renn Ellen Emmet Rand: Gender, Art, and Business, edited by Alexis L. Boylan Ethnographic Collecting and African Agency in Early Colonial West Africa: A Study of Trans-Imperial Cultural Flows, by Zachary Kingdon Old Masters Worldwide: Markets, Movements and Museums, 1789–1939, edited by Susanna Avery-Quash and Barbara Pezzini Pioneers of the Global Art Market: Paris-Based Dealer Networks, 1850–1950, edited by Christel H. Force Reframing Japonisme: Women and the Asian Art Market in Nineteenth-Century France, 1853–1914, by Elizabeth Emery Théodore Rousseau and the Rise of the Modern Art Market: An Avant-Garde Landscape Painter in Nineteenth-Century France, by Simon Kelly Women, Art and Money in England, 1880–1914: The Hustle and the Scramble, by Maria Quirk

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Art Markets, Agents and Collectors Collecting Strategies in Europe and the United States, 1550–1950 Edited by Susan Bracken and Adriana Turpin

BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS Bloomsbury Publishing Inc 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in the United States of America 2021 This paperback edition first published 2022 Selection and editorial matter © Susan Bracken and Adriana Turpin, 2022 Individual chapters © their authors, 2022 For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xiv constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover image: Edouard Vuillard, 1868-1940. Théodore Duret, 1912, oil on cardboard on wood, 95.2 x 74.8cm. Chester Dale Collection Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Inc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Bracken, Susan (Susan Caroline), editor. | Turpin, Adriana, editor. Title: Art markets, agents and collectors: collecting strategies in Europe and the United States, 1550-1950 / edited by Susan Bracken and Adriana Turpin. Description: New York: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2021. | Series: Contextualizing art markets | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020045366 (print) | LCCN 2020045367 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501348877 (hardback) | ISBN 9781501348884 (epub) | ISBN 9781501348891 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Art–Collectors and collecting–Europe–History. | Art–Collectors and collecting–United States–History. Classification: LCC N5202.E85 A78 2021 (print) | LCC N5202.E85 (ebook) | DDC 708.0094–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020045366 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020045367 ISBN: HB: 978-1-5013-4887-7 PB: 978-1-5013-9227-6 ePDF: 978-1-5013-4889-1 eBook: 978-1-5013-4888-4 Series: Contextualizing Art Markets Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India ​ ​ .com and To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury sign up for our newsletters.

Contents List of Plates List of Figures Series Editor’s Introduction Acknowledgements

ix x xii xiv

Introduction  Jan Dirk Baetens, Susan Bracken and Adriana Turpin 1 Part I  Agents in the market, 1550–1720

I Introduction: Agents in the art market, 1550–1720  Sandra van Ginhoven 23  1 Hans Albrecht von Sprinzenstein: An Austrian art agent in the service of Archduke Ferdinand II of Tyrol  Adriana Concin 33  2 Marco Boschini and the artists of his time  Linda Borean 49  3 International art dealers, local agents and their clients in seventeenth-century Habsburg Inner Austria  Tina Košak 60  4 James Thornhill as an agent-collector in early-eighteenth-century Paris  Tamsin Lee-Woolfe 77 Part II  Agents in the long eighteenth century

II Introduction: Hidden figures – agents in the long eighteenth  5  6

 7  8  9 10

century  Bénédicte Miyamoto 87 Scottish agents in Rome in the eighteenth century: The case of Peter Grant  Maria Celeste Cola 102 ‘An oracle for collectors’: Philipp von Stosch and collecting and dealing in art and antiquities in early-eighteenth-century Rome and Florence  Ulf R. Hansson 113 Shaping the taste of British diplomats in eighteenth-century Venice  Laura-Maria Popoviciu 129 Establishing honest trading relationships: Academic painters in the art market of eighteenth-century France  Christine Godfroy-Gallardo 137 The German art market in the eighteenth century  Renata Schellenberg 151 Playing the market: Lord Yarmouth, the Prince Regent and the role of the royal agent 1806–19  Rebecca Lyons 160

Contents

viii

Part III  The agent in the modern European art market, 1820–1950

III Introduction: The art market in Europe, 1820–1950  Anne Helmreich 169 11 Edward Solly, Felice Cartoni and their purchases of paintings: A ‘milord’

12

13

14 15 16 17

and his ‘commissioner’ anticipating a transnational network of dealers c. 1820  Robert Skwirblies 174 ‘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 Meyer 185 ‘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 201 The Beurdeleys: A dynasty of curiosity dealers and their networks  Camille Mestdagh 214 Collaboration and resistance: The National Gallery, London and the Italian art market at the end of the nineteenth century  Elena J. Greer 229 ‘I shall set at once about the work’: Some agents in China  Nick Pearce 241 Promoting themselves: Agents and strategies in early Surrealism’s art market  Alice Ensabella 252

Part IV  Agents in the market for American collectors

IV Introduction: Collecting alliances in the United States during the long nineteenth century  Inge Reist 267

18 Can a leopard change its spots? René Gimpel, art dealer  Diana J. Kostyrko 276 19 Samuel P. Avery’s early career: The emergence of a successful art agent, art dealer and art expert  Madeleine Fidell-Beaufort 285 20 Dealing with allegories of the four parts of the world: James Hazen Hyde (1876–1959) and his network  Louise Arizzoli 294 21 Laying the foundation: Harold Woodbury Parsons and the making of an American museum  MacKenzie Mallon 306 22 Convergences: Art history, museums and scholar-agent Martin Birnbaum’s transatlantic art for the public  Julie Codell 316 Bibliography Contributors Index

329 366 372

List of Plates 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

Francesco Terzio (?), Archduke Ferdinand II of Tyrol, after 1557 Sigmund Elsässer, Hans Albrecht von Sprinzenstein on Horseback in the Kolowrat Wedding Codex, 1580 Jan Brueghel the Elder, Triumph of Death c. 1597 Godfried Maes, Allegory of Hope before 1700 Nicolas Poussin, Tancred and Erminia c. 1634 Allan Ramsay, Half-length portrait of Abbé Peter Grant c. 1755 Pier Leone Ghezzi, Il congresso dei migliori antiquari di Roma, 1725 Athlete, Roman engraved garnet gem signed by Gnaios, 30–20 BCE Giovanni Battista Foggini, The Flaying of Marsyas, before 1716 Elisabeth Louise Vigée-Lebrun, La Paix ramenant l’Abondance, 1780 David Teniers the Younger, Gambling Scene at an Inn, late 1640s Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, The Shipbuilder and his Wife: Jan Rijcksen and his Wife, Griet Jans, 1633 Agnolo Gaddi, triptych, 1388 Alessandro Bonvicino, known as Moretto da Brescia, Madonna with Child and the Four Latin Church Fathers c. 1540–50 Nicolaes Maes, Christ Blessing the Children, 1652–3 Project of Candelabras for The Breakers by Alfred Beurdeley, c. 1895 Giovanni Battista Moroni, Knight with his Jousting Helmet, 1554–8 Niccolò di Buonaccorso, Marriage of the Virgin, c.1380 Porcelain dish with monochrome cobalt blue glaze. Ming dynasty, mark and reign of Wanli (1573–1620) Sir William Orpen, R. H. A., R. A., Portrait of Roland Knoedler. Signed, dedicated and dated upper right: ‘TO ROLAND KNOEDLER/WITH REGARDS AND THANKS/WILLIAM ORPEN/1922.’ Paul Helleu, Portrait of Belle da Costa Greene. 1913 Henri de Toulouse Lautrec, Marcelle Lender Dancing the Bolero in ‘Chilpéric’. 1895–6 Ignacio Leon y Escosura, Auction Sale in Clinton Hall, New York, 1876 Rosalba Carriera, Personification of America, c. 1720 Nicolas Poussin, The Triumph of Bacchus, 1635–6

List of Figures Ernst Graf von Sprinzenstein, Coat of Arms of the Sprinzenstein family, from an unpublished manuscript of the Sprinzenstein family chronicle, 1890 1.2 Unknown artist, Portrait of Bianca Cappello, c. 1581 1.3 Unknown artist, Portrait of Chiappino Vitelli, c. 1580 3.1 Frans Floris, The Feast of the Gods, c. 1597 3.2 Alexander Casteels, A Cavalry Battle (Joshua fighting the Amalekites) before 1674 3.3 Alexander Casteels, A Cavalry Battle before 1674 4.1 Nicolas Poussin, The Holy Family with St John and St Elizabeth, 1645–7  II.1 John Greenwood, Portrait of the French engraver and dealer Gilles Demarteau the Elder, c. 1760 II.2 John Greenwood, Portrait of the collector Richard Russell, c. 1760 II.3 John Greenwood, Portrait of the artist George Barret the elder, c. 1760  5.1 Angelica Kauffman, Portrait of Abbé Peter Grant, 1763 5.2 Letters sent in Rome, to the abbé Peter Grant at the Cafè Anglais 5.3 Giovan Battista Piranesi, Lettere di Giustificazioni 6.1 Johann Justin Preißler, Achilles among the daughters of Lycomedes, 1730 8.1 Hyacinthe Rigaud, Louis XIV King of France standing in royal costume, 1701 8.2 Frontispiece, Catalogue des bronzes et autres curiosités égyptiennes, étrusques, indiennes et chinoises, du cabinet de feu M. Morand, 1773 11.1 Prospero Fontana, Lamentation, second half of the sixteenth century, including a Pietà attributed to Michele di Matteo, mid-fifteenth century 12.1 Display at the Städel Museum, Frankfurt, 22 February, 2018, with the Fesch Moretto painting of the Madonna with Child and the Four Latin Church Fathers 12.2 Alessandro Bonvicino, known as Moretto da Brescia, Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints Anthony Abbot and Sebastian, c. 1540 13.1 Flameng, Portrait of W. Bürger, 1870 13.2 W. Unger, after Frans Hals, Portrait of a Woman in the Pereire Collection, 1866 13.3 After Vermeer, Geographer, from the Pereire Collection, 1866 13.4 After Vermeer, Jeune Femme qui se pare (Woman with Pearls) from the Bürger collection, 1866 14.1 Pavillon de Hanovre, boulevard des Italiens, Paris, c. 1900 in an undated booklet published by Christofle 1.1

35 38 39 64 65 65 80 88 89 90 103 104 106 121 139 145 177

186 189 202 205 206 207 215

 List of Figures xi 14.2

Commode stamped Guillaume Beneman (1750–1811) with restorations and gilt bronze additions by Alfred Beurdeley c. 1870 14.3 Console table in pietre dure, porphyry and gilt-bronze mounted clock and vases designed by Alfred Beurdeley, c. 1860 14.4 Alfred Emmanuel Beurdeley’s business card, c. 1893 15.1 Marco d’Oggiono, Virgin and Child, c. 1520  15.2 Giovanni da Milano, Christ and the Virgin Enthroned with Six Saints, c. 1350  16.1 Objects bought for the V&A in Beijing by Stephen Bushell 16.2 William C. White, Bishop of Henan Province, c. 1930, unknown photographer. 16.3 Seated earthenware figure of a Westerner. Tang dynasty (618–906) 17.1 Invitation for Paul and Gala Éluard to the opening night of Max Ernst’s exhibition at Au Sans Pareil, May 1921  17.2 Advertisement for Max Ernst’s exhibition in Littérature, n. 19, May 1921  17.3a and b Paul Éluard collection sale catalogue  IV.1 Postcard with view of the villa belonging to portraitist Théobald Chartran on the Island of Salagnon, Lake Léman, near Clarens, Switzerland (memento of a luncheon attended by Mr. and Mrs. Henry Clay Frick, Charles Carstairs and others)  IV.2 Roger Fry. Self Portrait. 1928  IV.3 Albert C. Barnes and William Glackens, c. 1920, unknown photographer  18.1 Ernest Nathan Gimpel c. 1896  18.2 Jan Steen, The Prince’s Birthday, signed and dated 1661  18.3 Madame de Dompierre de Fontaine, née Marie-Elisabeth Mignot, Self-portrait before 1771 19.1 S.P. Avery Engraver on Wood 129 Fulton Street, New York, from his scrapbook  19.2 Front page of Punch’s Pocket Book of Fun, compiled by S. P. Avery  19.3 Anton Scharf, Portrait Medallion of Samuel P. Avery. 1897  20.1 Emile Friant, James Hazen Hyde, c. 1905  20.2 Eugénie Sellers Strong, unknown photographer 20.3 Allegory of Africa, first century CE  21.1 Harold Woodbury Parsons, unknown photographer  21.2 Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, Young Man in a Black Beret, 1666  22.1 Arnold Genthe, portrait photograph of Martin Birnbaum, 1920

217 218 222 232 233

243 245

246 254 255 259

268 270 272 277 278 279 286 287 291 295 298 301 307 311 317

Series Editor’s Introduction One of the aims of the present series is to provide a deeper understanding of the frameworks within which art markets come into being, operate and change over time. It is accepted that there is no unitary definition of the ‘art market’ and that the sociocultural arenas within which art objects circulate are variable. The chapters in the present book add a further important dimension to the ambitions of the Contextualizing Art Markets series. By identifying and studying the role of agents – intermediaries who connect a range of individuals and institutions – the contributors to this book offer a deeper understanding of the sheer density of social, cultural and informational exchanges that fuel art world transactions. While dealers and critics have long been familiar figures in the market landscape, the following chapters illuminate contributions made by those who have typically received less attention in scholarly literature. Discussions span the roles played by early modern ambassadors and merchants in extending cultural networks, the rise of appraisers and advisors in the nineteenth century, and the contribution of legal, economic and market specialists to the negotiation of complex regulatory frameworks of the twentieth century. As the editors of this book make clear, however, the role of an ‘agent’ does not imply a fixed identity. Nor does it suggest a prescribed set of tasks or duties. Indeed, one of the most interesting aspects of the following discussion concerns the hybrid nature of agency and the multiple roles that individuals assume in connection with the circulation, sale and acquisition of art objects. A Renaissance diplomat could communicate important information about a particular artist while negotiating an unrelated trade agreement; an artist might spread studio gossip among collectors; a poet can generate interest in the work of a friend or collaborator; and a museum trustee may influence institutional collecting while also stimulating a market for the work of an emerging artist. In such cases, information seeps between different spheres of value, and the conflicting motivations of agents generate distinct avenues of profit for a range of otherwise unrelated individuals and institutions. The examples discussed in the following chapters make clear that agents disseminate information both intentionally and unintentionally. In either case, the importance of access to reliable data is seen to be vital to the functioning of art markets. This can, however, lead to significant imbalances of power. As conduits for the international circulation of art became more sophisticated in the nineteenth century, so too the possession of privileged information about artists and artworks was increasingly prized. Agents with the skills to access, evaluate and control the flow of such information were sought by both private collectors and public institutions. As the contributors to this book make clear, art markets depend on socially endorsed conceptions of value. The ability of individuals to appraise and communicate notions of value is, therefore, a

 Series Editor’s Introduction xiii marketable asset in its own right. On this basis, an agent can become an important power broker in the wider art ecosystem, but one whose fiduciary and ethical duties may sometimes conflict or remain unclear. While the following chapters provide ample illustration of the multiple roles assumed by art agents within and between the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States from the Renaissance to the mid-twentieth century, the themes of this book are also relevant to the functioning of contemporary art markets. Authors encourage reflection on the ways in which the circulation of information can create or change markets and the relationships that develop within them. Most importantly, the chapters raise the question of trust. As actors within extensive social, political and cultural networks, the agents discussed in this book created and disseminated knowledge about art and the values ascribed to it from time to time. The reliability of that information and transparency of the agent’s role remain a litmus test for wider confidence in the art world and its systems. Kathryn Brown Loughborough, Spring 2020

Acknowledgements It is always a great pleasure to acknowledge the help and support received from so many quarters, in the publication of this book of chapters and in the organization and hosting of the conference from which it originates. The conference, held in London and Paris in July and October 2016, was the eighth organised by the Seminar on Collecting and Display, based at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, on different themes in the history of collecting, five of which have been published. For this conference, we returned to an important area in collecting studies, the roles of agents, advisors and dealers and their relationships with individual collectors. Previous conferences had covered these relationships concentrating on collectors and their networks and on methodologies by which to better understand these relationships and the ways in which they were created and maintained, but none had focused on the market. The IHR hosts our monthly seminar meetings and we are very grateful to them for their support in organizing the London conference. In Paris, the sessions were held at the INHA through the generosity and kindness of Stéphane Castelluccio, who facilitated our use of that venue. We were also most grateful to Mickael Szanto for guiding us through the intricacies of the INHA systems and to both him and Olivier Bonfait for presenting the introductions and conclusions to the conference. Their comments and suggestions were extremely helpful in planning the book and writing the introduction. We would also like to thank our speakers at both sessions for their papers and our contributors for their enthusiasm and commitment to the project. In particular, we would like to thank Susanna Avery-Quash for all her help in running both conferences and the writers of our introductions, who accepted the difficult task of summing up complex histories so well: Jan Dirk Baetens, Sandra van Ginhoven, Bénédicte Miyamato, Anne Helmreich and Inge Reist. Their contributions have enabled us to achieve our goal to provide the long history of the agent in the European art markets in an academically meaningful way. We were thrilled that Bloomsbury Academic was enthusiastic about our proposal from the beginning and championed the extent and range of the chapters. We also greatly appreciate the cheerful help and advice given by Erin Duffy. Finally, all projects need financial assistance and we are most grateful to Boris Grebille, director of the Institut d’Études Superières des Arts, Paris, for generously contributing to the costs of the conference in Paris and for underwriting the cost of the colour images in the book. In both cases, his support was essential to the successful conclusion of our endeavours. Susan Bracken and Adriana Turpin London, October 2019

Introduction Jan Dirk Baetens, Susan Bracken and Adriana Turpin

‘Commissioning a work of art, then as now, requires a client, an artist and very often an agent to act as intermediary. This intermediary helps the client to select an artist, assesses the work of the art objects, oversees the writing up of the contract and, if a new project is involved sees to it that the work is completed on time and meets specification.’1 As this summary of the role of agents suggests, the agent is a key figure in art market transactions. Even if the term ‘agent’ is not always appropriate, in that agents developed other ways of intervening in the market and dealers often acted as agents, the activity of agency remained important, as indicated by the chapters in this book. The final transformation of the agent surely is the art consultant of the contemporary art market or curator of the private collector, who carries out many of the tasks described earlier. This series of chapters takes as a starting point the need to discuss the roles of agents and collectors within the arena of the marketplace. By adding this dimension, the following chapters discuss how agents and collectors influenced and were influenced by market factors. Furthermore, in covering an extended time frame, from the Renaissance in Europe to the mid-twentieth century in the United States, we also use the agent as a means of investigating the long history of the market. Thus, through a consideration of one player in the market, it is hoped that the continuity of their role will emerge, while at the same time, the changes that were taking place as the market broadened and diversified are more fully explored. In order to provide a useful historical overview of the mainly European market from the sixteenth century to the twentieth century, the book is divided into four chronological parts; each part is introduced by an essay that not only places the specific accounts of agents within the context of the history of the art market but also attempts to define the various roles that agents played at any given time. Many of the suggestions in this Introduction are taken up in more detail by those four introductory essays. Accounts of the roles of collectors and their agents have often taken questions of taste and fashion as their main focus. This approach, which has its roots in the seminal works of scholars such as Francis Haskell or Antoine Schnapper, was instrumental in highlighting the interactions of individual collectors and artists and the acquisition of desirable artworks.2 Since then, issues of representation, emulation and investment have been used to nuance and challenge any simplistic accounts of taste and to place the actions of individuals in their social, economic and cultural context.3

2

Art Markets, Agents and Collectors

Considering art within the market, which is subject to many of the same laws as other consumables, has led to investigations of artists’ business practices, the roles of dealers and galleries in creating demand and the importance of social networks, as will be discussed further. Economic and quantitative studies are essential to provide a balanced picture of the art market, both historically and for contemporary practice.4 The careful study of sales results and sale catalogues, for example, by economic historians has developed our understanding of how dealers developed sophisticated strategies for creating demand. On the other hand, the study of the original auctioneers’ catalogues and stock books in Christie’s archives has demonstrated that sales are more complex than might be assumed. In these archives, the names of buyers and often the real values of transactions, rather than the published ones, can be more readily seen.5 Such focused analysis, concentrating on individual transactions, can pinpoint reasons for the purchase – or not – of particular works. Furthermore, the history of trade and consumption has contributed to our understanding of the art market by investigating the ways in which new items appearing on the market became desirable and collectable.6 This in turn allowed opportunities for agents, who could respond to and work within these markets for new collectables. Drawing on the work of historians of material culture and luxury has enriched the study of the art market, not least by ensuring that areas of collecting and consumption beyond fine art are also give consideration.7 As these chapters will make clear, such information can only be gathered through primary research in the archives and, as new questions are being asked by historians of collections and the market, so new sources have been added. Traditional art historical research has been based primarily on the works produced by artists, inventories of collections and estates, sales catalogues, patrons’ correspondence, diplomatic and official records, later extended to studio practice. Early historians of early Netherlandish art examined artistic production using civic and guild records,8 while those of the Italian Renaissance concentrated more on artists’ commissions and the studio,9 leading to different understandings of the market that have gradually shifted as individual practices have been placed in broader economic perspectives.10 Investigations into the art market have been facilitated by availability of online records, particularly dealers’ records but also the provenance listings of major museums or resources such as the Medici Archive project.11 In addition, the Getty Provenance Index, as one of the first online resources, and the increasing availability of dealers’ archives, together with the continuing publication of accounts, letters and a huge variety of other archival information, have stimulated new research projects, advancing the study of the history of collecting and the art market.12 Research into the Agnews’ archives, for example, has demonstrated that prices of works sold did not always reflect the market value, but were used to create loyalty, demonstrate connoisseurship or underpin other strategies to engage new clients.13 Understanding the role of finance and investment in the market has helped to shift the focus from personal taste to more nuanced accounts of the rise and fall of demand, including the business practices of the dealer and collector. Information from individual studies on agents could be an important tool in gathering data, if the questions asked by sociologists and economic historians were

 Introduction 3 applied to these primary sources of information. Future studies, using computer networking facilities, might be able to show how these connections and social interactions underpin the overt art market data of auction sales. Both networking and mapping tools are now available and have been used very effectively, but this could be extended to position individual agencies within the broader picture of the art market.14 The study of the art market invites an interdisciplinary approach, which has been encouraged by many recent conferences and symposia. As these studies advance and more research and interest in the history of collecting develops, it is obvious that the art world is a microcosm of the social, political, cultural and economic life of the period. As such, it can only benefit from the cross fertilization of several different disciplines, not just from historians, both historians of art and economics, but equally from anthropologists, sociologists and cultural economists.

Part one: The art market, agents and collectors in the historiography of the early modern period c. 1400–1800 Investigation into the art market in early modern Europe has explored the many elements of collecting and acquisition, increasingly placing the individual patron or collector into the broader arena of social, economic and cultural issues. The acquisition of works of art to display in dedicated sites invites discussion of those sites and the disposition of the works therein, as well as the reception of the works of art and the manner of their acquisition. Sites of display, the studiolo, kunstkammer and the cabinet of curiosities, have been analysed in terms of collecting patterns and their role in transforming the meaning of objects15 and considered as the origins of museum collecting and display.16 In order to understand the motives of the patron and collector, Renaissance historians demonstrated the influence of theories of princely magnificence, as discussed by Aristotle and Machiavelli, in justifying the patronage and collecting of art and the display of luxury.17 The increasing demand for art, which was encouraged by competition between city states and played a role in Renaissance familial, social and political strategies.18 Power and influence could be recognized by the importance of the commission; increasingly the status of the artist ‘added value’ to patrons’ commissions.19 That it could also help the ruler build networks of loyal citizens and provide wealth for the community, was argued by Guerzoni in his studies of the d’Este family in Ferrara20 and the political elements of patronage and to a lesser extent, collecting, have been strongly argued by many art historians of the Renaissance, both in Italy and elsewhere.21 Political motivation for the patronage of the arts was extended to later periods by Peter Burke who, in The Representation of Louis XIV, argued that the king was primarily concerned with utilizing his patronage to visualize his personal authority.22 Among the precedents for Louis XIV in creating displays of paintings in his state rooms at Versailles were collections in Rome, such as that in Palazzo Barberini, as well as the creation and display of the collection of Philip IV of Spain.23 The outstanding

4

Art Markets, Agents and Collectors

Italian, and in particular Venetian paintings, in the Spanish Royal Collection were an important model for other seventeenth-century collectors. Among these was Charles I of England, whose collection of Venetian paintings was built up from purchases, mainly through agents, most notably of the Gonzaga collection.24 Countless examples of princes throughout eighteenth-century Europe testify to the importance of displaying collections as part of both princely magnificence and enlightenment interest in promoting culture and the arts.25 The increasing demand for paintings to decorate great palaces, their very portability and variety helped to create a market, not just for contemporary paintings but also for Old Masters. As court patronage and the collecting of art and artworks became an essential part of European court life, the networks to supply these wealthy individuals, whether aristocrats, court officials or, as so often, financiers, also developed. In early markets, the agent might assist in the contracts made between artists and patrons, particularly when an artist received a commission from outside their own locale. Agents could be important actors in the secondary market, acquiring works of art for their clients, negotiating and bargaining on their behalf. The example of the Medici using agents in Rome in order to acquire antiquities, particularly cameos and small bronzes or hardstones, is but one.26 Agents could be diplomats, family members or aristocrats who had access to local information and sources. Although this book tends to concentrate on the art capitals of Europe, the chapters emphasize the fluidity of transnational exchanges and the movement of works of art between countries. In early modern Europe, before the rise of the nation state, this was made easier by the interfamilial and diplomatic connections between rulers and court elites, with extensive and complex relationships established through diplomatic gifts.27 Studies on the Habsburgs in particular emphasize the close relationships and exchange of artefacts, whether as gifts or purchases, between the members of the family.28 The role of women in maintaining and extending these connections has been recognized as fundamental to the networks of European rulers.29 Trade in artworks and luxury commodities in the early modern period was facilitated by merchants who were active throughout Europe and the Middle East, as well as in the Americas and the Far East.30 As Sandra van Ginhoven argues in her introductory chapter, merchants’ activity in the art markets was not confined to court circles. Studies by economic historians of the rise of consumption in Europe have shown that art was acquired at many levels of society. Much of the art trade centred on the Netherlands, leading to the dominant role of Antwerp in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.31 Hans van Miegroet has explored how artists in the Netherlands created an industry sending paintings to Spain and the New World32 while Paula Nuttall recounts how artists and artisans in Flanders supplied linen altar cloths to the Italian market.33 The importance of exotica and non-European artefacts alongside the interest in naturalia and artificialia has led to research into how these were acquired, not just in Europe, but in the previously unknown territories to the east and west of Europe. The essays in Merchants and Marvels went further and brought the commercial aspect of acquiring these works to the fore.34 Concentrating on Europe and the Dutch in the seventeenth century, Jan de Vries provided material evidence for the importance of new commodities from the east bringing innovation and changes in consumption habits

 Introduction 5 as the demand from an increasingly wealthy merchant class led to local, European production.35 The rise of the art market in seventeenth-century Holland can thus be seen as a part of the approbation of the acquisition of luxury goods and resulted in the purchase and display of artworks by a significant proportion of the population.36 The growing body of research on the eighteenth-century art market reinforces the complex issues involved in understanding the history and mechanisms of the art market as it developed new professional practices, as seen in the rise of the dealer and the auction house. Krzysztof Pomian, in his early studies on the Paris art market, approached the eighteenth century through the published auction catalogue.37 Analysing those texts, changes in the descriptions of works of art were linked to the growing emphasis on authenticity, including provenance.38 The debates over connoisseurship, while linked to attributions, were connected with theories on taste, writings on which characterized the eighteenth century.39 Although taste has always been perceived as part of intellectual history, it could also be seen as an indication of attempts by aristocratic and court collectors to differentiate themselves from a rising wealthy middle class.40 Just as Elizabeth Honig has argued that connoisseurship was used in seventeenth-century Antwerp to create social communities and connections between peers,41 so too could eighteenth-century concerns with connoisseurship and taste be linked to concerns about status and challenges to social and economic hierarchies.42 As expertise became an ever more essential tool to gain credibility in the market, it was vital for the dealer or advisor to display knowledge and not just connoisseurship, as is argued by many of the authors in this book. It is noteworthy in this connection that the first attempt to write an account of Dutch painting in France, La Vie des peintres flamands, allemands et hollondois, was by an artist (although also a dealer), Jean-Baptiste Descamps, in 1753, whereas the second was by the dealer and expert, Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Lebrun, the Galerie des peintres flamands, hollandais et allemands published between 1792 and 1796. Following this model, Michael Bryan also used art historical authorship to demonstrate his expertise: A Biographical and Critical Dictionary of Painters and Engravers, from the Revival of the Art under Cimabue, and the Alleged Discovery of Engraving by Finiguerra, to the Present Time (1816). The market strategies of key figures in the market, such as Edmé-François Gersaint, Pierre Rémy, Alexandre-Joseph Paillet and Lebrun, have mainly been analysed through the many sales they negotiated.43 Studies of Gersaint and Lebrun have laid out their pre-eminent roles in the eighteenth-century Parisian art market.44 There has been less focus on the individual dealer in London, but studies on John Bouttats and, more importantly, on Michael Bryan have augmented the general study on the art market in Britain by Iain Pears.45 The work of David Ormrod and, more recently, Bénédicte Miyamoto has shown the actuality (existing reality) of the London market as it developed and grew.46 Thus, Miyamoto has argued that the order of the lots in Christie’s sales were structured in such a way as to generate momentum and interest.47 She has also discovered that dealers might insert works from their stock into named sales, often works from the lower end of the market.48 Such careful studies of auction sales can only enhance our understanding of the ways in which prices were controlled and even possibly created at auctions.

6

Art Markets, Agents and Collectors

It may be that the emphasis on the catalogue in studies of French auctions has distorted our understanding of how auctions actually worked, and there is some evidence, for example, that the manner in which auctions in Paris were carried out was more similar to London than previously thought.49 Charlotte Guichard in her essay on the Paris art market exploits the information in the personal catalogues of Lebrun to demonstrate the systems of information and networks underpinning this increased professionalization, while reminding us that the Paris art world was very small and very closely connected.50 The ‘democratization’ that arguably occurred through the public auction sale might have led to the role of the agent being undermined; however, agents shifted their ground to work within this new, more public market. New types of agents appeared, including dealers who, acting as art experts, were also able to advise collectors on quality and provenance at auction and also guide them through complex local networks of owners to gain the prizes they sought. Essential to the role of the agent was an ability to create and manipulate connections and networks so as to maintain their superior knowledge and access to works of art desired by collectors. Trade depended on networks and in this the art market was no exception. Detailed investigation into the networks surrounding each actor in the market, whether a collector, supplier or intermediary, can demonstrate the sophisticated and complex connections made within art markets, and crucially that these networks play a key role in enabling international markets.51 Whether within Europe or across the globe, access to local markets relied on agents, especially, but not only, when the art market was decentralized. Thus in Rome, owing to its international importance for the collecting of Old Masters and antiquities as well as its lack of transparency, agents played a key role.52 In these important sectors, as well as in the less valuable areas of drawing and print collecting, connoisseurship developed alongside the study of history.53 Understanding the importance of networks has led to a greater awareness of the need to place anecdotal evidence into a more sophisticated framework.54 Further research into the role of women in maintaining and possibly continuing the business after, say, their husbands’ deaths, as happened in the retail trades of the period, is needed, and might add to understanding the networks created by dealers and agents.55Although there has been a shift from presenting collecting as purely a matter of taste, to revealing the variety of collectors’ motives, even this needs to be carefully nuanced. As we study further the financial institutions that underpinned the rise of London and Paris as mercantile and financial centres, other aspects of the market will be better understood.56 Aspects which have been little studied to date in this period include banking practices, financial liquidity or even bankruptcy as factors in the market.

Part two: The emergence of the modern art market 1800–1950 There is, regrettably, generally little interaction between scholars of the early modern art market and those of the modern art market and its actors. Patterns of continuity

 Introduction 7 between both periods, however, regularly seem to outweigh those of rupture and change as the chapters in this book indicate. In addition, both fields have been shaped in recent years by sometimes parallel methodological and theoretical developments, as well as a focus on similar key questions, even if different answers to these questions have sometimes been offered. The most eye-catching characteristic of the further maturation of the art market in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was probably the continuing rise to prominence of the professional agent or art dealer, not just in the Old Master market but also in the increasingly anonymous primary market, where even in the upper strata artists and collectors were often strangers to each other. In his Impressions sur la peinture, a collection of bon mots and opinions published in 1886, the celebrated society painter Alfred Stevens confessed to being a champion of ‘good’ art dealers and explained their central role: ‘it is they who create amateurs, who raise our prices, who defend our qualities and make the ignorant see them, and who spare us the effort of singing our own praise.’57 It is also art dealers who have most stirred the imagination of scholars of the modern art market. This is demonstrated not only by a sustained and profound scholarly interest in the often innovative business models adopted by the leading dealers of their day,58 but also by a series of recent exhibitions and carefully researched exhibition catalogues devoted to these dealers and their businesses, ranging from famous entrepreneurs like Durand-Ruel and Vollard to more local players like the van Wisselingh dealership and, more recently, the Buffa gallery in Amsterdam.59 It seems that the dealer, especially the enlightened dealer who promotes cutting-edge art or uses advanced commercial and financial techniques, has become as much an object of cultural veneration as the artist himself and should perhaps be seen as the quintessential hero of high culture under capitalism. The monographic approach that preconditions such a consecration of the dealer is also discernible in scholarly research on the market in general, which has often focused on individual agents, usually presented as illustrative of wider phenomena. Much of this research concentrates on dealers, ranging from the powerful British dealer in Old Master paintings John Smith, to a multinational dealership specialized in Salon paintings and commercial prints like Goupil or an equally international firm specialized in modernist paintings like the Thannhauser Gallery.60 However, researchers have increasingly started to examine the strategies of other actors operating in the market, again usually focusing on specific careers or enterprises rather than on wider trends or developments. Following ideas already suggested by Albert Boime and Oskar Bätschmann, much attention has been given to the agency in the market of artists themselves.61 This has led David Galenson and Robert Jensen to question the central role attributed to dealers trading in avant-garde art in the development of the modern market in Harrison and Cynthia White’s dated but still highly influential study, Canvases and Careers, and to foreground again the role of artists.62 The wider material and varied infrastructure in which dealers and artists operated, described by Anne Helmreich later in this book, have also been increasingly explored. Attention has been given to the parts played in the transfer of works of art, from artist to collector or between collectors, by auction houses,63 art-unions,64 artists societies,65

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Art Markets, Agents and Collectors

exhibitions and exhibition institutions,66 art historians,67 critics and periodicals.68 In the past, research has sometimes been haunted by a preponderantly factual and almost hagiographic treatment of individual collectors, but some more context-oriented studies, firmly rooted in critical theory, have also opened up this field.69 A concerted effort to study the roles played by the very different actors in the exchange of works of art has led to a better grasp of the relationship between the market and developments in adjacent spheres, such as the rise of the art press, the establishment and expansion of museums, and the maturation of art history as a scholarly discipline, as well as an improved understanding of the interconnections between the market proper and the rise of consumption culture in general.70 The very diversity of the focal points and subjects of study in these actor-centred research avenues also makes it clear, as evidenced in this book, that it would be mistaken to characterize any of these actors and institutions in a monolithic, discrete or stable way. Collectors, for instance, were driven by myriad different and often conflicting motives and their interests were interwoven with those of artists, dealers, museums and other collectors. It has also become clear that it is frequently impossible to make neat distinctions between the different agents operating in the market and their respective motivations: many of these agents acted in different capacities, often at the same time, as is also clear from Inge Reist’s discussion of agents active in the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While substantial advances have been made in understanding such mechanisms in specific cases, a more thorough theoretical conceptualization would be beneficial.71 Such a reconceptualization of the often inherently hybrid nature of agency in the art market could also lead to a further reassessment of the roles played by female agents. Often relegated to the informal and uninstitutionalized realm of the amateur, the role of women has long remained invisible. Recent years have seen substantial progress here, however, although different views on what a feminist revision of the history of collecting and the art market should look like have sometimes produced very different research results. Women were generally excluded from any formal capacity as a dealer or an agent until well into the twentieth century.72 The commercial dimension of their activities in other capacities, however, has been the object of some scrutiny, even if, not unexpectedly, Mary Cassatt’s promotion in the United States of her Impressionist friends, referred to by Inge Reist later in this book, has still received only a fraction of the attention given to Durand-Ruel’s endeavours.73 The role of women in the developing culture of art connoisseurship and the importance of women collectors have attracted more substantial scholarly interest.74 Actors, questions of interaction and agency are always studied within specific geographic boundaries, but geography itself has, concurrent with the so-called geographical turn in the humanities, become a key concern in itself in our field of research. Agency and the sites of agency have been mapped, on both macroscopic and microscopic levels, but the very structure of the map has also been revised and regularly redrawn. Much research still focuses on Paris and London, the most capitalized markets for art during most of the nineteenth century, with the booming American market, taking over the lead in the twentieth century, coming in next.

 Introduction 9 However, following calls for a more ‘global’ understanding of the art market, the geographical scope of research has unmistakably widened. This has resulted in a better understanding of developments in countries like the Netherlands, Germany and even Argentina and Japan, although the problem of language still prevents a thorough, efficient co-ordination and integration of these different scholarly endeavours and their different geographical perspectives.75 Within national markets, a beginning has been made to counter the usual bias towards metropolitan centres like London, Paris and New York and to shift attention to places like Manchester, Lyon or Boston, but much is still to be done here.76 The study of the geography of the art market is also crucial in other ways. The geographical organization of Titia Hulst’s recent compilation of key-texts on the history of the Western art market does justice to the differences between local art markets, but perhaps it also leaves comparatively little place for issues of exchange and transfer between these markets, which have become increasingly popular among scholars.77 Indeed, rapidly growing possibilities of communication and transportation in the modern era led to a further interconnectedness and, eventually, integration of local art markets.78 At the same time it has to be admitted, however, that local market and production centres also continued to be defined in national terms, and that distinctions and categories based on ideas of national identity shaped much of the art discourse and structured the exchange of art across (national) borders until at least the first few decades of the twentieth century.79 The geographical perspective has also led scholars to map the dynamic material infrastructure of the market, tracing the shifting locations of auction houses, collectors’ residences, exhibition spaces, galleries and other high-end retail places. Digital tools have greatly helped this research and the visualization of its results.80 Such a geography of the art market can also be conceived as a social geography. Here, network theory and its methods of visualization have proved to be valuable tools for mapping local or international clusters of market actors,81 even if the results of such approaches are not always unexpected. On the most microscopic level, finally, the spatial turn is also leading to a re-examination of the architectural design and layout of the actual spaces occupied by the art trade and art collections, in commercial galleries, auction houses, exhibition spaces and private galleries, as well as a reconsideration of the impact of these spaces on the consumption of art in the widest sense of the word.82 Here as well, digital tools have been useful in recreating some of these locales.83 Digitization has also led to an exponentially increasing availability of large sets of data. The Goupil and Knoedler archives have been completely digitized by the Getty, and the Netherlands Institute for Art History has done the same for a number of Dutch archives available, including those of Goupil’s branch at The Hague. The availability of such sources offers the possibility of studying individual agency within a larger historical reality, but surprisingly, ‘hard’ quantitative scrutiny and rigid economic analysis are largely absent in the field, with a few notable exceptions.84 Statistical approaches are certainly not devoid of challenges and difficulties, and they do not always yield significantly new results, but they can also lead to new insights and debunk tenacious received ideas.85

10

Art Markets, Agents and Collectors

There are also other lacunae in the field. For instance, it seems to be only with hesitation that scholars of the art market have attempted to make the bridge between (changing) market conditions, collecting practices and patterns of agency on the one hand, and (changing) art production on the other hand, especially in terms of iconography and style. The commercial benefits and problems of serial production have received some attention,86 and so has the impact of commercial galleries’ business models on product differentiation and the practice of producing replicas and copies.87 Much of our understanding of other ways in which changing commercial contexts could affect the actual look of art, however, remains anecdotal and is sometimes steeped in general commonplaces. Among the notable exceptions are Rosie Dias’ study of the impact on English artistic life of John Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery and JeanJoseph Goux’s provocative (but also debatable) argument on the parallel between the formal qualities of modernist painting and concomitant changes in economic theory.88 A renewed research focus on the relation between market and production could also lead to an examination of the exchanges between, and mutual permeability of, the primary market and the Old Master market. The strict, modernist separation between these two is, surprisingly, still upheld by many scholars, with only a few exceptions.89 For most of the nineteenth century, however, it sits uncomfortably with the era’s democratic broadening of artistic tastes, its eclectic collecting patterns and the sustained engagement of its artists with the art of the past, which led not only to the proliferation of historical pastiches but also to various waves of more imaginative historical revivalism. The concept of ‘new old masters’, coined by Donald Kuspit in a much more recent context but applied to art produced in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, could perhaps be of particular use here.90 Even more can perhaps be gained from a reconsideration of the focus of most research on a small group of elite dealers, collectors and their favourite artists. Such a focus is understandable and explicable in itself, but its complementary blindness to the middle and lower strata of the market cannot be justified. We have gained a much better understanding of the mechanics of the nineteenth-century print market,91 which is certainly a substantial step forward in itself, but we have largely ignored provincial artists or low-cost portrait painters, occasional buyers of art or petits-bourgeois simply interested in decorating their dwellings, and junk-shops and brocanteurs selling cheap copies of modern or Old Master paintings or imitation furniture. Their place in the cultural fabric of the time, however, is unquestionable, and in simple quantitative terms, their role was probably far greater than that of artists, collectors and dealers of the top segment. The result of all this could not only be a more complete but also a more nuanced understanding of the development and maturation of the modern art market as we know it today. Such an understanding will require us to move away from some of the idées reçues that are, as always, very much around, and from the generalizing way in which useful, but contested, concepts such as White and Whites’ ‘dealer-critic model’ or theoretical frameworks such as Pierre Bourdieu’s have sometimes been used in, and applied to, contexts that are very different from the ones for which they were originally intended. It will require, in particular, the development of a more dynamic model

 Introduction 11 to analyse local and supralocal market developments and the parts played by different agents in these developments. In a recent publication, Anne Helmreich and Pamela Fletcher have taken a first step in this direction.92 Others, it can be hoped, will follow.

Notes 1 Neil De Marchi, ‘Introduction’, in Auctions, Agents and Dealers: The Mechanisms of the Art Market, 1660–1830, ed. Jeremy Warren and Adriana Turpin (Oxford, London: Beazley Archive: Archaeopress; in Association with the Wallace Collection, 2008). 2 Francis Haskell, Patrons and Painters; A Study in the Relations between Italian Art and Society in the Age of the Baroque (New York: Knopf, 1963); Antoine Schnapper, Curieux du grand siècle: Collections et collectionneurs dans la France du XVIIe siècle Vol II œuvres d’art (Paris: Flammarion, 1994). In England, this approach can be seen in Edward Chaney, ed., The Evolution of English Collecting: The Reception of Italian Art in the Tudor and Stuart Periods (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003). 3 Pierre Bourdieu (1979), Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, translated by Richard Nice, with a new introduction by Tony Bennet (London: Routledge, 2010) for a recent publication; Theodore Veblen (1899), The Theory of the Leisure Class; An Economic Study in the Evolution of Institutions, edited with an introduction and notes by Martha Banta (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). For recent use of concepts of representation and emulation, see, for example, ‘The Art Collector-Between Philanthropy and Self-Glorification’ a special issue of the Journal of the History of Collections 21 (November 2009). 4 For a general account of the early modern art market, see Neil De Marchi and Hans van Miegroet, ‘The History of the Art Market’, in Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture, vol. 1 ed. Victor Ginsburgh and David Throsby (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2006), 69–116. John. M. Montias’s many publications provide the foundation for studies on the art markets in the Netherlands, for example, Montias, Artists and Artisans in Delft: A Socio-Economic Study of the 17th Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983). See also Richard Goldthwaite, Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy 1300–1600 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993); Neil De Marchi and Hans van Miegroet, Mapping Markets for Paintings in Early Modern Europe 1450–1750 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006). 5 Tom Stammers, ‘Salvage and Speculation: The London Art Market after the FrancoPrussian War (1870–71)’, in Museums, Modernity and Conflict: Museums and Collections in and of War Since the Nineteenth Century, ed. Kate Hill (Routledge, 2020). We are most grateful to Dr. Stammers for sharing his article before publication. 6 Jan De Vries, The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Behaviour and the Household Economy 1650-the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) importantly examines the importance of new goods in shifting perceptions on the desirability of luxury goods. For general discussions on the role of consumers in creating demand, see: John Brewer and Roy Porter, eds, Consumption and the World

12

Art Markets, Agents and Collectors

of Goods (New York and London: Routledge, 1993); Neil De Marchi and Crauford D. W. Goodwin, eds, Economic Engagements with Art (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 1999). 7 Maxine Berg and Helen Clifford, eds, Consumers and Luxury: Consumer Culture in Europe 1650–1850 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999); Stéphane Castelluccio, ed., Le Commerce du Luxe à Paris aux VIIe et XVIIIe Siècles (Bern: Peter Lang, 2009). For the argument that artworks were part of a luxury market, see Nicholas Green, ‘Circuits of Production, Circuits of Consumption: The Case of MidNineteenth-Century French Art Dealing’, Art Journal 48, no. 1 (1989): 29–34. See also Véronique Chagnon-Burke, ‘Rue Laffitte: Looking at and Buying Contemporary Art in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Paris’, Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 11, no. 2 (Summer 2012): 32–47. 8 Early work on Netherlands’ markets includes the essay by Lorne Campbell, ‘The Art Markets in the Southern Netherlands in the 15th Century’, Burlington Magazine 118 (1976): 188–98; See Filip Vermeylen, Painting for the Market: Commercialization of Art in Antwerp’s Golden Age (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003). 9 Martin Wackernagel, The World of the Florentine Renaissance Artist: Projects and Patrons, Workshop and Art Market; translated from the original German (1938) by Alison Luchs (Guildford: Princeton University Press, c.1981). 10 Marcello Fantoni, Louisa C. Matthew, and Sara Matthews-Grieco, eds, The Art Market in Italy, 15th–17th Centuries (Modena: F.C. Panini, 2003); Michelle O’Malley, The Business of Art: Contracts and the Commissioning Process in Renaissance Italy (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005). 11 The Medici Archive Project, http:​/​/www​​.medi​​ci​.or​​g​/the​​-medi​​ci​-in​​terac​​tive​​a​rchi​​ve​-mi​​a. 12 The Getty Provenance Index, established by Burton Frederickson, is a major tool in providing a database of inventories, sales records and dealers’ records. http:​/​/pip​​ rod​.g​​etty.​​edu​/s​​tarwe​​b​/pi/​​servl​​et​.st​​arweb​​?pat​h​​=pi​/p​​i​.web​. For other dealers’ records, see the Duveen archives and Knoedler archives at the Getty Research Institute. See for example, the Agnews stockbooks at the National Gallery, London https​:/​/ww​​w​ .nat​​ional​​galle​​ry​.or​​g​.uk/​​resea​​rch​/r​​esear​​ch​-ce​​ntre/​​agne​w​​s​-sto​​ck​-bo​​oks, archives at the Frick Collection Library, including the Archives Directory for the History of Collecting in America: https://digitalcollections​.frick​.org. 13 See Alison Clarke, ‘The Spatial Aspects of Connoisseurship: Agnew’s and the National Gallery, 1874–1916’ (PhD diss., University of Liverpool and the National Gallery, 2018) and Barbara Pezzini, ‘Making a Market for Art: Agnews and the National Gallery, 1855–1928’ (PhD diss., University of Manchester and the National Gallery, 2018). 14 Koenraad Brosens, Jan Aerts, Klara Alen, et al., ‘Slow Digital Art History in Action: Project Cornelia’s Computational Approach to Seventeenth-Century Flemish Creative Communities’, Visual Resources: An International Journal on Images and their Uses 35, no. 1–2 (2019): 105–24, Pamela Fletcher and Anne Helmreich, ‘Local/ Global: Mapping Nineteenth-Century London’s Art Market’, Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 11, no. 3 (August, 2012), accessed at https​:/​/ww​​w​.19t​​hc​-ar​​tworl​​dwide​​ .org/​​autum​​n12​/f​​l etch​​er​-he​​lmrei​​ch​-ma​​pping​​-the-​​​londo​​n​-art​​-mark​​et Pamela Fletcher and David Israel, London Gallery Project, 2007; Revised September 2012, http:​/​/lea​​rn​.bo​​wdoin​​.edu/​​fletc​​her​/l​​ondon​​​-gall​​ery/

 Introduction 13 15 Krzysztof Pomian, Collectors and Curiosities: Paris and Venice 1500–1800 (Cambridge, 1990), 7–34; Wolfgang Liebenwein, Studiolo: Die Entstehung Eines Raumtyps Und Seine Entwicklung Bis Um 1600 (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1977); Arthur MacGregor, Curiosity and Enlightenment: Collectors and Collecting from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007). 16 See Oliver Impey and Arthur MacGregor, eds, The Origins of Museums: The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 2017). For a discussion of the historical space, see Susan M. Pearce, On Collecting: An Investigation into Collecting in the European Tradition (London: Routledge, 1995); Horst Bredekamp, The Lure of Antiquity and the Cult of the Machine: The Kunstkammer and the Evolution of Nature, Art and Technology, trans. from German by Allison Brown (Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1995). 17 Mary Hollingsworth, Patronage in Renaissance Italy: From 1400 to the Early Sixteenth Century (London: John Murray, 1994) and Patronage in Sixteenth-Century Italy (London: J. Murray, 1996); Jill Burke and Michael Bury, Art and Identity in Early Modern Rome (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008). 18 See James Lindow, The Renaissance Palace in Florence: Magnificence and Splendour in Fifteenth-Century Italy (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007); Stephen J. Campbell and Evelyn Welch, Artists at Court: Image-Making and Identity, 1300–1550. Fenway Court, vol. 31 (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2002); Gabriele Neher and Rupert Shepherd, Revaluing Renaissance Art (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000); Goldthwaite, Wealth and the Demand for Art. 19 Jonathan K. Nelson and Richard J. Zeckhauser, The Patron’s Payoff: Conspicuous Commissions in Italian Renaissance Art (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2008); Michelle O’Malley and Evelyn Welch, The Material Renaissance (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007); Charles M. Rosenberg, ed., The Court Cities of Northern Italy: Milan, Parma, Piacenza, Mantua, Ferrara, Bologna, Urbino, Pesaro, and Rimini (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Francis Ames-Lewis, The Intellectual Life of the Early Renaissance Artist (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000); and Fantoni et al., The Art Market in Italy. 20 Guido Guerzoni, ‘The Social World of Price Formation: Prices and Consumption in Sixteenth-Century Ferrara’, in O’Malley and Welch, The Material Renaissance, 85–105. 21 See Francis Ames-Lewis, ed., The Early Medici and Their Artists (London: Birkbeck College, University of London, Dept. of History of Art, 1995); Dale Kent argued, however, against presenting early Renaissance patronage as motivated solely by political ambitions or self-representation. Dale Kent, Cosimo de’ Medici and the Florentine Renaissance (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000). 22 Peter Burke, The Fabrication of Louis XIV (London: Yale University Press, 1992). For an analysis of strategies behind the collecting and display of paintings see Jonathan Brown and J. H. Elliott, A Palace for a King: The Buen Retiro and the Court of Philip IV, rev. and expanded (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003). 23 See Nicholas Milovanic and Alexandre Maral, eds, Louis XIV, L’Homme et le Roi, exh. cat. Musée National des Châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon (Paris: Skira Flammarion, 2009); for Cardinal Mazarin’s collections as an important precedent for Louis XIV see Patrick Michel, Mazarin, prince des collectionneurs: les collections et l’ameublement du Cardinal Mazarin (1602–1661): histoire et analyse (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 1999). An important study of the display of art collections

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was made by Patricia Waddy, Seventeenth-Century Roman Palaces: Use and the Art of the Plan (New York: Architectural History Foundation, 1990). 24 See Jonathan Brown, Kings & Connoisseurs: Collecting Art in Seventeenth-Century Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995). Extensive research into the formation of the collections of Charles I includes Arthur MacGregor, ed., The Late King’s Goods: Collections, Possessions and Patronage of Charles I in the Light of the Commonwealth Sale Inventories (London and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989) and Susan Bracken, ‘Charles I and the Art of Italy in Spain’ (Madrid: Museo del Prado, forthcoming). 25 See, for example, Susan Bracken, Andrea Gàldy, and Adriana Turpin, eds, Collecting and the Princely Apartment (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2011). 26 Suzanne Butters, ‘Making Art Pay: The Meaning and Value of Art in Late SixteenthCentury Rome and Florence’, in Fantoni, Art Markets in Italy, 25–40. 27 Leah Ruth Clark, Collecting Art in the Italian Renaissance Court: Objects and Exchanges (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). For eighteenth-century use of porcelain in gift exchanges, see Maureen Cassidy-Geiger and Mogens Bencard, Fragile Diplomacy: Meissen Porcelain for European Courts c. 1710–63, published for the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture, New York (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007). 28 A very good overall account of their art and politics is given in Herbert Karner, Ingrid Ciulisová and Bernardo J. García García, eds, The Habsburgs and their Courts in Europe, 1400–1700: Between Cosmopolitism and Regionalism (Palatium e-Publication, 2014). Available at htt​​p:/​/w​​ww​.co​​urtre​​siden​​ces​.e​​u​/ind​​ex​.ph​​p​/pub​​licat​​ ions/​​e​​-Pub​​licat​​ions/​. For the role of exotica in their gift giving, see Helmut Trnek, Nuno Vassallo e Silva, Exotica: The Portuguese Discoveries and the Renaissance Kunstkammer (Lisbon: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 2001). 29 Cynthia Lawrence, ed., Women and Art in Early Modern Europe: Patrons, Collectors and Connoisseurs (Pennsylvania State, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997). For two Renaissance collectors, see Dagmar Eichberger, ed., Women of Distinction: Margaret of York, Margaret of Austria (Davidsfonds: Brepols, 2005) and Anne Marie Gschwend, A rainha coleccionadora. Catarina de Austria (Lisbon: Circulo de Leitores, 2012). 30 See bibliography in this book for sections one and two; in particular Christina Anderson, ed., Early Modern Merchants as Collectors, Visual Culture in Early Modernity (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2016). Sandra van Ginhoven, Connecting Art Markets: Guilliam Forchondt’s Dealership in Antwerp (c. 1632–78) and the Overseas Painting Trade (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2017). 31 See the chapter by van Ginhoven in this book. 32 Hans van Miegroet and Neil De Marchi, ‘Exploring Markets for Netherlandish Paintings in Spain and Nueva Espana’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 50 (2000): 81–111. 33 Paula Nuttall, From Flanders to Florence: The Impact of Netherlandish Painting, 1400–1500, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004). 34 Paula Findlen and Pamela Smith eds, Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, Science and Art in Early Modern Europe (Routledge, 2001); for the Medici collections, Lia Markey and Jessica Keating, ‘“Indian” Objects in Medici and Austrian Inventories’, Journal of the History of Collections 23, no. 2 (2011): 283–300. 35 De Vries, The Industrious Revolution.

 Introduction 15 36 John Loughman and John Michael Montias, Public and Private Spaces: Works of Art in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Houses, Studies in Netherlandish Art and Cultural History, 3 (Zwolle: Waanders, 2000); Mariët Westermann, Willemijn Fock, Eric Jan Sluijter, and H. Perry Chapman, Art & Home: Dutch Interiors in the Age of Rembrandt, exh. cat. Denver Art Museum (Denver, Colorado, 2001); Willemijn Fock, Het Nederlandse Interieur in Beeld 1600-1900 (Zwolle: Waanders Uitgevers, 2001). 37 Pomian, Collectors, 139–68. 38 See the eighteenth-century bibliography in this book. 39 See Pomian, Collectors, 143–7, 153–9; Iain Pears, The Discovery of Painting: The Growth in the Arts in England 1680–1768 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988), 27–50; Carol Gibson-Wood, Jonathan Richardson: Art Theorist of the English Enlightenment (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000). De Marchi, ‘Adam Smith’s Accommodation of “Altogether Endless” Desires’, in Berg and Clifford, Consumers and Luxury, 18–36. 40 Bourdieu, Distinction. 41 Elizabeth Honig, Painting and the Market in Early Modern Antwerp (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998); see also Koenraad Jonckheere, ‘Supply and Demand: Some Notes on the Economy of Seventeenth-Century Connoisseurship’, in Art Market and Connoisseurship: A Closer Look at Paintings by Rembrandt, Rubens and Their Contemporaries, ed., Anna Tummers and Koenraad Jonckheere (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008); Neil De Marchi and Hans van Miegroet, ‘Pricing Invention: “Originals,” “Copies,” and Their Relative Value in Seventeenth-Century Netherlandish Art Markets’, in Economics of the Arts, ed. Victor Ginsburgh and Pierre-Michel Menger (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1996), 27–70. 42 For general works on the rise of the wealthy middle classes in London, see Richard Grassby, The Business Community of Seventeenth-Century England (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Susan Whyman, Sociability and Power in Late Stuart England: The Cultural Worlds of the Verney 1660–1720 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). Regarding the arts, see Michelle Galinou, City Merchants and the Arts 1660–1720 (Wetherby: Oblong for the Corporation of London, 2004). 43 See Patrick Michel, Le commerce du tableau à Paris dans la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle: acteurs et pratiques (Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses universitaires du Septentrion, 2007); De Marchi and Van Miegroet, ‘Transforming the Paris Art Market 1718– 1750’, in De Marchi and Van Miegroet, Mapping Markets; Hans van Miegroet, ‘The Market for Netherlandish Painting in Paris 1750–1815’, in Warren and Turpin, Auctions, Agents and Dealers, 41–52. 44 Guillaume Glorieux, À l’Enseigne de Gersaint: Edmé-François Gersaint, Marchand d’art sur e Pont Notre Dame (1694–1750) (Seysell: Champs Vellon, 2002) and Darius Spieth, Revolutionary Paris and the Market for Netherlandish Art (Leiden: Brill, 2018). 45 Hugh Brigstocke, William Buchanan and the 19th Century Art Trade: 100 Letters to His Agents in London and Italy (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1982); for Bouttats, see David Connell, ‘John Anderson and John Bouttats: picture dealers in eighteenth-century London’, in Warren and Turpin, Auctions, Agents and Dealers, 113–26; for Michael Bryan, see Julia Armstrong-Totten, ‘The Rise and Fall of a British Connoisseur: the career of Michael Bryan (1757–1821)’, in ibid., 127–40; See also Armstrong-Totten, ‘Expand the Audience, Increase the Profits: Motivations behind the Private Contract Sale’, in La Circulation des Œuvres d’art: The Circulation

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of Works of Art in the Revolutionary Era, 1789–1848, ed. Roberta Panzanelli and Monica Preti-Hamard (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2007), 45–56. 46 Bruce Cowan, ‘Arenas of Connoisseurship: Auctioning Art in Later Stuart London’, in Art Markets in Europe, ed. Michael North and David Ormrod (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), 153–66; for a discussion of the legal conditions involved in the emergence of the auction see David Ormrod, ‘The Origins of the London Art Market 1600–1730’, in ibid., 167–86 and Satomi Ohashi, ‘The Auction Duty Act of 1777: The Beginning of the Institutionalisation of Auctions in Britain’, in Warren and Turpin, Auctions, Agents and Dealers, 21–32. For the eighteenth century, see Bénédicte Miyamoto, ‘“A Pretty General Taste for Pictures”: The Social Construction of Artistic Value in Eighteenth-century London’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Université Paris Diderot Paris 7, 2011). 47 Benédicte Miyamoto, ‘“Making Pictures Marketable”: Expertise and the Georgian Art Market’, in Marketing Art in the British Isles, 1700 to the Present, ed. Charlotte Gould and Sophie Mesplède (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 119–133. 48 Benédicte Miyamoto, paper given at the conference ‘Tools for the Art Market’, which took place at the Royal Academy of Art, London May 28, 2019 (publication forthcoming). This was noted, for example, in discussions about the sale of Fonthill Abbey at Phillips in 1823, but it was not realized it might have been common practice. 49 See Jean de Julienne sale where the order of the sale survives, which is closer to the format of London sales than the printed catalogue. Jennifer Tonkovich, ‘Jean de Julienne as a Collector of Drawings’, in Jean de Julienne Collector and Connoisseur, ed. Christoph Vogtherr and Jennifer Tonkovich, exh. cat. Wallace Collection, London (London: Wallace Collection, 2011), 39–41. 50 Charlotte Guichard, ‘Small Worlds; The Auction Economy in the Late Eighteenth Century Paris Art Market’, in Moving Pictures: Intra-European Trade in Images, 16th-18th Centuries ed. Neil De Marchi and Sophie Raux (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 237–56. 51 Ibid. The essays consider the various networks of Flemish dealers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. For a network visualization of agents in the art market see, Susanna Avery-Quash and Christian Huemer, eds, London and the Emergence of a European Art Market 1780–1820 (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2019), 7–8, based on Maximilian Schich, Christian Huemer, Piotr Adamczyk, Lev Manovich, and Yang-Yu Liu, ‘Network Dimensions in the Getty Provenance Index’, https​:/​/ar​​xiv​.o​​rg​/ ft​​p​/arx​​iv​/pa​​pers/​​1706/​​170​6.​​02804​​.pdf 2017. 52 For a general introduction to the specific qualities of the Roman art market, see Paolo Coen, The Art Market in Rome in the Eighteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 1–27. 53 See works cited by Ulf Hansson and Maria Celeste Cola in their chapters on the Roman art market. 54 For example, Hans van Miegroet, Hilary Cronheim and Bénédicte Miyamoto, ‘International Dealer Networks and Triangular Art Trade between Paris, Amsterdam and London’, in Huemer and Avery-Quash, London and the Emergence of a European Art Market. 55 In the eighteenth-century furniture trade, widows took over the firm as happened with Madame Oeben, who ran her husband’s firm from 1763 to 1768, when she married his chief assistant, Jean-Henri Riesener.

 Introduction 17 56 This has been done for the nineteenth century, where dealers’ accounts show the various means dealers used to encourage purchases. See Barbara Pezzini, ‘The “Art” and the “Market” Elements of the Art Market: John Linnell, William Agnew and Artist Dealer Relationships in Nineteenth-Century Britain’, Journal for Art Market Studies 4 (2018), https​:/​/fo​​kum​-j​​ams​.o​​rg​/in​​dex​.p​​hp​/ja​​ms​/ar​​ticle​​/do​wn​​load/​​40​/13​2 (accessed 19 July 2019). Patrick Michel considered the importance of investment in eighteenth-century Paris, but did not link this to financial liquidity, see Michel, ‘Le tableau et son prix’, in Warren and Turpin, Auctions, Agents and Dealers, 53–68. 57 Alfred Stevens, Impressions sur la peinture (Paris: Librairie des bibliophiles, 1886), 63–4. 58 See, for instance, Thomas M. Bayer and John Page, ‘Arthur Tooth: A London Dealer in the Spotlight, 1870–71’, Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 1, no. 1 (2010); Pamela M. Fletcher, ‘Creating the French Gallery: Ernest Gambart and the Rise of the Commercial Art Gallery in Mid-Victorian London’, Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 6, no. 1 (2007); DeCourcy E. McIntosh, ‘Goupil’s Album: Marketing Salon Painting in the Late Nineteenth Century’, in Twenty-First-Century Perspectives on NineteenthCentury Art: Essays in Honor of Gabriel P. Weisberg, ed. Petra ten Doesschate-Chu and Laurinda S. Dixon (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2008), 77–84. 59 Recent exhibitions on art dealers include Paul Durand-Ruel. Le pari de l’impressionisme (Paris: Musée du Luxembourg; London: National Gallery; Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2014–2015); Picasso, Léger, Masson: Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler et ses peintres (Villeneuve d’Ascq: LaM, 2013–2014); La Maison Goupil et l’Italie. Le succès des peintres italiens à Paris au temps de l’impressionnisme (Rovigo: Palazzo Roverella; Bordeaux: Galerie des Beaux-Arts, 2013); De Cézanne à Picasso. Chefs-d’œuvre de la galerie Vollard (Paris: Musée d’Orsay; New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; Chicago: Art Institute, 2006– 2007); Theo van Gogh: Art Dealer, Collector, Vincent’s Brother (Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum; Paris: Musée d ‘Orsay, 1999–2000). 60 Stefan Koldehoff and Chris Stolwijk, eds, The Thannhauser Gallery: Marketing Van Gogh (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018); Agnès Penot, La Maison Goupil: Galerie d’art internationale au XIXe siècle (Paris: Mare & Martin, 2017); Charles Sebag-Montefiore and Julia I. Armstrong-Totten, A Dynasty of Dealers: John Smith and His Successors 1801–1924 (London: The Roxburghe Club, 2013). 61 Oskar Bätschmann, The Artist in the Modern World: The Conflict between Market and Self-Expression (Cologne: DuMont, 1997); Albert Boime, ‘Entrepreneurial Patronage in Nineteenth-Century France’, in Enterprise and Entrepreneurs in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century France, ed. Edward C. Carter II, Robert Forster and Joseph N. Moody (Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1976), esp. 187 ff; Petra ten Doesschate-Chu, The Most Arrogant Man in France: Gustave Courbet and the Nineteenth-Century Media Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007); Petri Grischka, Arrangement in Business: The Art Markets and the Career of James McNeill Whistler (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 2011); Anne Lafont, ‘Les Stratégies marchandes des élèves de David pendant la Révolution’, in Collections et marché de l’art en France 1789–1848, ed. Monica Preti-Hamard and Philippe Sénéchal (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2005), 113–29. 62 David W. Galenson and Robert Jensen, ‘Careers and Canvases: The Rise of the Market for Modern Art in Nineteenth-Century Paris’, Van Gogh Studies 1 (Current

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Issues in Nineteenth-Century Art) (2007): 137–66; Harrison C. White and Cynthia A. White, Canvases and Careers: Institutional Change in the French Painting World (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1965). 63 See, for instance, Timothy Richard Brown, ‘The Politicization of the Paris Auction Marketplace, 1789–1848’, in Preti-Hamard and Sénéchal, Collections et marché de l’art en France, 47–55; Lukas Fuchsgruber, ‘The Hôtel Drouot as the Stock Exchange for Art: Financialization of Art Auctions in the Nineteenth Century’, Journal for Art Market Studies 1, no. 1 (2017): 34–46. 64 See, for instance, Craig Houser, ‘Disharmony and Discontent: Reviving the American Art-Union and the Market for United States Art in the Gilded Age’, NineteenthCentury Art Worldwide 11, no. 2 (2012). 65 See, for instance, Robert Jensen, Marketing Modernism in Fin-de-Siècle Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994); Greg Smith, ‘An Art Suited for the “English Middle Classes”? The Watercolour Societies in the Victorian Period’, in Governing Cultures: Art Institutions in Victorian London, ed. Paul Barlow and Colin Trodd (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 114–27. 66 See, for instance, Barbara Pezzini, ‘The 1912 Futurist Exhibition at the Sackville Gallery, London: An Avant-Garde Show within the Old Master Trade’, The Burlington Magazine 111, no. 1324 (2013): 471–9. 67 See, for instance, Antoinette Friedenthal, ‘John Smith, His Catalogue Raisonné of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish, and French Painters (1829-1842) and the “stigma of PICTURE DEALER”’, Journal of Art Historiography 5, no. 9 (2013): 1–20; Ivan Gaskell, ‘Tradesmen as Scholars: Interdependencies in the Study and Exchange of Art’, in Art History and Its Institutions: Foundations of a Discipline, ed. Elizabeth Mansfield (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), 146–62; Jeremy Howard, ‘Art, Commerce, and Scholarship: The Friendship between Otto Gutekunst of Colnaghi and Bernard Berenson’, in Bernard Berenson: Formation and Heritage, ed. Joseph Connors and Louis A. Waldman (Villa I Tatti: The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, 2014), 33–68. 68 See, for instance, Pamela Fletcher and Anne Helmreich, ‘The Periodical and the Art Market: Investigating the “Dealer-Critic System” in Victorian England’, Victorian Periodicals Review 41, no. 4 (2008): 334–5; Katherine Haskins, The Art-Journal and Fine Art Publishing in Victorian England, 1850–1880 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), esp. 91–136; Barbara Pezzini, ‘The Burlington Magazine, The Burlington Gazette, and the Connoisseur: The Art Periodical and the Market for Old Master Paintings in Edwardian London’, Visual Resources 29, no. 3 (2013): 1–31. 69 See, for instance, Dianne Sachko Macleod, Art and the Victorian Middle Class: Money and the Making of Cultural Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); John Ott, Manufacturing the Modern Patron in Victorian California: Cultural Philanthropy, Industrial Capital, and Social Authority (Burlington: Ashgate, 2014). 70 See, for instance, Pamela Fletcher, ‘The Grand Tour on Bond Street: Cosmopolitanism and the Commercial Art Gallery in Victorian London’, Visual Culture in Britain 12, no. 2 (2011): 139–53. 71 Ingrid Goddeeris and Noémie Goldman, eds, Animateur d’art: Dealer, Collector, Critic, Publisher . . . : The Animateur d’art and his Multiple Roles. Pluridisciplinary Research of these Disregarded Cultural Mediators of the 19th and 20th Centuries (Brussels: Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, 2015); Margaret Iacono, ‘A

 Introduction 19 Dealer Collects: Reconstructing Charles Stewart Carstairs’s Private Art Collection’, Journal of the History of Collections 29, no. 1 (2017): 93–108. 72 See Maria Quirk, ‘Portraiture and Patronage: Women, Reputation, and the Business of Selling Art, 1880–1914’, Visual Culture in Britain 17, no. 2 (2016): 181–99. 73 Laura D. Corey, ‘The Many Hats of Mary Cassatt: Artist, Advisor, Broker, Tastemaker’, in Dealing Art on Both Sides of the Atlantic, 1860–1940, ed. Lynn Catterson (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 39–57. 74 See the special issue edited by Meaghan Clarke and Francesco Ventrella, ‘Women’s Expertise and the Culture of Connoisseurship’, Visual Resources 33, no. 1–2 (2017); Dianne Sachko Macleod, Enchanted Lives, Enchanted Objects: American Women Collectors and the Making of Culture, 1800–1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008); Alain Pougetoux, La Collection de peintures de l’Impératrice Joséphine (Paris: Éditions de la Réunion des musées nationaux, 2003); Inge Reist, ed., Power Underestimated: American Women Art Collectors (Venice: Marsilio, 2011). 75 See, for instance, Anna Ahrens, Der Pionier: Wie Louis Sachse in Berlin den Kunstmarkt erfand (Cologne and Weimar: Böhlau, 2017); María Isabel Baldassare, ‘Buenos Aires: An Art Metropolis in the Late Nineteenth Century’, Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 16, no. 1 (2017); Eriko Tomizawa-Kay, ‘Changes in the Japanese Art Market with the Emergence of the Middle-Class Collector: A Study of Hishida Shunsō (1874–1911)’, Journal of the History of Collections 28, no. 2 (2016): 261–77. 76 See, for instance, Laurent Houssais and Marion Lagrance, eds, Marché(s) de l’art en province, 1870–1914 (Pessac: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 2010); Gabriel Weisberg, DeCourcy E. McIntosh and Alison McQueen, eds, Collecting in the Gilded Age: Art Patronage in Pittsburgh, 1890–1910 (Pittsburgh: Frick Art & Historical Center, 1997). 77 Titia Hulst, ed., A History of the Western Art Market: A Sourcebook of Writings on Artists, Dealers, and Markets (Oakland: University of California Press, 2017). See for instance the special issue edited by Bénédicte Savoy, ‘Translocations and the Art Market’, The Journal for Art Market Studies 2, no. 2 (2018). 78 Significantly, a substantial portion of the catalogue of the Durand-Ruel exhibition was devoted to the international dimension of his trade. See, in particular, Anne Robbins, ‘À la conquête de Londres’, in Paul Durand-Ruel. Le pari de l’impressionisme, ed. Sylvie Patry (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2015), 134–49; Jennifer A. Thompson, ‘Paul Durand-Ruel et l’Amérique’, in ibid., 106–19. See also Anne Helmreich, ‘The Goupil Gallery at the Intersection between London, Continent, and Empire’, in The Rise of the Modern Art Market in London, 1850-1939, ed. Pamela Fletcher and Anne Helmreich (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2011), 65–84. 79 Jan Dirk Baetens and Dries Lyna, eds, Art Crossing Borders: The Internationalisation of the Art Market in the Age of Nation States ca. 1750–1914 (Leiden: Brill, 2019). 80 See for instance: Fletcher and Helmreich, ‘Local/Global’; Léa Saint-Raymond, Félicie de Maupeou and Julien Cavero, ‘Les Rues des tableaux. Géographie du marché de l’art parisien (1815–1955)’, Artl@s Bulletin 4, no. 1 (2015). 81 Fletcher and Helmreich, ‘Local/Global’. 82 Malcolm Gee, ‘Modern Art Galleries in Paris and Berlin, c. 1890-1933: Types, Policies and Modes of Display’, Journal for Art Market Studies 2, no. 1 (2018); Meike Hopp, ‘Art Trade Palaces – Galleries of Art Dealers as Architectural Task and Their

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Reception in Munich around 1900’, Journal for Art Market Studies 2, no. 1 (2018); Corina Meyer, ‘“An Identifying Characteristic That Makes the [Collection] Worth a Trip”: The Orléans Collection as a Stamp Album in London?’, Getty Research Journal 8 (2016): 55–72. 83 Sally Webster, ‘A Digital Recreation of the Lenox Library Picture Gallery: A Contribution to the Early History of Public Art Museums in the United States’, Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 17, no. 2 (2018). 84 Some notable exceptions are: Thomas M. Bayer and John R. Page, The Development of the Art Market in England (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011); Léa SaintRaymond, ‘How to Get Rich as an Artist: The Case of Félix Ziem – Evidence from His Account Book from 1850 through 1883’, Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 15, no. 1 (2016). 85 Diana Seave Greenwald, ‘Colleague Collectors: A Statistical Analysis of Artists: Collecting Networks in Nineteenth-Century New York’, Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 17, no. 1 (2018): 2–37. 86 Régine Bigorne, ‘Les images de la vie d’artiste de la Maison Goupil & Cie’, in L’Artiste en représentation. Images des artistes dans l’art du XIXe siècle, ed. Alain Bonnet (Lyon: Fage, 2012), esp. 131–3; Sylvie Patry, ‘Paul Durand-Ruel et les expositions particulières en 1883’, in ed. Patry, Paul Durand-Ruel, 84–7. 87 Thomas M. Bayer and John Page, ‘Arthur Tooth’; Patricia Mainardi, ‘The 19th-Century Art Trade: Copies, Variations, Replicas’, Van Gogh Museum Journal 6 (2000): 62–73. 88 Rosie Dias, Exhibiting Englishness: John Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery and the Formation of a National Aesthetic (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2013); Jean-Joseph Goux, L’Art et l’argent. La rupture moderniste: 1860–1920 (Paris: Blusson, 2011). 89 Barbara Pezzini, ‘(Inter)national Art: The London “Old-Masters” Market and Modern British Painting (1900–14)’, in Art Crossing Borders: The Internationalisation of the Art Market in the Age of Nation States, 1750-1914, ed. Jan Dirk Baetens and Dries Lyna (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 127–63. 90 See for instance: Dries Lyna, ‘Name Hunting, Visual Characteristics, and “New Old Masters”: Tracking the Taste for Paintings at Eighteenth-Century Auctions’, Eighteenth-Century Studies 46, no. 1 (2012): esp. note 31; Donald Kuspit, California New Old Masters (Newport Beach: Literary Press Publishing, 2004). 91 See for instance: Robert Verhoogt, Art in Reproduction: Nineteenth-Century Prints after Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Jozef Israëls and Ary Scheffer (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2007). 92 Pamela Fletcher and Anne Helmreich, ‘Epilogue: Reframing the “International Art Market”’, in ed. Baetens and Lyna, Art Crossing Borders, 327–41.

Part I

Agents in the market, 1550–1720

22 

I

Introduction Agents in the art market, 1550–1720 Sandra van Ginhoven

Agents permeated all areas of life in early modern Europe. Broadly conceived, agents were embedded in politics, diplomacy, economic policy, and cultural, intellectual and commercial exchanges to such an extent that historians have identified early modern brokerage as one of the fundamental organizational principles of that society.1 Art production and its circulation were no exception to this organizational principle, and agents have been fundamental actors in the history of art and the art markets.2 As diplomatic envoys, they acted as representatives of their patrons and through their travels and extended networks they also disseminated news and information. In princely art commissions and gift exchanges, agents were crucial information brokers, facilitating connections and translating valuations when assessments needed to be made, often in the context of hierarchical relations based on asymmetrical reciprocity. Especially in competitive environments where artists contended for the patronage of the church, the courts and the most prominent families, agents were fundamental in promoting the careers of artists among prominent benefactors, and conversely by conveying to artists their patrons’ requests and also favours.3 What constitutes effective art brokerage is generally perceived as the ways in which agents were instrumental in culturally significant outcomes. Examples abound, ranging from agents’ mediation role between parties, to their interventions in order to produce particular results; it is in this sense that Marika Keblusek has remarked that the agents’ function mattered more than their actual profession.4 Whether orators, secretaries, ambassadors, artists or merchants, they brought their expertise and abilities in different areas to their cultural brokerage. A case in point is Adriana Concin’s account in Chapter 1 of this book of the hitherto little-known contributions that Hans Albrecht von Sprinzenstein made, via his early education and networks in Italy, as well as his negotiating skills, to the successful acquisition of key works for the collections of the Archduke Ferdinand II of Tyrol. Better known as a military man, Sprinzenstein’s trajectory shows other effects of successful art brokerage, such as the enhanced reputation of the agent among other (potential) patrons, resulting in expanded networks and areas of influence. Dealings also helped agents develop

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connoisseurial expertise and collecting practices that could result in tastes aligned across collections – their own and those of their patrons. Agents were unquestionably integral to the cultural and artistic life of early modern Europe, but the creation of open markets for artworks and the rise of the art dealer as a professional category constitute two specific developments during the period that concerns us here. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries brought about a spectacular growth in the activity of artists who could not aspire to royal appointments or princely patronage, as well as new wealthy urban classes able and willing to spend on paintings and other (semi) luxuries.5 In the case of paintings, a growing local consumer base, including new collectors from the professional and commercial groups, fuelled a demand that created new market segments as artists began to specialize in affordable landscapes, still lifes and genre scenes.6 As a result of these developments, artists producing for local buyers or for export, directly or indirectly through dealers, without relying on commissions but rather on what has been called ‘replication and reformulation of successful models’, became a dominant impetus for art production and exchange from the sixteenth century; this was fully instituted during the seventeenth century.7 At the forefront of these developments was the city of Antwerp, with the production of paintings and other luxuries on spec exhibited in fairs and dedicated sales halls.8 Though without ever replacing the primary commission circuits of the patronage system, fairs and halls provided the ideal place of exchange between artists and their clients, where artists learned what would or would not sell and buyers would in turn stimulate demand and thus new production. While much research has concentrated on northern Europe and on paintings, more recent studies focused on Italy, France, Spain, elsewhere in Europe and overseas have identified analogous expansions in the art markets, though under different circumstances.9 For example, in Bologna, rich merchants who started buying art, often applying their mercantile mindset, fuelled a level of diversification of supply that needed the mediation of experts appearing in the early decades of the seventeenth century.10 Also in early-seventeenth-century Rome, buyers were much more numerous and diverse than previously assumed and middlemen participated in the way that certain preferences for paintings spread throughout different layers of society.11 In Naples, middle and aristocratic classes connected to the Spanish administration brought their taste for collecting with them, which attracted foreign painters such as Caravaggio, Ribera and Artemisia Gentileschi, further expanding consumer tastes and artists’ specializations.12 In Madrid and Paris, painters and works from Flanders and Italy initially dominated the artistic landscape, but as the seventeenth century progressed local workshops and dealers increasingly took over.13 This was also the case in Seville and Cadiz, with the difference that the Americas constituted a major impetus.14 With regard to other parts of the world and beyond paintings, it is through case studies on specific dealers and their networks, as well as on the activities of merchants in raw and precious materials and finished goods, that scholarship has begun to uncover the nature of the expansion of the art trade during this period.15 From a market perspective, the relatively high levels of uncertainty about both the demand for and quality of cultural goods in general and of artworks, in particular,

 Introduction 25 create the space and need for market intermediaries.16 While in theory artworks constitute unique or heterogeneous products with little or no substitutes, the actual level of substitutability depends on how well the available supply meets buyers’ motives (aesthetic, cultural, social, financial, historical, decorative to mention a few) and matches the features buyers seek in the works they purchase. However, buyers can be uncertain about issues of quality and valuation, unless they have invested in gaining knowledge and developing experience as collectors. For this reason, they often need help in translating mysterious concepts such as value, taste, reputation, fashion and novelty, especially when the material aspects of works of art are insufficient to make these judgements. Therefore, the perceived merit of artworks to a large extent relies on the credibility of experts being able to articulate the different kinds of value that buyers can derive as owners and capable of bringing artworks possessing certain qualities to potential buyers looking for those or similar qualities. In acting on the knowledge of what sort of artworks are in demand, what features buyers prefer, what price ranges can these works command and how to attract collectors, market intermediaries can influence art production, buyer behaviour and collecting practices, and even become fashion-makers. In this context, the art dealer constitutes a special type of agent that emerged as a recognizable professional category during the period addressed here. Throughout the long seventeenth century, these intermediaries became increasingly professionalized, relying on extended networks and introducing new distribution and marketing techniques that added stimulus to existing markets. In some places, art dealers appeared earlier than in others and their activities and impact on the artistic environment were not the same everywhere. In most places and in contrast to later developments that Bénédicte Miyamoto, Anne Helmreich and Inge Reist address in their introductory chapters in this book, the distinctions of dealers’ and agents’ areas of influence were incipient ones, mostly articulated in terms of the types and array of goods traded. As remarked, most attention has been directed to paintings, and the resulting picture that continues to emerge underscores the blurred lines within the pricequality spectrum, the many coexisting market segments, as well as the multiplicity and adaptability of functions dealers played. Many operated in both the primary and secondary markets, specialized in paintings and other luxury products or staple goods, were active only locally or also cross-border directly or through their networks, and some dealt directly with prominent collectors as well as ventured into the open markets. In fact, dealing in art was a highly diversified activity. Changes in the way dealers described their occupation indicate levels of specialization in the art trade, which functioned within specific institutional frameworks and codes. In Antwerp, dealers who specialized in paintings (e.g. handelt met schilderijen) appeared in the guild’s records in the late 1580s, but were more pronounced in numbers between the 1610s and the 1630s.17 In Amsterdam, they became much more common from the 1630s and 1640s as the market also grew in scale and scope.18 Similar specializations emerged in Naples a little later, by the mid-seventeenth century, with the dealer in paintings (mercanti di quadri) as a specialist seller in the upper strata of the market.19 In Rome, levels of specialization have been identified also in terms of

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the occupations involved: sellers of paintings among other luxuries; those who sold only paintings, especially from the middle of the seventeenth century, and people from other trades also engaged in selling paintings.20 Similar groups sold paintings in Venice, but primarily merchants dealing in other goods, perhaps a development connected to Venice’s major place as international trade centre.21 In Spain and Spanish America, dealers in paintings (tratantes en pintura) were active in the second-hand markets, some of them in connection to the transatlantic trade of other goods including books towards the second half of the century.22 The ways in which guilds and professional groups dealt with these developments varied widely across places and time. We know much less about other artistic centres around the globe, which are still awaiting similar assessments, especially with regard to other types of artistic production.

Emerging markets for artworks It is important to keep in mind that artistic and trading centres concentrated the circulation of objects including artworks, exotica, naturalia, raw materials and many other finished products conveying new knowledge about a world under intense exploration.23 In this context, scholars have investigated inter-city, intra-European and overseas dynamics in the art trade and exchanges facilitated by those actors whose activities extended beyond one location and type of good traded.24 Specifically in the case of paintings, while art production in the Dutch Republic was diversified between cities, Amsterdam was the centre of much of the activity, and Dutch dealers did not start exploring opportunities abroad until later in the seventeenth century when the local industry started to show signs of maturity and even saturation.25 By contrast, a century earlier in Antwerp, dealers embedded in the merchant communities started to actively seek new markets for paintings as they expanded into other luxury and semi-luxury goods that were also traded in the main commercial hubs relying on existing shipping and trading infrastructures for their long-distance deals. Some Flemish dealers explicitly contracted local painters for their sales abroad, while many others established themselves across European cities and relied on a web of local fellow merchants and their deep knowledge of domestic practices and tastes.26 The case of the Antwerp-based Forchondt family is one example of such a dealer venturing abroad within European Spanish Habsburg domains and in long-distance markets for Flemish paintings such as the Americas.27 In Chapter 3, Tina Košak specifically focuses on this dealership’s role in identifying new opportunities and in cultivating the rising aristocracy as collectors of Flemish paintings in Vienna, Linz, Graz and Ljubljana among other cities. In doing so, she adds central Europe to the historical art markets map and enriches the discussion of what it meant to operate in small, rising, emerging art markets. The disparity between a heightened demand for artworks imported from aboard and an uneven local expertise in paintings helps explain the resulting business opportunities on which the Forchondts were able

 Introduction 27 to capitalize. This case also emphasizes the key role that familial and professional networks, aristocratic patronage and financial infrastructure played when dealing in artworks across borders.28 Interconnected networks of personal and professional relations also arise as a main trait across this and other case studies, given that counting on trustworthy agents and contacts was perhaps the most important factor for dealing successfully across cities and continents.

Many forms of intermediation Very often artists themselves acted as agents and became promoters of their own work. Some painters – Diego Velazquez and Charles Le Brun might come to mind – remained in the primary commission circuits or worked exclusively as royal painters with little or no market engagement. Others such as the equally famous Titian and Peter Paul Rubens, who enjoyed great esteem among powerful kings and princes, actively advocated for their works among the ruling elites and fashionable circles. They did so while possessing full awareness of what it took to run a successful workshop and market their works. They established practices that matched the different configurations of authorship and style to the expected valuation of their works by their potential clients, which also involved them as agents in their dealings with those patrons. While the scholarship on art patronage is extensive and has uncovered different power structures between patrons and artists depending on the individuals involved, entrepreneurial artists could exert control by using self-promotion, superior knowledge about their own workshop practices vis-a-vis their clients, and business acumen to their own advantage.29 Intense artistic competition locally led similarly entrepreneurial artists to look beyond and identify how they could broaden their areas and scope of operation. Usually, painters sold their production from their own shops, as the familiar examples of collectors or their agents visiting artists’ studios testify. However, the changes described earlier in how and where paintings were sold often created tensions between dealers and those painters, guilds, and academies or colleges who controlled the production side. For instance, Antwerp allowed art dealers among the ranks of painters, which resulted in artist-entrepreneurs and close links between artists and dealers, including dealerentrepreneurs who contracted artists directly and, as already mentioned, those who operated on an international scale. But almost everywhere else, regulations insisted that artists could sell only their works and from their own workshops. However, this did not stop the growth in retail outlets nor of artworks being sold indiscriminately. In fact, scores of painters across Europe produced paintings for the open markets, or worked as, or for, dealers and shopkeepers for a fee, including nameless journeymen who, by being absent from much documentary evidence, remain an unquantifiable force in artistic transmission and exchanges. Lured by opportunities abroad, some artists migrated and established accomplished careers outside their places of origin.30 Others, despite the risks involved in trade

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especially over long distances, took on the tasks of intermediaries and absorbed their profits. Taking Seville as an example, up to the middle of the seventeenth century, artists could deal with their clients overseas, contracting travelling agents to fulfil the requests for their works abroad, but from the second half of the century, the production of art for the American markets intensified to such a degree that the model of big exportoriented studios was replaced by a model in which merchants contracted directly with painters so that the painter was paid in advance and did not have to wait for the return of the fleet for their reimbursement.31 As markets abroad grew, the infrastructure that sustained artistic flows changed in configuration as the agents who carried out these tasks became more professionalized and specialized in response to the lucrative opportunities for intermediation they identified.32 While scholars have charted similar developments in other cities, much research is still necessary across artistic and trade centres to better understand the mechanisms underlying periods of a heightened art production or circulation. This discussion should not ignore other notions of intermediation shaped by the multiplicity of roles agents could take on. Artists, merchants and collectors acted as intermediaries in transfers of knowledge and also goods, not only in the market but also in other spheres, for instance, through their literary works.33 The case of the midcentury Venetian Marco Boschini presented in this book provides an example of an art dealer who operated in different circles simultaneously as dealer, critic and advisor to collectors. In Chapter 2 Linda Borean discusses how in his poem La Carta del navegar pitoresco Boschini created a channel through which he sought to exert influence on the appreciation of the artists he promoted. Boschini’s role in shaping tastes and also artistic practice is measured by contrasting the identity of those artists who Boschini considered worthy of inclusion in his poem with the career trajectories, presence in collections, and known market success of Venetian and foreign artists of the time. Despite the subjective nature of the poem, several important topics emerge from this analysis, such as a nascent distinction between Old Masters and living artists, as well as between the aesthetic and investment values derived from artworks, which in his poem Boschini suggested as the purview of collectors and art advisors, respectively. Similar debates on art valuation would become widespread in eighteenth-century art markets. The dual role as agent and collector of the painter James Thornhill that Tamsin LeeWoolfe discusses in Chapter 4 brings full circle the often overlapping and manifold nature of art dealing discussed so far, in this case across borders. In contrast to painters who travelled from England to the continent and brought back news about fashions and tastes, Thornhill cultivated his expertise by purchasing for English collectors a wide array of French paintings and objects d’art to decorate their homes in the context of a growing market for luxury and semi-luxury goods between the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Lee-Woolfe proposes the agent’s influence in the reception of the work of French artists in early-eighteenth-century England, setting the stage for the developments explored in Part II of this book. Indeed, by the late seventeenth century, some features of agents and dealers, like their ‘internationalization’, were fairly

 Introduction 29 established. Other developments, such as the specialized art auction instituted alongside an increasing connoisseurial awareness later expressed in the auction catalogue, were still taking shape in the markets.34 While agents’ combined activities – for instance, as bidders, advisers, appraisers and purchasers for own stock – continued, what appears to have changed over time are the specific ways their roles enabled behaviours and market mechanisms, influencing artistic production and circulation and the reception and formation of collections.

Notes 1 Marika Keblusek and Badeloch Vera Noldus, eds, Double Agents: Cultural and Political Brokerage in Early Modern Europe (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2011); Hans Cools, Marika Keblusek and Badeloch Noldus, eds, Your Humble Servant: Agents in Early Modern Europe (Hilversum: Uitgeverij Verloren, 2006). 2 Jeremy Warren and Adriana Turpin, eds, Auctions, Agents and Dealers: The Mechanisms of the Art Market, 1660–1830 (Oxford: London: Beazley Archive: Archaeopress; in Association with the Wallace Collection, 2008). 3 Some examples in: Susan Bracken, Andrea M. Gáldy and Adriana Turpin, eds, Collecting and the Princely Apartment (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011); Idem, Collecting and Dynastic Ambition (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010); Gail Feigenbaum and Sybille Ebert-Schifferer, eds, Sacred Possessions: Collecting Italian Religious Art, 1500–1900 (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2010); Arthur MacGregor, Curiosity and Enlightenment: Collectors and Collections from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007). 4 Keblusek, Double Agents, 3. 5 Peter Burke, ‘Art, Market and Collecting in Early Modern Europe’, in Artwork through the Market: The Past and the Present, ed. Ján Bakoš (Bratislava: VEDA, 2004), 74. For a wider geographical spread, see Christina M. Anderson, ed., Early Modern Merchants as Collectors (Abingdon, Oxon, New York, NY: Routledge, 2017). 6 John Michael Montias, ‘Works of Art in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam; An Analysis of Subjects and Attributions’, in Art in History; History in Art; Studies in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Culture, ed. David Freedberg and Jan de Vries (Santa Monica: Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1991), 331–72; Elizabeth A. Honig, Painting & the Market in Early Modern Antwerp (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998); Richard E. Spear and Philip L. Sohm, eds, Painting for Profit: The Economic Lives of Seventeenth-Century Italian Painters (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010). 7 Larry Silver, ‘Second Bosch: Family Resemblance and the Marketing of Art’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 50 (1999): 30–56. 8 Dan Ewing, ‘Marketing Art in Antwerp, 1460–1560: Our Lady’s Pand’, Art Bulletin 72 (1990): 558–84; Filip Vermeylen, Painting for the Market. Commercialization of Art in Antwerp’s Golden Age (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003). 9 The literature on early modern northern European art markets is extensive, especially since the pioneering work of John Michael Montias on the seventeenth-century

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Dutch painting industry. The most comprehensive comparative assessment to date on the history of early modern art markets albeit focused on western Europe is: Neil De Marchi and Hans J. Van Miegroet, ‘History of Art Markets’, in Handbook on the Economics of Art and Culture, ed. Victor Ginsburgh and David Throsby (Amsterdam, London and Tokyo: Elsevier North-Holland, 2006). See also Simonetta Cavaciocchi, ed., Economia e Arte, Secc. XIII-XVIII: Atti Della Trentatreesima Settimana Di Studi, 30 Aprile-4 Maggio 2000 (Firenze: Le Monier, 2002); Michael North and David Ormrod, eds, Art Markets in Europe, 1400–1600 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998). 10 Spear and Sohm, Painting for Profit. 11 Patrizia Cavazzini, Painting as Business in Early Seventeenth-Century Rome (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008). 12 Christopher R. Marshall, Baroque Naples and the Industry of Painting: The World in the Workbench (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016); Spear and Sohm, Painting for Profit. 13 María Jesús Muñoz González, El mercado español de pinturas en el siglo XVII (Madrid: Fundación Caja Madrid; Fundación Arte Hispánico, 2008); Mickaël Szanto, ‘Antwerp and the Paris Art Market in the Years 1620–1630’, in Mapping Markets for Paintings in Europe 1450–1750, ed. Neil De Marchi and Hans J. Van Miegroet (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), 329–42. 14 Duncan Theobald Kinkead, ‘Juan de Luzón and the Sevillian Painting Trade with the New World in the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century’, Art Bulletin 66 (1984): 303–12. 15 Many recent publications focus on the global circulation of materials, artworks and artists. Daniel Savoy, The Globalization of Renaissance Art: A Critical Review (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2017); Susanna Burghartz, Lucas Burkart and Christine Göttler, Sites of Mediation: Connected Histories of Places, Processes, and Objects in Europe and Beyond, 1450–1650 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2016); Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann and Michael North, eds, Mediating Netherlandish Art and Material Culture in Asia (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2014); Michael North, ed., Artistic and Cultural Exchanges between Europe and Asia, 1400-1900: Rethinking Markets, Workshops and Collections (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010). 16 Richard Caves, Creative Industries: Contracts between Art and Commerce (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002); Olav Velthuis, ‘Art Markets’, in Ruth Towse, ed., A Handbook of Cultural Economics (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, c2011), 33–42. For how these features determined the Dutch painting industry, see: John Michael Montias ‘Art Dealers in the Seventeenth-Century Netherlands’, Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 18, no. 4 (1988): 244–56; Claartje Rasterhoff, Painting and Publishing as Cultural Industries: The Fabric of Creativity in the Dutch Republic, 1580–1800, (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017), 287–90. See also, Claartje Rasterhoff and Filip Vermeylen, ‘Mediators in trade and taste. Dealing with demand and quality uncertainty in the global art market of the seventeenth century’, De Zeventiende Eeuw, 31 (1) (2015), 138–58. 17 Neil De Marchi and Hans Van Miegroet, ‘Exploring Markets for Netherlandish Paintings in Spain and Nueva España’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 5 (1999): 5082. 18 Angela Jager, ‘Galey-Schilders’ En ‘Dosijnwerck’: De Productie, Distributie En Consumptie Van Goedkope Historiestukken in Zeventiende-Eeuws Amsterdam (PhD thesis University of Amsterdam, 2016); Montias, ‘Art Dealers’.

 Introduction 31 19 Christopher R. Marshall, Baroque Naples; Christopher R. Marshall, ‘Dispelling Negative Perceptions: Dealers Promoting Artists in Seventeenth-Century Naples’, in De Marchi and Van Miegroet, Mapping Markets, 363–82. 20 Loredana Lorizzo, ‘People and Practices in the Paintings Trade of SeventeenthCentury Rome’, in ibid., 343–62; Cavazzini, Painting as Business, 119–52. 21 Isabella Cecchini, ‘Troublesome Business: Dealing in Venice, 1600-1750’, in De Marchi and Van Miegroet, Mapping Markets, 125–34. 22 See: Sandra van Ginhoven, Connecting Art Markets: Guilliam Forchondt’s Dealership in Antwerp (c. 1632-78) and the Overseas Painting Trade (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2017): 51–72; Miguel Falomir, ‘Artists’ Responses to the Emergence of Markets for Paintings in Spain, c. 1600’, in De Marchi and Van Miegroet, Mapping Markets, 135–63. Muñoz González, El mercado español de pinturas, 25–86. 23 Global studies of artistic trade and exchanges also grapple with issues and definitions of mediation and agency from an intercultural perspective. See references in note 15. 24 For a discussion focused on the natural sciences and ‘entrepreneurial naturalists’, see Tomomi Kinukawa, ‘Learned vs. Commercial?: The Commodification of Nature in Early Modern Natural History Specimen Exchanges in England, Germany, and the Netherlands’, Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 43, no. 5 (2013): 589–618. 25 Rasterhoff, Painting and Publishing as Cultural Industries. For a recent account on the presence of Dutch works in Danish inventories, see Angela Jager, ‘Quantity over Quality? Dutch and Flemish Paintings in a Danish Private Collection’, in Trading Paintings and Painters’ Materials 1550–1800, CATS proceedings IV, ed. Anne Haak Christensen and Angela Jager (London: Archetype Publications, 2019), 26–38. 26 De Marchi and Van Miegroet, Mapping Markets; Dries Lyna, Filip Vermeyen and Hans Vlieghe, eds, Art Auctions and Dealers: The Dissemination of Netherlandish Art during the Ancien Régime (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009); Neil De Marchi and Sophie Raux, eds, Moving Pictures: Intra-European Trade in Images, 16th-18th Centuries (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014). 27 van Ginhoven, Connecting Art Markets. 28 James D. Tracy, ed., The Rise of Merchant Empires: Long-Distance Trade in the Early Modern World, 1350–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Rila Mukherjee, ed., Networks in the First Global Age, 1400–1800 (New Delhi: Indian Council of Historical Research in association with Primus Books, 2011). Julia Adams, The Familial State: Ruling Families and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005); Koenraad Brosens, Katlijne Van der Stighelen and Leen Kelchtermans, eds, Family Ties. Art Production and Kinship Patterns in the Early Modern Low Countries (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012). The role women played in trade in general and the art trade in particular has received little attention. See: William C. Jordan, Women and Credit in Pre-Industrial and Developing Societies (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1993). 29 Francis Haskell, Patrons and Painters; A Study in the Relations between Italian Art and Society in the Age of the Baroque (New York: Knopf, 1963). For an earlier period, see Michelle O’Malley, Painting under Pressure: Fame, Reputation and Demand in Renaissance Florence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013).

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30 To take the widely researched case of Netherlandish artists, see, for example, Abigail D. Newman, ‘Netherlandish Artists and the Marketing of “Flemishness” in Madrid’, in De Zeventiende Eeuw. Cultuur in de Nederlanden in interdisciplinair perspectief 31 no. 1 (2015): 78–100; Frits Scholten, Joanna Woodall and Dulcia Meijers, Art and Migration: Netherlandish Artists on the Move, 1400–1750 (Leiden: Brill, 2014). 31 Kinkead, ‘Juan de Luzón and the Sevillian Painting Trade’, 306–7. 32 Van Ginhoven, Connecting Art Markets, 46–59. 33 Artists’ biographies and commentaries fall under this category, for example those of Giorgio Vasari (1511–74), Karel Van Mander (1548–1606), Roger de Piles (1635– 1709), Antonio Palomino (1655–1726) and Bernard Mandeville (1670–1733). 34 This is particularly noted in Warren and Turpin, Auctions, agents and dealers, where the focus is between 1680 and 1830.

1

Hans Albrecht von Sprinzenstein An Austrian art agent in the service of Archduke Ferdinand II of Tyrol Adriana Concin

Collecting was in Archduke Ferdinand II of Tyrol’s blood.1 As a scion of the Habsburg family, he was able to look back on a lineage of inveterate collectors, both male and female, from his uncle Emperor Charles V and his aunt Margaret of Austria, down to his own father, Emperor Ferdinand I.2 Unsurprisingly, Ferdinand II (Plate 1) also emerged as one of the most accomplished collectors of art and artefacts of the sixteenth century.3 He demonstrated a predilection for collecting throughout his life, from his younger days as governor of Bohemia in Prague through to his position as Archduke of Tyrol and the outer Austrian dominions.4 His collection, much of which is preserved at Schloss Ambras in Innsbruck, is well known.5 Yet little time has been dedicated to understanding the large network of contacts that helped to furnish his collection with some of the greatest treasures of the early modern world.6 Indeed, Ferdinand II’s unquenchable thirst for the curiosities, knowledge and skills of the known world necessitated a vast network of individuals, who pursued and procured works of art on the Archduke’s behalf. Ferdinand II’s contacts were particularly extensive on the Italian peninsula. In Venice, Ferdinand relied on the imperial ambassadors (the so-called orators) and their secretaries as dedicated brokers. Up until 1567, it was the Venetian orator Count Franz von Thurn who catered to the artistic wishes of Ferdinand II. Among the commissions of ebony and ivory panels, psalters and breviaries, he also sent depictions of unicorn horns to the Archduke.7 Thurn was followed by the Gorizian nobleman Veit von Dornberg, who also supplied the Archduke’s collection with a great variety of products.8 Above all, these orators in Ferdinand’s service were tasked with the purchase of Venetian glassware and securing the employment of Venetian glassmakers for the glasshouse that Ferdinand II had established at his court in Innsbruck.9 After Dornberg’s appointment as imperial orator in Rome in 1589, Ferdinand increasingly relied on the imperial secretary Bernardino Rosso in Venice to organize shipments of artworks from Venice to Innsbruck.10 In the city of Genoa, it was the military man

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Adrian von Sittinghausen who fulfilled the Archduke’s artistic objectives by furnishing the Ambras Kunstkammer with items such as prized pieces made from coral.11 During the tenure of his son Cardinal Andreas of Austria in Rome, the Cardinal and his secretary, Andreas von Vels, were often engaged in fulfilling the artistic orders sent by the Tyrolean Archduke.12 The cultural services of Italian noblemen were also frequently called upon. Brandolino Brandolini was one such loyal supporter, who, for example, sent the Archduke portraits of female dwarfs from Italy.13 The antiquarian and scholar Ercole Basso in Bologna likewise formed part of this network, which was dedicated to enlarging the Archduke’s collection and, in Basso’s case specifically, enriching it with rare coins and medals.14 There are many more figures worth mentioning who formed part of Ferdinand II’s large and often-changing network; this chapter, however, will focus more closely on one specific artistic intermediary, the Austrian nobleman Hans Albrecht von Sprinzenstein (1543–98). Like all of the aforementioned people upon whom Ferdinand relied, he was not yet a professional art agent operating solely in this capacity. These educated men made it one part of their duties to provide cultural and artistic services to their employers. Most of them were imperial ambassadors, merchants, diplomats and political agents, who supplemented their income through the art trade or who, in addition to their political service, were engaged in their masters’ artistic objectives. Sprinzenstein was arguably the most dedicated and long-serving agent acting on behalf of the Tyrolean Archduke (Plate 2).15 A privy councillor, military advisor and frequent political envoy of Ferdinand II, he intermittently served the Archduke for twenty years, until the former’s death in 1595.16 Not only was he an accomplished political broker, Sprinzenstein was also an equally reliable cultural broker, whose area of expertise spanned the Italian peninsula. A resourceful and canny negotiator, he encapsulated the versatility and eloquence of early modern political and cultural agents, whether he was called upon to negotiate marriage alliances or the price of bronzes on Ferdinand II’s behalf. So far, Sprinzenstein’s role in his capacity as an art agent has received little attention. This aspect of his career, however, merits inspection. Sprinzenstein, born Johann Albrecht Freiherr von und zu Sprinzenstein auf Neuhaus in 1543, was the son of Hieronymus Freiherr von Sprinzenstein (1510–70).17 His father was the personal physician of Emperor Ferdinand I and his wife, Anna Jagellonica, and, from 1532, Lord Chamberlain of the Emperor’s wife and daughters in Innsbruck (Figure 1.1).18 Due to Sprinzenstein’s father’s position at the Habsburg courts, he grew up alongside the children of Emperor Ferdinand I, including his future master Archduke Ferdinand II.19 Sprinzenstein began his career as a page at the court of Ferdinand’s brother Charles II of Inner Austria before travelling to Florence with Ferdinand’s youngest sister, Johanna of Austria, the new Duchess of Florence, to serve as her cupbearer from 1565 until 1576.20 The Florentine court of Cosimo I de’ Medici and his son Francesco was one of great artistic and cultural vigour. It provided the foundation for Sprinzenstein’s artistic sensitivities, granting the young Austrian nobleman a comprehensive cultural education.21 It was while he was in the employ of Johanna of Austria that Sprinzenstein received his first commissions from Ferdinand II. In 1574, the Archduke was compelled to search for a capable bronze caster who could complete the final piece of casting for

 Hans Albrecht von Sprinzenstein 35

Figure 1.1  Ernst Graf von Sprinzenstein, Coat of Arms of the Sprinzenstein family, from an unpublished manuscript of the Sprinzenstein family chronicle, 1890. Ink and watercolour on paper. Courtesy Author. the mausoleum of Emperor Maximilian I in Innsbruck, notably the bronze sculpture of Maximilian himself.22 Negotiations had ensued with the Trentino bronze caster Antonio Catani, but Sprinzenstein recommended another man to the Archduke, one who could be ready to travel to Innsbruck at short notice and who would pour, cut and polish the cast without prior payment, according to Sprinzenstein.23 Josef Hirn has deduced that it was the Sicilian sculptor and bronze caster Lodovico del Duca (active c. 1551–1603) whom Sprinzenstein endorsed in 1574 and who was eventually entrusted with the casting of Maximilian’s bronze effigy in 1583, after a long period of negotiations.24 If Hirn is correct in suggesting Sprinzenstein’s contribution in successfully proposing del Duca for the risky task of casting the large bronze effigy, it is most likely that Sprinzenstein knew del Duca from his time in Florence.25 Sprinzenstein’s contribution was evidently deemed satisfactory: only a year later, his services were again sought by the Archduke. On 3 November 1575, Sprinzenstein reported to Ferdinand II that he had successfully handed over the production of certain figures that the Archduke had requested to ‘the best sculptor of Italy’, Giambologna.26 He informed Ferdinand enthusiastically that Giambologna had shown him creations that would simply astonish and mesmerize the court of Innsbruck, including the Archduke.27 What exactly these constituted is still unknown, and the bronzes listed

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in the 1596 inventory of Ferdinand’s collection make it difficult to establish a secure connection with this particular commission.28 What is certain is that the results of Sprinzenstein’s earliest commissions pleased Ferdinand II, who became increasingly interested in engaging him permanently. After the Archduke had made several attempts to secure his employment, he officially entered the services of Archduke Ferdinand II in 1578 as his ‘Geheimer Hofrat’.29 His intimate knowledge of Italy proved invaluable, and his personal connections with the Italian courts continued to run deep.30 Sprinzenstein’s surviving correspondence is testament to his links throughout Italy. Particularly interesting is a letter from Giovanni Ambrogio Saracchi, a member of the famous family of lapidary artists from Milan, sent to Sprinzenstein in April 1582.31 The letter concerns two precious rock-crystal vases set in gold for Archduke Ferdinand: the first, ‘una galera’, a rock-crystal vase in the shape of a galley, and the other, ‘una fontana’, possibly a rock-crystal table fountain.32 Giovanni Ambrogio had initially shown the Archduke these two creations but had ended up taking them back with him to Milan to work on them further to fully satisfy Ferdinand II. As the work had been completed, he was now enquiring with Sprinzenstein if the two vases were still desired by the Archduke. If this were the case, he would have the pieces promptly delivered to Innsbruck in time for Archduke Ferdinand’s nuptials. Saracchi elaborated that these two crystals would certainly be suitable for Ferdinand’s upcoming wedding in May, when he was due to marry his Mantuan niece, Anna Caterina Gonzaga.33 Archduke Ferdinand was an avid collector of virtuoso rockcrystal vessels and owned numerous precious creations from the Milanese families of the Saracchi and Miseroni.34 It remains unclear, however, if Saracchi’s creations met with Ferdinand’s approval, or even if they arrived in time for the wedding festivities.35 The inventory drawn up following Ferdinand II’s death, however, does mention a rockcrystal vessel in the shape of a ship: ‘Moreover, a crystal glass cut in the form of a ship with a figure in-flight holding a dragon on a chain, its base made from molten gold.’36 Unfortunately, its current whereabouts cannot be traced. Perhaps Sprinzenstein’s most notable contribution was to Ferdinand’s collection of arms and armours of famous military men known as the ‘Heldenrüstkammer’ (Cabinet of Heroes’ Arms and Armour). These collections rank among Ferdinand’s most exhaustive artistic undertakings. For the Heldenrüstkammer, Ferdinand envisioned an illustrious chamber filled with the suits of armour and corresponding weapons of the most distinguished ‘condottiere’ of the early modern world, the physical presence of their armour serving not only as a testament to their triumphs but also as an enduring monument to the memory of these great men and their military accomplishments.37 The Tyrolean sovereign, in close cooperation with his secretary, Jakob Schrenck von Notzing, oversaw the necessary acquisitions, and a large number of individuals throughout Europe were engaged in procuring suits of armour, ranging from Habsburg family members and distant relatives, to imperial emissaries and ambassadors, art agents and countless middlemen.38 Sprinzenstein also played a part in Archduke Ferdinand’s acquisition strategy. In his documents, we find an Italian ‘order template’ for the acquisition of armour from Italian sovereigns.39 The document is an official letter signed by Archduke Ferdinand II containing a standardized formula

 Hans Albrecht von Sprinzenstein 37 asking the recipient to yield his suit of armour.40 It finishes with the promise that each donor will receive a copy of the forthcoming illustrated catalogue of Ferdinand’s ‘Heldenrüstkammer’ upon receipt of the armour.41 Sprinzenstein was given this document to petition various Italian rulers and men of arms to generously proffer their suits of armour for Ferdinand’s purposes. A second, undated, letter fragment, written in the Archduke’s hand, includes instructions to Sprinzenstein about another order for the armour of an Italian prince, but unfortunately, the name of the prince in question is illegible.42 Ferdinand’s second large cultural venture, which occupied the final two decades of his life, concerned his collection of portraits, both miniature and full scale.43 The Tyrolean ruler strove to obtain images of the political, ecclesiastic and cultural elite of the early modern world. Yet again, Sprinzenstein and his connections to the Florentine court proved integral to his patron’s efforts. While the importance of the pre-existing Medici portrait collection in the establishment of Ferdinand’s own collection in Ambras is known, the vital role played by Sprinzenstein in facilitating the commissions and in the subsequent transport of these painted effigies to Innsbruck has largely gone unnoticed.44 A letter published in 1993 by Paola Barocchi and Giovanna Gaeta Bertelà confirms the noteworthy contribution of both Sprinzenstein and the Medici to Ferdinand’s collection of portraits.45 The letter, written in April 1581 by a certain ‘Giovanni Alberto Libero’ and addressed to Francesco de’ Medici’s second wife, Bianca Cappello, contains a request for a portrait of the Florentine Grand Duchess for the Archduke’s collection. The author asserted that in the past, ‘I have brought from Florence many, many portraits, and that I have never brought one of Your Highness’ (Bianca Cappello).46 He heard, however, that ‘Alessandro di Brunsino’ (Alessandro Allori) had recently executed a portrait of Bianca that he deemed suitable for his master’s collection and he invited her to give it to him.47 So far, the identity of this Giovanni Alberto Libero has remained obscure. Who was this figure so integral to the commissioning and transport of all these portraits from Florence to Innsbruck? It has been suggested that he was simply an unknown Maestro delle Poste, or else some other long-forgotten intermediary figure.48 In fact, he is none other than Hans Albrecht, Freiherr von Sprinzenstein or, as he was often referred to in Italian, Giovanni Alberto Libero. In a letter of credence from Archduke Ferdinand II, Sprinzenstein is referred to as ‘Giovanni Alberto Libero’, and it is only in the next sentence that his full name is given as ‘Giovanni Alberto Libero Barone di Sprinzenstein et Neuhaus’.49 Bianca Cappello appears to have granted the Baron’s request, and a small-scale copy of Bianca Cappello after Allori’s portrait can still be found in the Ambras portrait collection (Figure 1.2).50 A letter preserved in the Sprinzenstein family archive provides more detailed information on the Florentine portraits he procured from the Tuscan court. In May 1580, Gimignano Lupi wrote to him from Florence regarding the portrait of the famous condottiere Chiappino Vitelli.51 Virginia Savelli-Vitelli, his patron, instructed him to send the portrait ‘della Felice Memoria dell’Illustrissimo Signore Chiappino Vitelli Marchese di Cetona’.52 Gian Luigi di Niccolò Vitelli, Marquess of Cetona, better known as Chiappino Vitelli (1519–75), was a famed Italian condottiere, predominantly

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Figure 1.2  Unknown artist, Portrait of Bianca Cappello, c. 1581. Paper on cardboard, 15 × 9.8 cm. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Photo Credit: KHM-Museumsverband. in the service of the Medici as military commander and envoy in Spain and a cavalier of the Order of the Knights of Santo Stefano.53As a famous military man of his times, his likeness was required for the section dedicated to martial heroes in Ferdinand’s growing collection.54 A miniature version of Chiappino’s portrait still constitutes a part of the Ambras collection (Figure 1.3), as does the suit of armour of his uncle Alessandro Vitelli, another successful military leader, which had entered Ferdinand’s Heldenrüstkammer at an earlier date, most likely also courtesy of Sprinzenstein’s intervention.55 Other rulers would also profit from his impressive abilities as a cultural broker. His competency likewise caught the attention of Ferdinand’s nephews Emperor Rudolf II and Duke Wilhelm of Bavaria, for whom Sprinzenstein accomplished a number of artistic commissions. In August 1595, Sprinzenstein was tasked with procuring a rare piece of jasper for Emperor Rudolf II.56A few months later, in November 1595, while in the military camp at Hatvan on the border with Hungary, the Freiherr sent Rudolf II a range of items, including a pair of scissors once belonging to the Bey of Hatvan, a gold inlaid knife, a golden and jewelled Ottoman comb, and a small golden Ottoman writingbox decorated with a large turquoise gem.57 Sprinzenstein was also in the artistic service of Rudolf ’s brother, Archduke Matthias, who succeeded his brother as Holy Roman

 Hans Albrecht von Sprinzenstein 39

Figure 1.3  Unknown artist, Portrait of Chiappino Vitelli, c. 1580. Paper on cardboard, 7 × 9.9 cm. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Photo Credit: KHM-Museumsverband.

Emperor. In 1598 Sprinzenstein was put in charge of overseeing the construction and decoration of a small private chapel and grotto for Archduke Matthias in the Viennese Hofburg.58 Duke Wilhelm of Bavaria equally understood both Sprinzenstein’s military acumen and his artistic clout. In August 1592, the Bavarian Duke commanded Hans Albrecht to procure for him three large pieces of Bohemian topaz, while another letter from Wilhelm to him, dating to May 1592, contains a discussion regarding rare shells.59 Having spent his life in the service of outstanding collectors, it comes as no surprise that Sprinzenstein established a reputable collection of art and precious artefacts for himself. The inventories of his estate showcase the wide variety of artists he patronized and the great number of important works of art he possessed. In a letter to his wife, Barbara, he informed her that the marble portrait bust he had commissioned of himself in Florence had been brought from Florence to Mantua.60 This work subsequently appears in the inventory of Sprinzenstein’s belongings drawn up after his death in 1598.61 Naturally, his time in Florence had left a strong mark on his collection. While in Medici employment, he had acquired not only paintings from contemporary Florentine artists but also works by Florentine painters of an earlier generation. Thus by 1581, we find in Sprinzenstein’s possession

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works of art by Bernardino Poccetti, alongside works by Jacopo da Pontormo and Francesco Salviati.62 One particular artist listed in the inventory of Sprinzenstein’s collection strongly aligned his taste with that of his master. Archduke Ferdinand was not famous for being a passionate collector of paintings by great masters. Yet the works of the Bassano family of painters, particularly Francesco Bassano the Younger, were well represented at Schloss Ambras. The same can be said for Sprinzenstein’s collection of paintings. In 1580, he travelled to Venice with a letter of recommendation from Archduke Ferdinand II for the Freiherr, addressed to the Venetian nobleman Michele di Michiel.63 It seems to have been an important visit and may have served to facilitate the purchase of works of art and other fine goods. The year following Sprinzenstein’s Venetian sojourn, the inventory of his ‘Gmäll’ (pictures) lists as the very first items ‘vier gar statliche Kunststückh von dem weitberüembten Maister Francisco dal Ponton von Basan so im vergude Ramen eingefaßt’ (four splendid works of art by the well-known master Francesco dal Ponton of Basan, mounted in gold frames), followed by ‘Ittem ein Katz ein Kinigl ain Keßl ain Gluetphannen von dem weitberuembten Maister Francisco del Ponto von Pasan’ gar kundter fetisch gemacht’ (Item a cat, a king, a cauldron, a firepan made by the well-known master Francisco del Ponto of Pasan).64 It is highly likely that it was during his visit to Venice in 1580 that Sprinzenstein obtained five paintings that he was careful to highlight were by Francesco Bassano, and it is even possible that one of Ferdinand’s Bassano canvases made its way to Ambras on this occasion. While Ferdinand’s Bassanos can still be admired today, unfortunately, nothing is left of Sprinzenstein’s once splendid collection.65 At the time of his death, most of his art treasures were in his apartment in Vienna.66 His heirs returned them to Schloss Neuhaus, where in 1626 they fell prey to looting during a rebellion of Upper Austrian farmers.67 An impressive personal collection was perhaps a predictable result of his standing as a high-ranking nobleman along with his vocation as an art agent. What sets Sprinzenstein apart and is testament to his idiosyncrasies as an early modern agent, however, is the fact that he also furnished the collections of his patrons with creations of his own. Hans Albrecht’s services for Ferdinand included contributions to the Archduke’s collection of weaponry and arms. Sprinzenstein’s time in Florence seems to have provided his initial introduction to bronze casting of cannons and other types of artillery. Greatly interested in warfare and in the production of princely armour and weapons, he proceeded to experiment with casting a variety of handheld artilleries as well as larger cannons.68 Among his principal inventions was a lighter, fast-sliding firearm, which he called ‘Aries’, and for which he had sought in vain to obtain a patent during the first half of the 1580s.69 These inventions were often gifted to Ferdinand’s collections of arms and armour. In the inventory compiled upon Ferdinand’s death in 1596, we find such a gift. In Ferdinand’s castle Ruhelust, near Innsbruck, the inventory includes a falconet or falcon, a light cannon on wheels, whose maker is given as Hans Albrecht von Sprinzenstein.70 The entry describes the cannon closely, as being on wheels and carrying the coat of arms of Archduke Ferdinand alongside Sprinzenstein’s

 Hans Albrecht von Sprinzenstein 41 signature, while the cannon itself was painted black and decorated with a variety of armour and motifs of jugglers in red colour.71 Overall, the present account has aimed to provide an initial overview of Sprinzenstein’s cultural activities, principally carried out in the service of Archduke Ferdinand. Sprinzenstein belonged to a group of agent-courtiers, whose strengths lay in their direct access to both the burgeoning art market and its traders, as well as to specialized and sought-after artists. His ability to access both of these spheres, paired with his excellent and unrivalled connections in Italy, made him a highly accomplished and greatly desired artistic broker. In Ferdinand’s employ, Sprinzenstein accomplished a myriad of important diplomatic and military missions.72 Yet it is telling that Hans Albrecht’s first assignment for the Archduke was of an artistic nature. Although today he is mostly known for his role as a diplomatic agent, the artistic dimension of Sprinzenstein’s work for Ferdinand remained a strong component of his responsibilities during his twenty years of service for the Tyrolean Archduke.

Notes 1 I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Mag. Wolfgang Sauber for his exceedingly generous help and unwavering support with the consultation of the Sprinzenstein archival material. 2 On Habsburg collecting, see Sabine Haag, ed., Das Haus Habsburg und die Welt der fürstlichen Kunstkammer (Vienna: Holzhausen Verlag, 2015). Specifically, on Emperor Charles V and his collection, see Fernando Checa Cremades and Juan Luis González García, eds, The Inventories of Charles V and The Imperial Family, 3 vols (Madrid: Villaverde, 2010). On Emperor Ferdinand I, see Wilfried Seipel and Georg Johannes Kugler, eds, Kaiser Ferdinand I: 1503–1564, das Werden der Habsburgermonarchie (Vienna: Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, 2003). Margaret of Austria’s collecting endeavours have been recently addressed by Sabine Haag, Dagmar Eichberger and Annemarie Jordan Gschwend, eds., Women. The Art of Power: Three Women from the House of Habsburg, exh. cat (Vienna-Innsbruck: KHM-Museumsverband, 2018). 3 Elisabeth Scheicher, ‘The Collection of Archduke Ferdinand II at Schloss Ambras. Its Purpose, Composition and Evolution’, in The Origins of Museums: the Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe, ed. Oliver Impey and Arthur MacGregor (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 2017), 29–38. 4 Alfred Auer, ‘Die Sammeltätigkeit Erzherzogs Ferdinand II. in Böhmen’, in Kaiser Ferdinand I. 1503–1564: Das Werden der Habsburgermonarchie, exh cat (Vienna: Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, 2003), 297–303. 5 The most recent and comprehensive publication on Archduke Ferdinand II and his collection is Sabine Haag and Veronika Sandbichler, eds., Ferdinand II: 450 Years Sovereign Ruler of Tyrol. Jubilee Exhibition, exh. cat (Innsbruck-Vienna: Haymon, 2017). 6 An exception is Annemarie Jordan Gschwend’s work on Hans Khevenhüller and his contribution to the collecting efforts of Archduke Ferdinand II; see her forthcoming book: Hans Khevenhüller at the Court of Philip II of Spain: Diplomacy & Consumerism in a Global Empire.

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7 In 1564, Thurn was charged with the commission of ebony and ivory panels in Venice, after designs sent by Ferdinand, and with the purchase of three Roman books of psalms for the choir at Ambras, two new breviaries in ‘folio’ and an old breviary. See David Ritter von Schönherr, ‘Urkunden und Regesten aus dem K. K. Statthalterei-Archiv in Innsbruck’, Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses (JKSAK) 11 (1890): Reg. 7838, 230; Reg. 7852 231 and Reg. 7907, 237. The request for depictions of the unicorn horns followed after Ferdinand had heard about two fine specimens that were kept in the treasury in Venice and wanted to have them both illustrated along with information on their thickness, length and value; see Schönherr, JKSAK 11 (1890): Reg. 7924, 239. For Thurn’s reply, including the requested details and the promise to dispatch the unicorn paintings shortly, see Tiroler Landesarchiv (hereafter TLA), Kunstsachen III, 39, unpaginated, letter from Franz von Thurn to Archduke Ferdinand of Tyrol, 13 January 1565. 8 To list a few, in February 1569, Ferdinand instructed him to contact Daniele Barbaro, Patriarch of Aquileia, who he had heard owned a famous book filled with exquisitely painted fish and to have this book copied by a capable artist, and again in April, Ferdinand informed Dornberg that a certain ‘Maestro Leone Canta’ owned a beautiful book illustrated with all varieties of birds, which he would like to acquire. See Schönherr, JKSAK 14 (1893): Reg. 10176, p. 117; Reg. 10178, p. 117. In November 1569, Archduke Ferdinand entrusted Dornberg with the acquisition of six to eight paintings for him in Venice; he wished them to be mostly of human beings, with only a few of animals or landscapes, and of about the same height, see ibid.: Reg. 10191, p. 119. For Veit von Dornberg’s biographical details, see Silvano Cavazza (1992). ‘Vito Dornberg’, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, 41. Available online: http:​/​/www​​.trec​​cani.​​it​/en​​ciclo​​pedia​​/vito​​-​dorn​​berg_​(Dizi​onari​o-​ Biografi​co). 9 On Ferdinand II’s quest to produce Venetian glass in Innsbruck see Jutta-Anette Page, ‘Venetian Glass in Austria’, in Beyond Venice: Glass in Venetian Style, 1500– 1750 (New York: Corning Museum of Glass, 2004), 20–83. 10 For example, in December 1589, Bernardino was tasked with finding a suitable glassworker to execute eight pieces of glass following the drawing the Archduke had sent him, see Schönherr, JKSAK 17 (1896): Reg. 14141, p. 11. To complete a dazzling missal Ferdinand had commissioned from the Flemish artist Joris Hoefnagel, Bernardino Rosso was employed to furnish the necessary materials in Venice, including ultramarine, red lacquer and turquoise. See TLA, Ferdinandea 247, unpaginated, letter from Ferdinand II to Bernardino Rosso, 7 November 1585; TLA, Ferdinandea 247, unpaginated, letter from Archduke Ferdinand II to Bernardino Rosso, 3 April 1588; TLA Ferdinandea 247, unpaginated, letter from Archduke Ferdinand II to Bernardino Rosso, 28 June 1590, and Schönherr JKSAK 11 (1893): Reg.11153, p. 208. Ferdinand’s illuminated manuscript survives today in the Austrian National Library (Cod. 1784 Han Mag) and has been recently treated by Thea Vignau-Wilberg, Joris and Jacob Hoefnagel: Art and Science Around 1600 (Berlin: Hatje Cantz, 2017), 66–72. 11 Schönherr JKSAK 11(1893): Reg. 10679, p. 168. Adrian von Sittinghausen, the brother-in-law of Archduke Ferdinand’s secretary Schrenck von Notzing, served as a military commander in Genoa and supplied Archduke Ferdinand II and

 Hans Albrecht von Sprinzenstein 43 Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria with a range of precious items from Genoa, see Jacob Stockbauer, Die Kunstbestrebungen am bayerischen Hofe unter Albert V. und seinem Nachfolger Wilhelm V. (Vienna: Braumüller, 1874), 111–16; Josef Hirn, Erzherzog Ferdinand II. von Tirol. Geschichte seiner Regierung und seiner Länder. vol. 1 (Innsbruck: Wagner, 1885), 349 and Josef Hirn, Erzherzog Ferdinand II. von Tirol. Geschichte seiner Regierung und seiner Länder.​vo​l. 2 (Innsbruck: Wagner, 1888), 427. In 1579, he acquired Genoese suits of armour and portraits for Ferdinand, see Friedrich Kenner, ‘Die Porträtsammlung des Erzherzog Ferdinand von Tirol: Die italienischen Bildnisse’, Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 17 (1896): 260. 12 Schönherr JKSAK 11 (1893): Reg. 10687, p. 168; Reg. 10697, p. 170; Reg. 10714, p. 171; Reg. 10723, p. 172; Reg. 10724, p. 172. 13 Brandolino Brandolini, Count of Valmareno sent two portraits of female dwarfs to Ferdinand II; see TLA, Ferdinandea 34, unpaginated, 26 April 1587. On 9 May 1587, Schrenck von Notzing on behalf of the Archduke expressed his gratitude over the portraits but reassured the Count that no further ones were needed; see TLA, Ferdinandea 247, unpaginated, 9 May 1587. One of the portraits is mentioned as: ‘Ain Welschen zwergin ganze pildnus’ in the 1596 inventory compiled after Ferdinand’s death; see Wendelin Boeheim, ‘Inventar des Nachlasses von Erzherzog Ferdinand II. in ‘Ruhelust, Innsbruck und Ambras vom 30. Mai 1596’, Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses in Wien 7 (1888): Reg. 5556, p. 232. The Ambras inventory of 1621 lists both portraits on folio 366r; see Ambraser Kunstkammer-Inventar 1621, Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Kunstkammer, Inv.-Nr. KK 6654. Also, see Friedrich Kenner, ‘Die Porträtsammlung des Erzherzog Ferdinand von Tirol: Die deutschen Bildnisse’, Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 15 (1894): 225. The two portraits seem to be no longer extant. On Brandolini, see Gaspare De Caro (1972). ‘Brandolino Brandolini’. Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, 14. Available online: http:​/​/www​​.trec​​cani.​​it​/en​​ciclo​​pedia​​/bran​​dolin​​o​-bra​​ ndoli​​ni​_re​​s​-e53​​af155​​-87e8​​-11dc​​-​8e9d​​-0016​​357ee​​e51_(​Dizio​nario​-Biog​rafic​o). 14 See Martha McCrory, ‘Coins at the Courts of Innsbruck and Florence: The Numismatic Cabinets of Archduke Ferdinand II of Tyrol and Grand Duke Francesco I de’ Medici’, Journal of the History of Collections 6 (1994): 158–9. 15 The most comprehensive account of Hans Albrecht Sprinzenstein’s life can be found in Leopold Böck’s unpublished doctoral thesis; see Leopold Böck, Hans Albrecht, Reichsfreiherr von Sprinzenstein, 1543–1598 (PhD diss., Universität Innsbruck, Innsbruck, 1949). Josef Hirn’s biography of Archduke Ferdinand II contains an account of Sprinzenstein’s time in Ferdinand II’s diplomatic services, see Hirn, Erzherzog Ferdinand II, vol. 2, 85–90. Also Dorothea Diemer provides a short outline of Sprinzenstein’s career; see Dorothea Diemer, Hubert Gerhard und Carlo di Cesare del Palagio, Bronzeplastiker der Spätrenaissance (Berlin: Deutscher Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft, 2004), 330. 16 Böck’s thesis makes valuable inroads towards untangling Sprinzenstein’s manifold political and diplomatic missions; see Böck, Hans Albrecht, 63–213. Aside from his employment at the Florentine court and long-term engagement at the Tyrolean court of Archduke Ferdinand II, he served at the Bavarian court of Wilhelm V of Bavaria

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and Emperor Rudolf II; see Hirn, Erzherzog Ferdinand II., vol. 2, 107–9 and 174, and Böck, Hans Albrecht, 96–100. 17 On the origins, albeit disputed, of the Sprinzenstein family, see August Zöhrer, ‘Aus der Geschichte der Familie der Grafen von Sprinzenstein’, Oberösterreichische Heimatblätter (1964): 61–7 and Böck, Hans Albrecht, 9–11. 18 Before his father, Hieronymus, Hans Albrecht’s Italian grandfather Paolo Riccio (also referred to as Paul Ritz or Ritius) was in the employ of Emperor Ferdinand I as jurist, personal physician and imperial councillor; see Böck, Hans Albrecht, 7–9. Hieronymus followed in his father’s footsteps and in 1536 was rewarded for his services, when Emperor Ferdinand I ceded the princely residence of Neuhaus to the dynasty. In 1555, the family was allowed to drop the surname Riccio and use the newly gained family title of Freiherren von und zu Sprinzenstein auf Neuhaus; see Arnold Luschin-Ebengreuth, ‘Österreicher an italienischen Universitäten zur Zeit der Reception des römischen Rechts’, Blätter des Vereines für Landeskunde von Niederösterreich 17 (1883): 507 and Böck, Hans Albrecht, 9–11. 19 From an early age, Hans Albrecht also had close ties to the Wittelsbacher dynasty and his father Hieronymus appointed Albrecht V, Duke of Bavaria, as Hans Albrecht’s godfather; see Böck, Hans Albrecht, 15. 20 Sprinzenstein appears on the lists of members of the ducal household as ‘coppiere di Sua Altezza’; see BIA Medici Archive Project Database, Doc. ID: 26674. While at the Medici court, Sprinzenstein’s ties to Archduke Ferdinand became stronger, for example, in 1573, he married Barbara Botsch zu Zwingenburg, one of Johanna’s ladies-in-waiting and daughter of Archduke Ferdinand II’s chamberlain, Simon Botsch zu Zwingenburg; see Böck, Hans Albrecht, 57–62 and Sarah Bercusson, ‘GiftGiving, Consumption and the Female Court in Sixteenth-Century Italy’ (PhD diss., Queen Mary University of London, London, 2009), 110–11 and 250. 21 Sprinzenstein’s cultural activities in Florence during his tenure as cupbearer of Johanna of Austria are fully explored in the present author’s forthcoming doctoral thesis. 22 Dorothea Diemer, ‘Kaiser Maximilians Kenotaph in der Innsbrucker Hofkirche – seine Vorgeschichte, seine Entstehung und seine Künstler’, in Maximilian I. Der Kenotaph in der Hofkirche zu Innsbruck, ed. Christoph Haidacher and Dorothea Diemer (Innsbruck: Haymon, 2004), 55–8. 23 Schönherr JKSAK 11 (1893): Reg. 10515, p. 152. 24 Hirn, Erzherzog Ferdinand II., vol. 1, 375. On the Sicilian sculptor, Lodovico del Duca, Beatrice Hernad (1988). ‘Lodovico del Duca’, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 36. Available at http:​/​/www​​.trec​​cani.​​it​/en​​ciclo​​pedia​​/lodo​​vico-​​del​ -d​​uca_%​​28Diz​​ionar​​io​-​Bi​​ograf​​i co​%2​​9. Del Duca’s involvement on the Imperial cenotaph has been discussed by Diemer, Kaiser Maximilians Kenotaph, 32–64 and 55–7. 25 A Florentine connection to Lodovico del Duca is suggested by the presence of a bronze copy of the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius signed by the Sicilian artist in the 1553 inventory of the Guardaroba Medicea, which today is in the collections of the Museo Nazionale del Bargello. The 1553 inventory of the Medici Guardaroba mentions ‘Uno cavallo di bronzo d’altezza di 2/3, ritratto da quello di Santo Ianni in Campidoglio di Roma con uomo suvi’; see Archivio di Stato Firenze, Guardaroba Medicea 28, c. 41. On Lodovico del Duca’s Marcus Aurelius statuette, see Claudia

 Hans Albrecht von Sprinzenstein 45 Beltramo Ceppi and Nicoletta Confuorto, eds, Firenze e la Toscana dei Medici nell’Europa del Cinquecento. Palazzo Vecchio: Committenza e Collezionismo Medicei 1537–1610 (Florence: Electa Editrice, 1980), 323. 26 Hirn, Erzherzog Ferdinand II., vol. 2, 86. 27 Ibid. 28 In Ferdinand II’s Kunst-and Wunderkammer, cabinet number thirteen was dedicated to metal and bronze works; see Boeheim, ‘Inventar des Nachlasses’, 298–300. 29 Böck, Hans Albrecht, 67. 30 For example, Sprinzenstein’s sister, Magdalena, went to the Florentine court with him and stayed there as one of Johanna of Austria’s ladies-in-waiting until November 1570, when she married the Lord of Pienza, Scipione Piccolomini d’Aragona; see Böck, Hans Albrecht, 16–18, 21, 50 and Bercusson, Gift-giving, 5–96 and 105–7. His other sister, Lucretia (1542–62), served the Duchess of Mantua, Eleonora of Austria, Ferdinand’s sister, as lady-in-waiting at the Mantuan court and later married Paolo degli Ippoliti, Count of Gazoldo; see Böck, Hans Albrecht, 9, 16, 19 and 36. 31 Schlossarchiv Sprinzenstein, Johann Albrecht von und zu Sprinzenstein (herafter Schlossarchiv Sprinzenstein), letter from Giovanni Ambrogio Saracchi to Hans Albrecht von Sprinzenstein, 1 April 1582. On Giovanni Ambrogio Saracchi and his illustrious family of lapidaries, see Rudolf Distelberger, ‘Die Sarachi-Werkstatt und Annibale Fontana’, Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 71 (1975): 95–164. 32 Schlossarchiv Sprinzenstein, letter from Giovanni Ambrogio Saracchi to Hans Albrecht von Sprinzenstein, 1 April 1582. 33 In May 1582, Archduke Ferdinand II married Anna Caterina Gonzaga, the daughter of his sister Eleonora of Austria, Duchess of Mantua; see Elena Taddei, ‘Anna Caterina Gonzaga und ihre Zeit: der italienische Einfluss am Innsbrucker Hof ’, in Der Innsbrucker Hof, ed. Heinz Noflatscher and Jan Paul Niederkorn (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2005), 213–40. 34 The very first cabinet in his Kunstkammer was devoted exclusively to the art of stonecutting; see Boeheim, ‘Inventar des Nachlasses’, 279–81. 35 In the letter’s postscript, Giovanni Ambrogio Saracchi included a message from his brother-in-law, the sculptor and glasscutter Annibale Fontana, who, as Giovanni Ambrogio affirmed, was particularly fond of the Freiherr. Fontana sent his best wishes to Sprinzenstein and wanted to notify the Baron that he was working on a series of marble statues for the famous church of Santa Maria presso San Celso in Milan; see Schlossarchiv Sprinzenstein, letter from Giovanni Ambrogio Saracchi to Hans Albrecht von Sprinzenstein, 1 April 1582. On Annibale Fontana’s work on Santa Maria presso San Celso, see Anna Patrizia Valerio, ‘Annibale Fontana e il paliotto dell’Altare della Vergine dei Miracoli in Santa Maria presso San Celso’, Paragone 24 (1973): 32–53. 36 Boeheim, ‘Inventar des Nachlasses’, 279. A similar vessel to the one described in the letter survives in the Schatzkammer of the Munich Residenz; it is a rock-crystal bowl in the shape of a galley, also attributed to the Saracchi workshop, which, before having been remounted, was complete with masts and sails of gold and made for Ferdinand’s brother-in-law Duke Albrecht of Bavaria in 1579, see Distelberger, Die Sarachi-Werkstatt, 120–1. 37 See Elisabeth Scheicher, ‘Historiography and Display: The “Heldenrüstkammer” of Archduke Ferdinand II in Schloss Ambras’, Journal of the History of Collections

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2 (1990): 69–79 and, more recently, Thomas Kuster, ‘“dises heroische theatrum”: The Heldenrüstkammer at Ambras Castle’, in exh. cat. Ferdinand II: 450 Years Sovereign Ruler of Tyrol. Jubilee Exhibition, ed. Sabine Haag and Veronika Sandbichler (Innsbruck-Vienna: Haymon, 2017), 83–8. 38 Kuster, ‘dises heroische theatrum’, 84–5. 39 Schlossarchiv Sprinzenstein, Italian order template from Archduke Ferdinand II of Tyrol for suits of armour, letter dated 12 December 1580. 40 A similar mandate in Latin was published by Kuster in the Ferdinand II anniversary exhibition catalogue, Kuster, ‘dises heroische theatrum’, 233. 41 The book mentioned in the letter refers to the Armamentarium Heroicum, a magnificent illustrated catalogue of Archduke Ferdinand II’s collection of military heroes’ armour, written by his secretary Jakob Schrenck von Notzing and decorated by the artists Dominicus Custos and Giovanni Battista Fontana with engravings of the former owners in their armour; see Scheicher, Historiography and Display, 69–79. 42 Schlossarchiv Sprinzenstein, undated letter fragment with instructions for Hans Albrecht von Sprinzenstein for the acquisition of armour. Also see Böck, Hans Albrecht, 81–2. 43 Friedrich Kenner, ‘Die Porträtsammlung des Erzherzog Ferdinand von Tirol: Einleitung’, Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 14 (1893): 37–186. 44 Kenner, ‘Die Porträtsammlung: Die italienischen Bildnisse’, 135–73. 45 Paola Barocchi and Giovanna Gaeta Bertelà, Collezionismo mediceo. Cosimo I, Francesco I e il cardinale Ferdinando. Documenti (1540–1587) (Modena: Panini, 1993), 194. 46 Ibid. 47 The ricordi of Alessandro Allori confirm this statement, as in 1580, Allori’s records show that he had returned the Grand Duchess’s liveries, which he had been using to finish a portrait of Bianca; see Igino Benvenuto Supino, I ricordi di Alessandro Allori (Florence: Barbèra, 1908), 25–6 and Karla Langedijk, The Portraits of the Medici: 15th-18th Centuries, vol. 2 (Florence: Studio Per Edizioni Scelte, 1981), 314. The Ambras miniature is a close-up of Bianca Cappello’s face taken most likely from a full- or knee-length depiction of the Florentine Grand Duchess. 48 BIA Medici Archive Project Database, Doc. ID: 16816. 49 Libero in this context was used as a direct translation of the German title of Freiherr, see Schlossarchiv Sprinzenstein, letter of credence from Archduke Ferdinand II for Hans Albrecht von Sprinzenstein, 18 July 1580. 50 Kenner, ‘Die Porträtsammlung: Die italienischen Bildnisse’, 164–5. Aside from the miniature portrait of Bianca Cappello based on Allori’s portrayal of the Grand Duchess of Florence, a second painted effigy of her survives in the Ambras miniature collection, which shows her in profile wearing the grand-ducal crown, which, if Sprinzenstein’s assertion is true, must have entered the collection at a later date. 51 Schlossarchiv Sprinzenstein, letter from Gimignano Lupi from Florence to Hans Albrecht von Sprinzenstein, 19 May 1580. 52 Ibid., letter from Gimignano Lupi from Florence to Hans Albrecht von Sprinzenstein, 19 May 1580. Virginia Savelli-Vitelli, Signora di Antrodoco, was Chiappino’s daughter-in-law, the wife of his son Gian Vincenzo Vitelli; see BIA Medici Archive Project Database Person ID: 16694.

 Hans Albrecht von Sprinzenstein 47 53 On Chiappino Vitelli, see Maurizio Arfaioli, ‘Alla destra del Duca: La figura di Chiappino Vitelli nel Contesto degli Affreschi Vasariani del Salone dei Cinquecento’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorisches Institutes in Florenz 51, 1/2 (2007): 271–8. 54 In May 1587, seven years after Vitelli’s portrait entered the Ambras collection, the Medici portraitist Cristofano dell’Altissimo consigned a portrait of Chiappino Vitelli to the Medicean portrait collection; see Silvia Meloni Trkulja, (1985), ‘Cristofano di Papi dell’Altissimo’, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 31. Available online: http:​/​/www​​.trec​​cani.​​it​/en​​ciclo​​pedia​​/rice​​rca​/C​​risto​​fano-​​​di​-Pa​​pi​-de​​ll’Al​tissi​ mo. The Ambras miniature of Chiappino seems to be derived from an independent bust-length portrait of the condottiere and is not, like the portrait by Cristoforo dell’Altissimo in the Medici collections, based on the depiction of Chiappino in a fresco by Giorgio Vasari in the Palazzo Vecchio’s Sala di Cinquecento; see Arfaioli, ‘Alla destra del Duca’, 271–8. If Lupi sent a large-scale portrait of Chiappino, which was used to paint the Ambras miniature, or if he sent a small-scale portrait copy is not known. 55 The suit of armour of Alessandro Vitelli forms part of the Rüst-und Jagdkammer in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna; see Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Hofjagd-und Rüstkammer, Inv. Nr: HJRK_A_350. 56 Schlossarchiv Sprinzenstein, letter from the imperial Chamberlain Hans Popp to Hans Albrecht von Sprinzenstein, 23 August 1595. 57 Schlossarchiv Sprinzenstein, letter from Hans Albrecht von Sprinzenstein in Vienna to the imperial Chamberlain Hans Popp, 24 November 1596. 58 Schlossarchiv Sprinzenstein, letter from Archduke Matthias to Duke Maximilian of Bavaria, letter dated 1595 and Diemer, Hubert Gerhard und Carlo di Cesare del Palagio, 330–1. 59 Schlossarchiv Sprinzenstein, letter from Duke Wilhelm of Bavaria to Hans Albrecht von Sprinzenstein in Prague, 10 August 1592 (the letter includes a drawing of the shape of the requested topaz) and Schlossarchiv Sprinzenstein, letter from Duke Wilhelm of Bavaria to Hans Albrecht von Sprinzenstein in Innsbruck, 12 May 1592. In a financial settlement from 1593, we find further evidence of Sprinzenstein’s artistic service for Wilhelm of Bavaria. Here, it is stated that the Duke still owed him money for the following services: first, he was owed payment for a painting by a certain Georg Karl that the artist had made for Wilhelm on Sprinzenstein’s commission; second, he was waiting to be reimbursed for the precious jewels that Hans Albrecht had bought in Prague for the Bavarian Duke; and finally, he was owed 1,000 crowns he had spent on a prized horse that the courtier later bestowed upon Rudolf II on Wilhelm’s behalf, see Ibid., expense report from Hans Albrecht von Sprinzenstein for Duke Wilhelm of Bavaria, February 1593. 60 Ibid., letter from Hans Albrecht von Sprinzenstein to his wife Barbara, 10 March 1583. 61 After Hans Albrecht’s death, a full inventory of his possessions at his residence Neuhaus was compiled in 1598, which includes his entire collection of artworks and it also lists the marble portrait bust he had shipped from Florence. The Schlossarchiv Sprinzenstein holds a contemporary copy of this inventory; see Ibid., Inventar der Kunst, Costüme und Waffensammlung des Feldzeugmeisters Johann Albrecht Freiherrn zu Sprinzenstein, 1598, no. 40. The original is in the Austrian State Archives.

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62 The painting by Francesco Salviati is listed in Sprinzenstein’s 1581 inventory as ‘Item a beautiful picture of Mary, high roughly one and a half ell, by Francesco Salviato, an accomplished Florentine painter’; the panel by Jacopo Pontormo is described as ‘Item another picture of Mary by Jacopo Pontormo’. The next object is described as ‘Item a beautiful fresco with a landscape and nude children painted by the master of painters Bernardino of Florence’; see Schlossarchiv Sprinzenstein, Hans Albrecht von Sprinzenstein’s 1581 inventory of artworks (the full inventory will be published by the author shortly). 63 Schlossarchiv Sprinzenstein, letter of credence from Archduke Ferdinand II for Hans Albrecht von Sprinzenstein, 18 July 1580. 64 Francesco Bassano had a workshop in Venice from 1578. One may be tempted to identify the four panels mentioned in the Sprinzenstein inventory with a set of The Four Seasons, which his father Jacopo had devised and of which Francesco created several versions, see Carlo Corsato, ‘Production and Reproduction in the Workshop of Jacopo Bassano: Four Matrices for the “Four Seasons” in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna’, Jahrbuch des Kunsthistorischen Museums Wien 12 (2010): 40–53. 65 Haag and Sandbichler, Ferdinand II: 450 Years Sovereign Ruler of Tyrol, Catalogue entries 6.6.1 and 6.6.2. 66 Böck, Hans Albrecht, 245–6. 67 The looters carried away paintings, precious suits of armour, weapons, sculptures, costly garments and fabrics. His nephews estimated the worth of Hans Albrecht’s art collection as amounting to 30,000 Gulden, see Schlossarchiv Sprinzenstein, letter from Rudolf Freiherr von Sprinzenstein to his brother Wenzel Reichard von Sprinzenstein, 18 January 1627. 68 From the beginning of his time working for Ferdinand, Sprinzenstein appears to have simultaneously cultivated his own passion for collecting bronzes, as well as his interest in the actual process of casting bronze. The Archduke even gifted Sprinzenstein the tradition-steeped foundry in Mühlau near Innsbruck; see Hirn, Erzherzog Ferdinand II, 88 and Böck, Hans Albrecht, 248–50. 69 Schlossarchiv Sprinzenstein, letter from Hans Albrecht von Sprinzenstein to Duke Wilhelm of Bavaria, 16 February 1583. 70 Boeheim, ‘Inventar des Nachlasses’, 245. 71 Ibid. 72 Sprinzenstein’s activities in dynastic matters were also of great importance. For example, he was in charge of procuring an Italian bride for Archduke Ferdinand’s son Karl, Markgraf von Burgau; see Böck, Hans Albrecht, 71–3 and TLA, Ferdinandea 151.

2

Marco Boschini and the artists of his time Linda Borean1

In order to carry out a comprehensive investigation of the relationship between Boschini and the artists of his time, we should take into account the entire spectrum of his activities in the Venetian artistic milieu of the mid-seventeenth century: his militant role as a critic and advisor and his role as a painting connoisseur for the Venetian magistracy. Such a task exceeds the scope of my contribution, in which I shall therefore limit myself to the analysis of the seventh and eight ‘winds’ of the well-known poem published by Boschini in 1660 and entitled La Carta del navegar pitoresco (from now on Carta). This was conceived by the author as a dialogue between a painting collector (called Eccellenza) and a connoisseur (called Compare). In particular, I will consider the specifics of the modern picture gallery designed for the Palace of the Eccellenza on the Grand Canal: even if the Eccellenza is a fictional title in the poem, it seems as if the Venetian patron and art collector Giovanni Nani may be identified with the Eccellenza, while the Compare is Boschini himself.2 Since the publication of the critical edition of the Carta by Anna Pallucchini, the study of seventeenth-century Venetian art has undergone considerable development with respect to the production of catalogues raisonnés, the study of the dynamics of patronage and collecting, and the historiography, as well as the art market. In the light of these significant achievements, the network in which Boschini operated and related to contemporary agents of artistic change can be better framed and understood. It is precisely on Boschini’s role in the Venetian art market that I shall shed new light in the present contribution. We know that Boschini provided expertise and was actively engaged in several commercial transactions, together with agents like Paolo del Sera and that he advised some of the most prestigious art collectors of the time, such as Cardinal Leopoldo de Medici. Furthermore, the Carta is dedicated to the Austrian Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, very well known for being one of the most important patrons and collectors in Europe. But in the Carta Boschini uses the Venetian dialect, perhaps because he intended the poem as a sort of artistic and commercial guide for local collectors – notably that belonging to the new nobility or to the class of rich merchants.

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The seventh wind In the seventh ‘wind’, Boschini illustrates and explains the activity ‘of each one of our good living painters’.3 Rather than writing as a historian, restricting himself to reporting the ever-evolving reality unfolding around him, Boschini speaks as a chronicler. Hence, the ‘wind’ starts with a reflection on the working conditions of the artists, which seems to be a logical consequence of the critic’s direct knowledge of the art market. Boschini emphasizes the ignorance of patrons and collectors, as well as the intense level of competition between the artists themselves. He affirms, therefore, that ‘the painter strives towards glory with all his ingenuity and makes every effort to light up a beam, a torch’ and this ‘in order to, one day, enjoy the fruits of his labours’.4 Boschini’s words are significant beyond their obvious rhetorical emphasis. They are, in fact, symptomatic of the competitive Venetian art market of the mid-seventeenth century, characterized by a lack of public commissions and the constant arrival in the city of young (and less young) foreign artists seeking the favours of collectors and patrons. In general terms, the status and the professional careers of the painters are at the centre of an increasing transformation: in order to achieve success or gain money, they play multiple roles, becoming experts, agents and restorers for collectors and art dealers.5 Some of them, as Boschini pointed out, started their careers by executing copies and replicas derived from Old Masters paintings: this is the case, for example, of the German-born Johann Carl Loth, who moved to Venice around 1655. In this competitive artistic scenario, where many potential collectors ‘gaze with their ears’,6 only ‘[those] who are talented’ – to quote Bernardo Strozzi – can aim at success.7 Boschini’s biographical sketch of the Pantheon of living Venetian painters, as presented to the Eccellenza, reveals the critic’s unrestrained and personal appreciation, exceeding the accepted standards of judgement associated with his role as a connoisseur. Not accidentally, Boschini’s biographies focus mainly on the work of the modern-day Venetian Apelles, who enriched the city’s collections, mainly through his mediation. Aware of the potential controversy this might cause, Boschini takes the necessary precautions in his seventh ‘wind’, ensuring his impartiality and presenting many ‘virtuous knights’ to the Eccellenza.8 Despite his good intentions, Boschini did not quite succeed in remaining super partes. At times, in fact, the choices he makes in the Carta are so subjective, sometimes driven by his friendships, that his omission of specific artists, including even those who were much appreciated by the most refined and cultured collectors of the time, makes his tendentiousness undeniable. The absence of Guido Cagnacci and Sebastiano Mazzoni, in particular, has long been underlined by scholars, and Boschini’s lack of objectivity still requires explanation.9 Certainly, Boschini did not shy away from opportunities, as is proven by his praiseworthy description to Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici of the most sought-after Venetian painters, including the Tuscan Mazzoni, who ‘does his share with brushes and with the pen he poetises in good spirit, although sometimes he leans towards the satirical’.10 Boschini’s letter to de’ Medici dates fifteen years after the Carta, which might make us cautious in judging its content. All in all, however, Mazzoni, having settled in Venice in the 1640s, was most probably Boschini’s only real competitor from the

 Marco Boschini and the Artists of His Time 51 point of view of either artistic theory or direct knowledge of the art market. Mazzoni’s rivalry could, therefore, have been potentially beneficial in so far as it could have made possible a shift from the stale debate on the pre-eminence of drawing over colour to a criticism untainted by campanilistic undertones, favouring one or the other painter based on his place of birth.11 As a matter of fact, in Boschini’s literary parade of modern artists, a place is reserved for a number of non-Venetian artists (foresti), who had won the favour of the Venetian clientèle. This was the case of Antonio Triva, exponent of the academic Bolognese tradition, who had a penchant for the distinctive style of the Veneto; Giambattista Langetti, about whom more will follow and Pietro Bellotti, whose biography in the Carta is significant in many respects. First of all, Bellotti’s painterly style jarred with Boschini’s standards of taste. At the time when the critic was writing the Carta (1656–60), however, Bellotti was gaining momentum on the Venetian market, as testified by sources and documents now available on local collections of the time.12 Bellotti saw in Boschini a much more dynamic figure than his biographer Giorgio Nicolini. The two-way traffic of mutual appreciation led to the commission of Boschini’s engraved portrait as a man of letters to Bellotti, which was to be published in the Carta. The critic thought that Bellotti, whom he referred to as ‘a double of myself ’, was the most suitable artist to transform a glimpse of a man’s life and work into an eternal work of art.13 In addition, Bellotti was commissioned for the portrait of the Eccellenza, intended for the gallery he had designed with the Compare.

The eighth wind The eighth ‘wind’ is the most experimental of the Carta and therefore also open to interpretation. Although the chapter seems to take its cue from Giambattista Marino’s Galeria (1620),14 it is rather the Eccellenza’s visual education, as it developed through his experience as a collector and his habitual conversations with the Compare, that surfaces more prominently. The eighth ‘wind’ should thus be regarded as the direct by-product of a connoisseur’s deep awareness of the taste and the business of the art of his time.15 The plan to assemble a ‘modern Gallery’ (moderna Galaria) is first expressed in the seventh ‘wind’ and it seems to derive from Boschini’s appreciation of living artists as much as the already existing collections vividly evoked in the poem. Letting the real agents of the market interpret their role in the construction of a collection, the Eccellenza openly states that it is his responsibility to appease the genius of painting.16 It is also his intention not to have one ‘paint only out of interest’ (depenzer sol per interesso) and with the prospect of an unattainable post-mortem fame.17 The Compare, on the other hand, emphasizes the economic implications of collecting and the value of such an enterprise as a commercial investment.18 Through the rhetorical device of a letter, Boschini imagines sending the Eccellenza the sketches produced by the artists after the input of the commissioners’ textual and conceptual instructions, mostly deriving from the individual patron’s desire to own ‘things that please me’ (cose che me

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agrada).19 The importance placed on the aesthetic enjoyment derived from artworks is certainly symptomatic of the ever-growing role of collectors as arbiters of taste. Boschini must have had to deal with the latter, one assumes, on a regular basis, given his involvement in the art market. The sketches Boschini mentions in his letter, although incomplete due to the death of Francesco Maffei on 2 July 1660, were translated by the critic himself into the medium of engraving. As such, they enhanced the Carta’s text visually. In the first edition of the work the engravings were flanked by descriptions. These attracted the attention of amateurs and collectors, for not only did they add a further dimension to the reading experience but they exceeded by far the merely textual nature of similar contemporary publications. Boschini’s work, as a matter of fact, could not easily be associated with the elegant collections of engravings illustrating the lavishness and prestige of princely collections with markedly propagandistic undertones. The display of the cultural magnificence of sovereigns was most certainly not the critic’s aim.20 This can be demonstrated by contrasting the Carta with, for instance, David Teniers’s Theatre of Painting. First published in 1660, and most certainly known to Boschini, the Theatre was conceived as a literary endeavour.21 Boschini’s work, on the other hand, was pitched to an audience of expert connoisseurs of art from the Veneto and highbrow collectors. Rather than following in the footsteps of Teniers, the ‘design fiction’ devised by Boschini was closer to Marino’s Galeria, Giulio Strozzi’s Venice Built (Venezia edificata, 1624) and Fabio Glissenti’s treatise Against the Regret of Dying or Athanotophilia (Contro il dispiacer del morir detto Athanatophilia, 1619), especially the latter’s conjuring of a palace.22 These three precedents emerged from, and their content revolved around, the complex networks of relations existing between collectors, as well as between their ideal and real literary collections. The disposition of the picture gallery between two other environments, respectively, containing Venetian Masters and foreign Masters, was articulated thematically and covered literary subjects, personifications and allegories drawn from Cesare Ripa’s Iconology, genre painting, landscapes and still lifes. All the paintings were accompanied by explanatory titles (tituli). From mere assets, paintings came to be regarded as objects speaking a proper language. The latter, it does not seem too far-fetched to suppose, bore some connections with the language of emblems, articulating the verbal interplay of eye and mind during their programmatic discussion of the pleasures embedded in a collection.23

A matter of taste: Boschini and the artists The painters Boschini chose for the rooms displaying the marvels of Venice are central to the latter part of the Carta and it is therefore important to provide a complete list of their names: Nicolò Renieri, Daniel van den Dyck, Pietro Ricchi, Filippo Bianchi, Antonio Triva, Giambattista Langetti, Bartolomeo Donati, Monsù Cussin, Francesco Mantovano, Joseph Heintz, Monsù Giron, Tilman van Gameren,24 Domenico Marolì, Corado Filgher, Matteo Ponzone, Pietro Liberi, Pietro Vecchia, Girolamo Forabosco,

 Marco Boschini and the Artists of His Time 53 Carlo Ridolfi, Bartolomeo Scaligero, Pietro Bellotti, Dario Varotari, Stefano Paoluzzi, Ermanno Stroiffi, Francesco Maffei, Giacomo Maffei and Domenico Bruni. To the latter, Boschini entrusted the decoration of the gallery’s quadrature ceiling, whose scheme did not differ much from that of Villa Foscarini at Stra,25 also painted by Bruni. The literary fiction contrived by Boschini catered to the advertising needs of young artists hunting for fame or to those who had recently settled in Venice from elsewhere as, for example, the Emilian Triva.26 For the more established painters, instead, the Carta acted as an endorsement of their inclusion in the canon observed in local picture galleries; for those, who were appreciated by collectors but not by Boschini, like Cagnacci or Mazzoni, it is unclear if the exclusion from the Carta limited their success: judging from archival evidence, it seems that in fact Boschini’s ostracism did not produce many consequences.27 The commissions were given, or so it seems, to the artists celebrated in the seventh ‘wind’. Female artists such as Chiara Varotari, Flaminia Triva and the daughters of Nicolò Renieri were all left out. The chosen male artists evidently shared Boschini’s taste or were included by the critic for utilitarian reasons or even nepotism. This, of course, severely affected the Carta’s intellectual integrity. It should be observed that some of Boschini’s choices may come across as rather surprising, regardless of his tendentiousness. The name of Matteo Ponzone, for example, a member of the old guard of late Mannerism and the dean of a generation by then almost completely extinct, suits the case. Ponzone was entrusted with the production of the ‘glorious ceiling’ (sofito glorioso)28 of the gallery, which in Bruni’s project had been purposefully left out. A similarly surprising inclusion is that of Carlo Ridolfi, who died in 165829 and could hardly be counted as ‘excellent’, if only because he was best known for his writings rather than for his paintings. Boschini and his patron, as a matter of fact, commissioned Ridolfi for a celebratory allegory of the Marvels of Art (Le Maraviglie dell’arte), a historiographic enterprise of vast scope, which, in an ironic twist of taste, Boschini himself sarcastically criticized.30 Boschini included in the seventh ‘wind’ a number of artists about whom little or no information has been retrieved by modern scholars, who have attempted to establish connections between the painters, their inventions as listed in the Carta and other comparable texts. The lives of Stefano Paoluzzi and Filippo Bianchi, for instance, are still obscure. Understanding or at least questioning why Boschini decided to include such artists seems nonetheless worth the attempt. In the sixth ‘wind’, for example, Boschini admitted that among the Masters he had selected for the Eccellenza’s collection, despite their undeniable skill (one should only think about Bartolomeo Scaligero, the ‘excellent’ promoter of Padovanino, to use Luigi Lanzi’s words),31 none could be regarded as an authentic genius. For this reason, Boschini’s canon has been relegated by later critics to the status of mere parody, especially when confronted with the Funeral Made by Venetian Painting (Funeral fato da la Pitura Venetiana), an encomiastic poem Boschini wrote in 1663 on the occasion of the death of Alfonso IV d’Este.32 Among the painters worthy of entering the Eccellenza’s collection, only a few seem to have been present in the picture galleries of the time, environments with which Boschini was familiar both as a critic and a connoisseur. The inclusion of Pietro Liberi, Pietro Vecchia and Nicolò Renieri was certainly driven by their mutual friendship with

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Boschini. This, however, might be mitigated by the ambiguous verses and the motto contained in the Allegory of Generosity,33 which Boschini addressed to Renieri. In it, the critic made a veiled criticism of the painter’s style, which evidently did not meet the critic’s standards of taste.34 The involvement of Daniel van den Dyck, husband of one of Renieri’s daughters, also seems rather obvious, given his popularity between 1653 and 1654, which he achieved through the support of the prince of the Incogniti, Gianfrancesco Loredan, a close friend of Boschini.35 The Flemish painter’s inclusion might also be seen as a means through which Boschini sought to expand his prestigious clientèle beyond the confines of the Veneto. As a matter of fact, Van den Dyck’s move to the court of Carlo II Gonzaga in Mantua dates to around 1657.36 There, he was nominated prefect of the duchy’s architectural and artistic projects (fabbriche). As a prefect, he was also in charge of overseeing the monetary flow deriving from dynastic bequests, a duty which was facilitated by his contacts in the Venetian art market.37 For the Eccellenza’s gallery, Van den Dyck painted Jove Adorning Virtue in a Regal Robe. The distribution of the figures across the space in the canvas intended for the Compare recalls that of Mercury Conducting Psyche to Olympus, frescoed in the barchessa of Villa Venier’s eastern wing at Mira. The latter work must have been carried out either before the move to Mantua or, as has recently been suggested, during his Venetian stay of 1657–63, when the artist passed away.38 Boschini seems to have followed some other principles in his choice of artists to be included in the gallery under construction. The expectations of the Venetian market, for example, were held in very high regard. An artist thus selected was Giambattista Langetti. Upon his arrival in Venice in 1655, he embraced natural realism and painting from life, stripped of all Baroque aspects. Langetti was a follower of Caravaggio, whose art was not marketable in seventeenth-century Venice, leaving most critics completely cold, Boschini included. When confronted with Langetti’s Apollo Flaying Marsyas, Boschini capitulated, overwhelmed by its beauty. It is ‘a huge work that stupefies’ (un’operona che rende stupor), he said, to the point that he could clearly hear the satyr’s screams coming from the canvas.39 Although Boschini waxed lyrical about Langetti, he also had some reservations. In the critic’s view, the artist could have certainly made the effort to ‘draw his brush’ (sfodrar el penel), a most fitting expression evoking the militant side of the artist so celebrated in the Carta. Langetti should have, however, avoided depicting suicidal and homicidal scenes, opting instead for a more restrained mythological episode such as Bacchus and a Satyr. Boschini’s appreciation was based on two specific characteristics of the painting representing Apollo and Marsyas: on the one hand, the drama and lighting of the work, which recalled that of Jacopo Tintoretto, an artist Boschini admired deeply; and on the other, Langetti’s increasing popularity among the most avantgarde and well-to-do collectors. The Genoese reached the apex of fame in 1663, when he received the commission for a Crucifixion altarpiece for the church of the Terese. Although apparently small and peripheral, the Terese was by no means a secondary church, as the Doge attended it regularly. An artist left out of Boschini’s gallery was, instead, the rising star of the Tenebrosi, the German Johann Carl Loth, who had moved to Venice and immediately captured

 Marco Boschini and the Artists of His Time 55 the critic’s attention. Boschini refers to him in relation to Tintoretto’s canvases at San Rocco.40 Boschini, whose aim was to become the most eminent agent on the Venetian cultural and artistic scene, must have certainly been the target of collectors. In this sense, one might question whether the presence in the gallery of the lesser-known Messinese artist Domenico Marolì (1612–76), author of not more than ten paintings, is due to the mediation of Giovanni Nani. As has recently been demonstrated, in Nani’s well-known inventory of paintings from 1668, five works are ascribed to Marolì.41 Among these is the extraordinary Euclid of Megara Disguising Himself as a Woman to Attend the Lectures of Socrates in Athens, which resurfaced on the market in 2008.42 The philosophical nature of the painting is most certainly connected with the figure of a learned man, whose profile would suit Nani perfectly. Another work ascribed to Marolì in the inventory was a naval battle celebrating the heroic deeds of Giovanni’s father, Federico Nani. The work relates to events in 1617 during the conspiracy of Bedmar. On that occasion, Federico led the Venetian army against the naval campaign launched by the Duke of Osuna to gain complete control over the Adriatic Sea at the expense of the Venetians.43 Finally, a number of other paintings were also attributed to Marolì: Tale of the Fishermen, Small Figures (Favola delli Pescatori, figure picciole) and The Journey of Abraham with Several Animals and Goods, which are Loaded on Horses and Donkeys, Small Figures in a Landscape (Viaggio d’Abram con molti animali et masseritie che vengono caricate sopra cavalli et aseni, figure picole in bel Paese).44 The Journey of Abraham, in particular, presented an arcadian and pastoral scene reminiscent of the Bassano tradition and of Jacopo Dal Ponte’s A Small Shepherd with Animals.45 The latter had been conceived especially for the Eccellenza and showcased incredible skills in the representation of animal painting executed from life. Between around 1650 and 1657 Marolì sojourned in Venice, probably after having fallen out with his master Antonio Barbalonga, a pupil of Domenichino.46 To my knowledge, Marolì’s name is not recorded in any other seventeenth-century Venetian account than Nani’s. This would prove that he never managed to reach significant popularity, despite Boschini’s protection and trust. Not even the ever-popular seascapes and landscapes he produced for the critic were convincing enough for him to be appreciated by more than one collector.

Winds of change At the beginning of the 1660s, the taste of Venetian collectors had become clearly defined. The genres preferred by the élites no longer reflected Boschini’s own taste, a discrepancy which he never ceased to emphasize. The critic’s dislike was mainly due to the fact that Venetian collectors preferred subjects which required the skills of foreign artists. Boschini was thinking specifically about genre painting, still lifes, landscapes and battle scenes, which he labelled ‘the bambo-jumbo of art’.47 Despite the

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critic’s scorn, he admitted that a collection of contemporary art could not be complete without battle scenes and precisely for this reason, he admitted some such examples in the gallery of the Eccellenza.48 It comes as no surprise that among the artists Boschini excluded from the ranks of the most worthy, were established painters, some of whom enjoyed significant commercial success.49 Among the latter was, for instance, the Salzburg-born Johann Anton Eismann, whose landscapes, battle scenes and portscapes were omitted even from Martinioni’s Catalogue of Painters, which, unlike Boschini’s, featured a much larger number of genre paintings. As to other artists, including Monsù Giron and Conrad Filgher, Boschini’s mention of them is the only one appearing in print, at least, until now. Landscape was the preferred genre of both the Eccellenza and the Compare. Among their favourite artists was the French Nadal Cochin, better known as Monsù Cussin, a figure who has only recently been rehabilitated owing to the efforts of Laura De Fuccia.50 After a rapid rise to fame, Cochin moved to Venice around the 1660s, where he became a representative of modern landscape painting and one of the reference points for the foreign art agents transiting through Venice. Cussin’s interest in the paeson, or big landscape, depicted in Titian’s Saint Peter Martyr, on which Boschini put so much emphasis, most certainly induced the Eccellenza to commission a ‘vegetable counterpart’ (agregato vegetante), that is, a landscape with figures. The latter was markedly Titianesque in character, particularly in the area of the mountainous backdrop. The representatives of sixteenth-century Venetian art did not hand down a full-fledged legacy of landscape painting which could act as a source of inspiration for future artists. Boschini, therefore, pointed to those works which had achieved particularly fine representation of landscape, such as the altarpiece in Santi Giovanni e Paolo. In Boschini’s view, Cochin’s admiration for the capacity of Old Masters to render the likeness of atmospheric phenomena and the permutation of colours and shades in the landscape throughout the seasons, was notable. Titian, of course, constituted a valuable precedent in this sense. The longa manus of the sixteenth century triumphed, in Boschini’s eyes, unrivalled. This can be perceived in the last two ‘winds’ of the Carta which end with the critic’s musings on an idealized reconstruction of an Olympus inhabited by the artists of the past, whose pre-eminence could hardly be surpassed. Notwithstanding, Boschini genuinely praised the artists of his time, going as far as to purchase their work, if we are to credit the testimony of his son. After Boschini’s death, his son addressed the Florentine agent Matteo Del Teglia asking him, ‘one of the Most Serene Princes’, to write ‘a composition in verses about his father, in which, in the Venetian language, the paintings of various modern authors, which adorn his little gallery, are explained and which could be sold at a modest price, were someone to be interested in them’.51 If there is a connection between the gallery of the eighth ‘wind’ and the small gallery mentioned by Boschini’s son, it cannot at present be ascertained. The possibility, however, remains, stimulating other consideration on the origin and the development of the Carta.

 Marco Boschini and the Artists of His Time 57

Notes 1 This essay has been extended from Linda Borean, ‘Per dover far moderna Galaria’. Marco Boschini e gli artisti del suo tempo. In Marco Boschini: L’epopea della pittura veneziana nell’Europa barocca, atti del convegno di studi ed. E.M. Dal Pozzolo (Treviso: ZeL Edizioni, 2014), 191–203. 2 Enrico Maria Dal Pozzolo, ‘Le maschere dell’Eccellenza’, in Marco Boschini. L’epopea della pittura veneziana nell’Europa barocca, ed. E. M. Dal Pozzolo (Treviso: ZeL Edizioni, 2014), 205–21. 3 Marco Boschini, La Carta del navegar pitoresco. Dialogo tra un Senator venezian deletante, e un professor de Pitura, ed. Anna Pallucchini (Venice: Istituto per La Collaborazione Culturale, 1966), 509. 4 Ibid., 512, vv. 8–11 and 20. 5 Linda Borean, ‘Être peintre dans la Venise du Seicento’, in Rencontres à Venise. Étrangers et Vénitiens dans l’art du XVII siècle, ed. Linda Borean, Stefania Mason, exh. cat. (Ajaccio: Palais Fesch, 2018), 35–47. 6 Boschini, Carta, 511, vv. 10–11. See also Isabella Cecchini, Quadri e mercato di quadri a Venezia nel Seicento. Uno studio sul mercato dell’arte (Venice, 2000), 116–19 and 134–5. 7 Cecchini, Quadri e mercato, 17. 8 Boschini, Carta, 524, v. 13. In the fifth ‘wind’ Boschini was cautious about formulating opinions about taste, declaring that he ‘wanted to praise all the painters, but a single heart cannot be donated to many’. 9 Paolo Benassai, Sebastiano Mazzoni (Florence: Edifir, 1999). 10 Lina and Ugo Procacci, ‘Il carteggio di Marco Boschini con il cardinale Leopoldo de’Medici’, in Saggi e memorie di storia dell’arte, vol. 4, 1965, 101. The document is attached to a letter dated 18 May 1675. 11 Massimiliano Rossi, ‘La peinture guerrière: artistes et paladins à Venise au XVIIe siècle’, in La Jérusalem dèlivrée du Tasse. Poésie, peinture, musique, ballet, actes du colloque, sous la direction de G. Careri (Paris: Klincksieck and Musée du Louvre, 1999), 67–108. 12 Luciano Anelli, Pietro Bellotti. 1625–1700 (Brescia, Grafo 1996), 125; Linda Borean, La quadreria di Agostino e Giovan Donato Correggio nel collezionismo veneziano del Seicento, (Udine, 2000), 108–10. 13 Boschini, Carta, 53 e 634. According to Sohm, however, this was not the image that the author wanted to convey of himself in the poem, in which he most certainly did not present himself as an academic writer or a commentator of ancient texts. Philip Sohm, ‘La critica d’arte del Seicento: Carlo Ridolfi e Marco Boschini’, in La pittura nel Veneto. Il Seicento, 2, ed. Mauro Lucco (Milan: Electa, 2001), 725–56. 14 Giambattisa Marino, La Galeria (Venice: Dal Cioti, 1620). 15 Marc Fumaroli, L’école du silence. Les sentiment des images au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Flammarion, 1994), 63–4. 16 Boschini, Carta, 587, vv. 1–5. 17 Boschini, Carta, 619, v. 35 and 620, vv. 1–5. 18 Boschini, Carta, 616, v. 32. 19 Boschini, Carta, 616, v. 28. 20 Evalina Borea, ‘Stampe in Europa nel Seicento per servirei collezionisti di arte italiana’, in Per Luigi Grassi. Disegno e disegni, ed. Anna Forlani Tempesti and Simonetta Prosperi Valenti Rodinò (Rimini: Galleria Editrice, 1998), 339–54.

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21 Margret Klinge, David Teniers the Younger. Paintings. Drawings (Ghent: SnoeckDucaju & Zoon, 1991), 278–9. 22 Massimiliano Rossi, ‘Il modello della ‘galleria’ nella letteratura artistica veneta del XVII secolo’, in Il collezionismo d’arte a Venezia. Il Seicento, ed. Linda Borean and Stefania Mason (Venice: Marsilio, 2007), 168. 23 Fabrizio Magani, ‘Appunti sui temi barocchi in casa Querini e nel collezionismo veneziano’, in Dei ed eroi del barocco veneziano. Dal Padovanino a Luca Giordano e Sebastiano Ricci, catalogo della mostra, ed. Giorgio Busetto (Palermo, G. Maimone 2004), 65. 24 Of Dutch origin, but active above all as an architect at the Polish court. See EymertJan Goossens and Konrad Ottenheym, eds, Tilman Van Gameren, 1632-1706: A Dutch Architect to the Polish Court, trans. Tristan Mostert and Yvette Rosenberg (Amsterdam: Royal Palace Foundation, 2002). 25 Giuseppe Pavanello and Vicenzo Mancini, eds, Gli affreschi nelle ville venete. Il Seicento (Venice: Marsilio, 2009), 390–1, n. 98. 26 L. Longo, ‘Testimonianze documentarie su Antonio Triva pittore di corte in Baviera (1669–1699)’, Arte veneta 41 (1987): 188. 27 Linda Borean, ‘Cagnacci e il collezionismo a Venezia tra Sei e Settecento’, in Guido Cagnacci. Protagonista del Seicento tra Caravaggio e Reni, ed. Antonio Paolucci and Daniele Benati, exh cat. (Milan: Silvana, 2008), 87–9. 28 Boschini, Carta, 631, v. 12 and 613, vv. 7–10. 29 Despite editing the poem with additions and amendments up to the moment of its publication, he left the passage about Ridolfi in the eighth ‘wind’ unaltered. 30 Boschini, Carta, 36, vv. 4–11. 31 Luigi Lanzi, Storia pittorica della Italia, ed. Martino Capucci, vol. 2 (Florence, 1970), 142; Giovanni Carlo Federico Villa, ‘Treviso’, in La pittura nel Veneto. Il Seicento, ed. M. Lucco (Milan: Electa, 2000), 196. 32 Rossi, Il modello della ‘galleria’, 176. 33 Annick Lemoine, Nicolas Régnier ca. 1588–1667 (Paris: Arthena, 2007), 310–11 n. 150. 34 Boschini, Carta, 624, n. 12. 35 Although he was not officially a member of the Academy of the Incogniti, Boschini seems to have shared their ideas and reflections on art. In this regard, see Bernard Aikema, Pietro della Vecchia and the Heritage of Renaissance Venice (Florence: Istituto Universitario Olandese Di Storia Dell’arte, 1990), 76–7. 36 The episode is mentioned by Boschini in the title accompanying the portrait of the artist. Boschini, Carta, 625, vv. 8–10. 37 See Roberta Piccinelli, Collezionismo a corte. I Gonzaga Nevers e la ‘superbissima galeria’ di Mantova (1637-1709) (Florence: Edifir), 37, 51–2, 86–7. 38 Rudolfo Pallucchini, La pittura veneziana del Seicento (Milan: Electa, 1981), 169; Pavanello and Mancini, Gli affreschi nelle ville venete, 238–9. 39 Boschini, Carta, 57. 40 Ibid., 123–4. 41 Stefania Mason, ‘Fortuna di Sebastiano Mazzoni (e altri fiorentini) a Venezia’, Paragone, 63, 753 (2012): 38. For the transcription of the document, see Mitchell Frank Merling, Marco Boschini’s ‘La carta del navegar pitoresco’: Art Theory and Virtuoso Culture in Seventeenth Century Venice (PhD diss., University of Michigan,

 Marco Boschini and the Artists of His Time 59 Ann Arbor, 1992), 398–405; and Benassai, Sebastiano Mazzoni, 201–4 with amendment. 42 Alberto Crispo, Un Euclide retrouvé de Domenico Marolì et figures de la réalité en Italie du Nord (Paris: Galerie Canesso, 2008), 13 n12. 43 See A. Battistella, ‘Una campagna navale veneto-spagnuola in Adriatico poco conosciuta’, Archivio veneto-tridentino, I, 1922, 76. On the Spanish ambassador to Venice, the Marquis of Bedmar, and his conspiracy of 1617-8 against the Serenissima, see Paolo Preto, ‘La congiura di Bedmar a Venezia nel 1618: colpo di stato o provocazione?’, in Complots et conjurations dans l’Europe moderne, ed. Yves-Marie Bercé and Elena Fasano Guarini (Rome: L’Ecole 1996), 289–315. 44 Merling, Marco Boschini’s, 402–3 and Benassai, Sebastiano Mazzoni, 203–4. 45 Boschini, Carta, 691. 46 Luigi Hyerace, ‘Precisazioni su Domenico Maroli e due inediti’, Prospettiva 38 (1984): 60–1. The artist is included also in the revised version of the Catalogo de gli pittori di nome che al presente vivono in Venezia by Giustiniano Martinioni, which implemented Francesco Sansovino, Venetia città nobilissima et singolare (Venice: S. Curti, 1663). 47 Boschini, Carta, 256, v.11. 48 On this subject, see Linda Borean, ‘Il collezionismo e la fortuna dei generi’, in Il collezionismo d’arte a Venezia. Il Seicento, ed. Linda Borean and Stefania Mason (Venice: Fondazione Di Venezia, 2007), 63–83. 49 Borean, La quadreria, 98–9. 50 Laura De Fuccia, ‘Per un profilo di “Cochin de Venise”’, Arte Veneta 64 (2007): 253–61. 51 M. S. Alfonsi, ‘Cosimo III de’ Medici e Venezia. I primi anni di regno’, in Figure di collezionisti a Venezia tra Cinque e Seicento, ed. L. Borean and S. Mason (Udine: Forum, 2002), 284.

3

International art dealers, local agents and their clients in seventeenth-century Habsburg Inner Austria Tina Košak

While in recent decades studies of early modern art markets in the major art-producing centres have become an independent research field with a substantial bibliography, much less attention has been given to the regions outside those centres.1 In the countries of eastern central Europe, this research field has received little attention to date.2 The focus has been on the Habsburg imperial collectors, as well as collecting strategies of individual notable figures such as Charles Eusebius (1611–1684) and Johann Adam (c. 1657–1712), Princes of Liechtenstein, Prince Eugene of Savoy (1663–1736), Leopold Joseph, Count Lamberg (1654–1706) and Ferdinand Bonaventura, Count Harrach (1637–1706).3 Little, however, is known about the availability and acquisition of international artworks in the provinces outside the imperial capital.4 The general perception has been that the provincial nobility purchased their artworks from dealers in Vienna and on their travels in Italy and western Europe.5 Indeed, such acquisitions have been confirmed by archival sources; however, they were not the only means by which to acquire art and luxury items.6 While archival research has confirmed that the provincial courts and individual representatives of the clergy, such as the Ljubljana Bishop Otto Friedrich Buchheim (1604/6–1664), employed agents and mediators, not much is known of the ways in which international art was acquired by the rest of the local community.7 Based on archival study of art collectors, their contacts with art dealers and intermediaries, which is still work in progress, this chapter attempts to shed light on the south-eastern hereditary lands of the early modern Habsburg Empire.

The Habsburg court in Graz Inner Austria was a culturally versatile region. Its historical provinces – the duchies of Styria, Carniola, Carinthia, Gorizia County and the Austrian Littoral – corresponded to present-day southern Austria, a major part of Slovenia, territories around Trieste and Gorizia in Italy and Rijeka in Croatia.8 At least until the beginning of the seventeenth

 Dealers, Agents and Clients in Inner Austria 61 century, referring to Inner Austria as the periphery does not do the region complete justice. Until 1619, its capital, Graz, was the residence of the Habsburg archdukes with an independent court, which significantly contributed to the development of artistic taste in the region. Under Archduke Charles II (1540–90), his wife, Maria of Bavaria (1551–1608) and their son, Archduke Ferdinand (1578–1637), art patronage at the court of Graz flourished.9 As at other Habsburg courts, the principal international acquisitions for the archdukes in Graz were channelled through networks of diplomatic agents, most of whom were members of the local higher nobility, such as Jacob Adam, Baron Attems (1526–90) and his son Hermann (1564–1611).10 Around 1600 there was a preference for Venetian art and the nobility from the Inner Austrian regions at the border with the Venetian Republic (i.e. Gorizia and Gradisca) established good contacts and knew their way around the artistic and art-trading circles in the Serenissima. This enabled them to establish a long tradition of making art acquisitions for the courts in Graz and Vienna. Years before the activities of the Attems, Gorizian nobles Franz, Baron Thurn and Vitus, Baron Dornberg were employed as advisors and agents for Emperors Ferdinand I and Maximilian II. They were not only active in acquiring available artworks but also informed the emperors of current architectural trends in Venice and interceded for commissions to Venetian architects.11 Through familial relations with the Emperor Maximilian II, Charles II’s brother, and Maria’s father, Albert V, Duke of Bavaria, as well as close connections with the Spanish Habsburgs, Inner Austrian archdukes came into contact with the imperial diplomat at the Spanish Habsburg court, Hans, Baron Khevenhüller (1538–1606), another Inner Austrian nobleman from Carinthia and agent for Emperors Rudolf II and Maximilian II. For more than two decades, Khevenhüller interceded for the Graz court, as an art agent for Charles II and Maria of Bavaria.12 Until the beginning of the seventeenth century, the court in Graz attracted international traders and dealers, who also supplied artworks to patrons outside the court.13 The court’s diplomatic infrastructure enabled higher Inner Austrian nobles to become part of a well-integrated network, providing them with opportunities for their own art commissions and acquisitions from international artists and dealers. After Archduke Ferdinand succeeded to the imperial throne in 1619 and dissolved the Inner Austrian archducal court, the social and political life of the provincial aristocracy, and consequently the dynamics of the local art market, became more directly connected with the imperial capital. The transfer of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm’s collection from Brussels to Vienna in 1656 and the subsequent publication of its illustrated catalogue Theatrum Pictorum by David Teniers the Younger (1660), which was also popular in the private libraries of Inner Austrian nobles, shaped the taste of late-seventeenth-century local collectors for the Venetian school on the one hand and for Netherlandish painting on the other.14

Commissioning Netherlandish art In the second half of the seventeenth century, a large majority of locally-produced art in Inner Austria was still made on direct commission. In addition to a relatively

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small selection of local Styrian artists, works by Vienna-based painters, most of whom supplied their clients directly, predominated in Inner Austrian collections. The demand for Netherlandish art was partly fulfilled by immigrant painters. Landscapes and pastoral scenes by Jan van Ossenbeeck (1623–74) and Hans de Jode (1630–63), genre scenes by Jacob Toorenvliet (1640–1719), and still lifes with kitchen utensils and kitchen interiors by Joannes de Cordua (1630–1702) were particularly popular.15 The frequent references to works attributed to these and some other artists in the inventories of several collectors suggests that acquisitions of pre-owned paintings were rather common, as well as exchanges of artworks as security for money loans.16 Paintings attributed to painter-dealers in Styrian collections support the idea of contacts and possible supply of works by other artists through them. Thus, we find works by Renier Meganck (1637–90) in the inventories of three significant collectors, Georg Seifried, Count Dietrichstein (1645–1714), Ignaz Maria, Count Attems (1652–1732) and Johann Ernst the Elder, Count Herberstein (1671–1726).17 Both Dietrichstein and Attems also owned several works by dealer-painter Franciscus de Neve the Younger (1632–1704).18 Meganck and De Neve, both painters of Flemish origin, were documented as sourcing and trading in works by contemporary artists, as well as in pre-owned paintings.19

The Forchondt family in Inner Austria Despite the presence of a number of painters from southern and northern Netherlands, some of whom settled either permanently or temporarily in Inner Austrian provinces, the demand for Netherlandish art exceeded what was available.20 This situation, together with the promising financial strength of the local nobility, created a business opportunity not to be overlooked. Guilliam Forchondt (1608–78), Flemish art dealer and owner of the large Antwerp-based enterprise, who had been exporting paintings and other luxury items to central Europe since the mid-1630s, perceived the potential of central European art markets, and established one of his branches in Vienna.21 In 1665, his son Alexander (1643–83) moved to Vienna and in the following years his brothers Guilliam the Younger (1645–1707), Melchior (1641–1708) and Marcus (1651–1706) joined him.22 They started with regular shipments of paintings, tapestries, leather and other luxury items, such as precious stones, jewellery, lace, furniture, leather products, gold and garments to Austrian towns. Applying the same strategies as in other trading places, but on a smaller scale, they contracted transport and communication intermediaries and financial agents in Inner Austria as well.23 A selection of archival records in the 1931 publication by Jean Denucé provides a good starting point for the study of Forchondts’ central European clients.24 Rare publications of the archival sources on collectors in Austria offer additional insight into their dealership in Vienna and Prague.25 More Inner Austrian contacts, however, can be extracted from their correspondence in the archive of the insolvent company Forchondt (Insolventeboedel Forchondt) in Antwerp City Archives (Stadsarchief Antwerpen). In addition to letters sent by buyers, which represent most of the surviving documents, it also contains correspondence with some of their Inner

 Dealers, Agents and Clients in Inner Austria 63 Austrian intermediaries.26 While the entrepreneurial strategies of the Forchondts in central Europe have recently been studied by Sandra van Ginhoven with in-depth data analyses of shipping documents and account books,27 their Inner Austrian clients and intermediaries as documented in the local archival sources, as well as the reception of artworks they supplied to the region, have yet to be fully investigated. The principal route for the Forchondts’ shipments to east central Europe was via Linz in Upper Austria. As one the most important towns on the Danube river trade route, Linz was an important stop on the way to Vienna and Bohemia.28 As can be seen from the correspondence, Alexander, Melchior and Marcus Forchondt often travelled to Linz in person to inspect or receive the goods.29 In the early 1670s, they also began to ship larger parcels of paintings and luxury items via and to Graz. Consequently, between 1670 and 1680, they had around thirty correspondents in Styria.30 Most of their Inner Austrian buyers, such as Johann Seyfried, Prince of Eggenberg, Sigmund Friedrich, Count Trauttmansdorff, Victor Jacob, Baron (later Count) Prandegg, Johann Ernst, Count Purgstall, Rosina Elisabeth, Countess Herberstein, Johann Balthasar and Siegmund, Counts Wagensperg and Johann Jakob II, Count Khisl, the Counts Dietrichstein and Counts Brandis, were members of the highest nobility. Archival sources in the Styrian Regional Archives in Graz (Steiermärkisches Landesarchiv), especially the probate inventories and records in family archives, reveal that several of them were very ambitious art collectors.31

Inner Austrian clients of the Forchondts As early as 1667, soon after his arrival in Vienna, Guilliam Forchondt the Younger came into contact with Walter, Count Leslie, the owner of Ptuj Castle in Lower Styria and Nové Městonad Metují in north-eastern Bohemia. Leslie was in need of a painter, as he was at the time renovating both residences and, as Guilliam the Younger reported in a letter to his father, he was himself a serious candidate for the post.32 Unfortunately, they never reached an agreement as Leslie died in March 1667, but the question remains whether he nevertheless could be one of the Forchondts’ early clients. The most notable among the Forchondts’ Styrian clients was Johann Seyfried, Prince of Eggenberg (1644–1713). In addition to employing his own court artists, he formed a large collection of paintings by Italian (mostly Venetian), German and Netherlandish master painters.33 Between 1670 and 1701, the documents reveal his purchases of individual items of furnishings, such as tapestries and leather hangings, as well as around thirty paintings, including a pair of seascapes by Van de Velde, two battle scenes by Il Borgognone (1621–75), ten unspecified large canvases by Justo Daniels, four battle scenes by Alexander Casteels (c. 1635–82), The Triumph of Death by Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568–1625) (Plate 3), The Feast of the Gods by Frans Floris (c. 1519/20–1570), Vertumnus and Pomona by Abraham Janssens (1567–1632) in a landscape by Jan Brueghel and with the still life by Adriaen van Utrecht (1599–1652), Pan and Syrinx by Rubens in a landscape by Jan Wildens (c. 1583/84–1653), Noah’s Ark

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by Jacopo Bassano (c. 1510–1592) and the Last Supper by Hans van Wechelen (c. 1530– 1570).34 Brueghel’s Triumph of Death and Frans Floris’s Feast of the Gods, for which Eggenberg paid the most – a staggering 550 Reichsthaler (i.e. 880 Reichsgulden) – are still in Graz, in Alte Galerie of the Universalmuseum Joanneum (Plate 3 and Figure 3.1)35 In 1713, both paintings were recorded in Eggenberg’s collection in Waldstein Castle and listed in his probate inventory with estimated values of 150 and 75 Reichsgulden, which were much lower than their purchase prices.36 After Eggenberg’s death, several of his paintings were sold to other Styrian collectors, including Ignaz Maria, Count Attems.37 Two battle scenes by Alexander Casteels from the Attems collection, now in the collection of the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana (Figures 3.2 and 3.3), may thus be associated with two of the dobbeldoeken by Casteels that Eggenberg purchased from the Forchondts.38 Similarly, in 1701, Eggenberg acquired from the Forchondts’ brother-in-law and associate, Frans Vasterhavons, a series of three canvases by Godfried Maes (1649–1700), depicting theological virtues.39 While the entire series was subsequently purchased by Attems, only the Allegory of Hope can be traced, which is now in the collection of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Ljubljana (Plate 4).40 The whereabouts of other works supplied by the Forchondts, including Pan and Syrinx by Rubens and Wildens, which can be identified in the 1715 inventory of Eggenberg’s widow Maria Antonia, where it was valued at a mere 50 Reichsgulden, remain unknown.41

Figure 3.1  Frans Floris, The Feast of the Gods c.1597. Oil on panel, 116.5 × 161 cm. Alte Galerie of the Universamuseum Joanneum, Graz. Courtesy Alte Galerie, Graz.

 Dealers, Agents and Clients in Inner Austria 65

Figure 3.2  Alexander Casteels, A Cavalry Battle (Joshua fighting the Amalekites) before 1674. Oil on canvas, 121 × 174.5 cm. Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Ljubljana. Courtesy National Gallery of Slovenia, Ljubljana.

Figure 3.3  Alexander Casteels, A Cavalry Battle before 1674. Oil on canvas, 121 × 172 cm. Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Ljubljana. Courtesy National Gallery of Slovenia, Ljubljana.

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As may be seen from the Forchondts’ ledger and the correspondence, Eggenberg – as well as many other Inner Austrian clients – received substantial assistance in acquiring artworks from his Hofmeister, the head of court household and administration, and, occasionally, by the principal servants, who were often appointed to be communication and financial co-ordinators.42 In addition to managing the correspondence, the latter were also in charge of receiving and estimating commissioned items and payments, which in some cases they negotiated themselves. The Forchondts occasionally accepted non-cash payments. Eggenberg’s Hofmeister Leopold von Vogtberg, thus, acquired three paintings, a panel by Alexander Adriaenssen (1587–1661), a dancing scene by Franck (probably Sebastian Vrancx, 1573–1647) and a landscape with a figural scene by Vincent Malo (c. 1629–68), in return for a turquoise and diamond golden ring as a down payment.43 The activities of the household staff of several other Inner Austrian nobles confirm that such assistance in acquiring household furnishings and collecting items was a common practice, requiring skills and knowledge of the principles of furnishing. Hofmeisters at Austrian provincial courts thus had a similar role to maestri di casa in Roman princely households, who have recently been identified as highly significant protagonists in the acquisition of luxury items and artworks for aristocratic collections there.44

Local intermediaries The most active among the local intermediaries employed by the Forchondts in Graz were the traders and bankers of Italian origin, Johann Tonagello and Bartolomeo Dossena. Most probably the descendant of court apothecaries Antonio and Pietro Tonagello, Johann Tonagello and his associate Bartolomeo Dossena led a money-lending and changing company, through which they acquired a good network of contacts.45 As they had good knowledge of the financial status of the local aristocrats and were well known to them, they were undoubtedly an effective choice of agent. In addition to delivering shipments to Forchondts’ clients, they also worked as communication and financial agents, provided deposits, and due to their well-established networks, promoted both the Forchondt family and their merchandise.46 The names of several other intermediaries from Graz appear in correspondence with the Forchondts, including a certain Bertolotti, the goldsmith Paulus Krebs and the provincial secretary, Hans Adam von Monzello. Monzello was himself a Forchondt client, but he also provided them with information regarding other Styrian clients and mediated in case of conflicts.47 When, for example, in April 1674 one of the Forchondts’ regular clients, Victor Jacob, Baron Prandegg, complained to Monzello about Alexander Forchondt not responding to his letters and ‘refusing’ to deliver a painting he required, Monzello proposed to Alexander Forchondt that he should ‘mediate to achieve general satisfaction on both sides’.48 Monzello’s letters and subsequent commissions from Baron Prandegg reveal that he must have been successful in settling the dispute. Prandegg continued his purchases from the Forchondts at least until the early 1680s, during which time he communicated

 Dealers, Agents and Clients in Inner Austria 67 with them directly, as well as through Monzello. Based on this correspondence, Prandegg seems to have been a demanding client with relatively specific wishes and high investments. In 1675, he repeatedly requested ‘an original flower piece by De Heem’ which turned out to be unavailable.49 Instead, he asked Alexander Forchondt to supply him with ‘500 of his Lord’s best and most beautiful tulip bulbs for a good price’ and some jewellery and he continued to purchase jewellery from the Forchondts.50 In 1681 Prandegg finally got the opportunity to acquire a large piece by De Heem, as well as a St. Jerome by Anthony van Dyck, a Conversion of St. Paul, a landscape with figures by Jan Brueghel the Elder and a drawing by Rubens, for which he refused to pay more than 300 Reichsthaler (i.e. 480 Reichsgulden).51 Although there are no references to Prandegg’s acquisitions of paintings in his other letters, we learn from the Forchondts’ ledgers that from around 1673 onwards, he bought several, including a peasant tronie by Adriaen Brouwer (1605–38), a landscape by Louis Snayers, a Landscape with St. Hubertus by Rubens and Cornelis van Daelen, a pair of still lifes with fruit by Jan Pauwel Gillemans (unspecified whether I or II), a pair of genre scenes depicting a peasant dance and an alchemist by Mattheus van Helmont (1623–after 1678), as well as a portrait of a moneychanger by Willem Key (c. 1515–68), a warrior in armour by Rubens, The Entry of Christ into Jerusalem by De Vos (perhaps Simon), an unattributed Venus and Bacchus, and a female tronie by Frans Floris.52 Following Prandegg’s death in 1694, his collection of more than 350 paintings was listed in his probate inventory, but none of them carried an attribution.53 While several works were listed as hollendisch, and many represented typical Netherlandish subject matter and imagery, only some individual pieces sold by the Forchondts can be identified. The Landscape with St. Hubertus, which he acquired as a work by Van Dalen and Rubens in 1673, was recorded as a Landscape with St. Eustachius and estimated at 300 Reichsgulden, which made it one of the most pricey works in the collection.54 A painting of St. Jerome, most probably the one by Van Dyck that he negotiated for in 1681, was valued at 90 Reichsgulden, while the Conversion of Saint Paul was estimated at 150 Reichsgulden. An Alchemist by Helmont can be identified with a painting of the same subject estimated at 50 Reichsgulden, while the Triumphal Entry of Christ by De Vos can be associated with a Triumphant Christ valued at 150 Reichsgulden.55 As in the case of Prandegg, references to paintings in the archival records of most of Forchondts’ Styrian clients lack attributions, which contrasts with specific demands for works by individual painters in their correspondence, as well as with references to painters’ names in the ledgers and records of shipments. Closer inspection of the commissions and tracing of the artworks in collectors’ legacies reveal that while their specific requests do reflect their taste, this is not a reflection of their level of expertise. The inexperience of the Styrian aristocracy as buyers and their lack of connoisseurship influenced their communication with art dealers and agents. References to quality and authenticity, which were relatively frequently subject to negotiation or even dispute in other areas of the Forchondts’ network,56 do not appear in correspondence with Inner Austrian clients. Surely, the Forchondts must have been aware that in cases such as Prandegg’s request for a ‘De Heem’, most Inner Austrian buyers would not be able to differentiate between the master and his assistants or

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even his wider circle. Casual attributions and the generalized use of workshop names were a common strategy utilized by agents, dealers and painters and it would have been unusual if they had not taken advantage of their clients’ lack of expertise.57 Inner Austrian clients, nevertheless, continued to spend relatively large sums on individual purchases and they seemed to be satisfied with the quality and variety of supply. As the circle of Styrian high aristocracy was a small and closely integrated community, their own social networks and recommendations were probably as effective (if not more so) in negotiating as the Forchondts’ contracted agents. Buyers themselves often provided new clients from their own social circles or acted as intermediaries in commissions for them. Monzello, for example, wrote to Alexander Forchondt on behalf of Prandegg to commission diamonds for a Countess Herberstein, probably the wife of Johann Maximilian the Younger, Ana Magdalena, née Thun (1633–1702).58

Family networks Familial relations had a significant role in the Inner Austrian network of buyers and often contributed to new commissions. The provincial governor of Styria and the owner of Trautenfels Manor, Sigmund Friedrich, Count Trauttmansdorff (1623–75), thus acted as an intermediary for his aunt Countess Thonhausen.59 Similarly, the purchase of a set of eight tapestries depicting the Acts of the Apostles after the Cartoons of Abraham van Diepenbeeck (1596–1675) from the Wauters workshop for Johann Jakob II, Count Khisl (1645–89) in 1675, which was made via Khisl’s father-in-law Raimondo, Count Montecuccoli (1609–80), triggered further purchases by Khisl.60 In 1682, he commissioned another set of tapestries to complement the existing eight.61 Khisl’s fourteen tapestries of the Acts of the Apostles were still recorded in his residence in Graz in his 1689 probate inventory.62 The close connections of the Forchondts’ Austrian clients can also be seen in the family networks of Walter, Count Leslie and Charles Eusebius, Prince of Liechtenstein, whose wives, Ana Francesca (1621–85) and Johanna Beatrix (1625–75), née Countesses Dietrichstein, were sisters. Their younger brother Ferdinand Joseph, Count Dietrichstein (1636–98), who was one of the first clients of the Forchondt brothers in Vienna, married Johann Seyfried Eggenberg’s sister, Maria Elisabeth (1640–1715). Johann Seyfried, Prince of Eggenberg made his first purchase from the Forchondts in 1670, only a year after his father-in-law, Charles Eusebius, Prince of Liechtenstein, one of Forchondts’ major clients, placed his first large order for paintings from the Vienna branch.63 As in the Forchondts’ account books, Eggenberg’s and Liechtenstein’s purchases are often recorded one after another, we can assume that they communicated over them or even made them simultaneously. A record in the archives of the House of Liechtenstein confirms this. In 1674 Eggenberg purchased the Triumph of Death by Jan Brueghel the Elder.64 In the same year Liechtenstein was offered a Triumph of Death by ‘Peeter Breughel’ for a much lower price of 100 Reichsgulden.65 The copy in the Liechtenstein Collection is now attributed to Jan Brueghel the Younger (1601–78).66

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Dealing in Carniola While there was a considerable demand for items sold by Flemish art dealers and agents in Styria, there are no records of their activities in the neighbouring Inner Austrian province of Carniola and its capital Ljubljana.67 Based on an analysis of probate inventory records and the surviving paintings, it can be deduced that here the demand for Netherlandish paintings was less and was mostly fulfilled by works by immigrant artists active in the province.68 The above-mentioned Bishop of Ljubljana, Otto Friedrich Buchheim, is the only collector whose regular cooperation with intermediaries has hitherto been confirmed by the study of archival sources. As shown by Ana Lavrič, between the early 1640s and the late 1650s, Buchheim acquired a number of paintings via Roman agents Giuseppe Mecholi and Carlo Pellegrini.69 In addition to assisting Buchheim in keeping close contacts with Rome, where he owned and decorated his own house, Buchheim’s Roman agents also acted on his behalf in Venice.70 A letter sent to Buchheim in 1641 by Mecholi is especially interesting as he advises his client to acquire several paintings via Monsignior Vidimann, who would act for him without seeking to make profit.71 The latter may have been one of the members of the Widmann family of traders in metal from the Inner Austrian province of Carinthia, who joined the Venetian patriciate in 1646, and were widely known for their outstanding art collection.72 Unlike Graz, where in the second half of the seventeenth century the most ambitious collectors were the established high aristocracy, several of the most notable in Ljubljana were the representatives of the so-called new nobility, predominantly traders and bankers.73 Their preference for Venetian art and luxury items over imported Netherlandish paintings can be associated with proximity to and close professional ties with the Serenissima.74 Their connections with the trading community in Venice must also have enabled them to establish contacts with local art dealers. Individual Venice-based traders of Inner Austrian origin, such as the above-mentioned Widmanns, as well as Gaspar Chechel (c. 1594?– 1657), were documented as ambitious collectors and intermediaries in art commissions for Austria.75 As in the case of Dossena and Tonagello, the existence of such agents in Graz has been confirmed in this chapter, the profile of trader-agent was most probably also present in Carniola. It complemented the role of the Hofmaler (Cammermaler) and painters of the provincial estates who were occasionally employed as connoisseurs and appraisers, especially those whose training and travel to Italy had been sponsored by their patrons and who could play a significant role in art acquisitions for their collections.76 Further research into archival sources in Ljubljana and Venice are thus likely to reveal protagonists involved in the art trade as intermediaries or agents among those traders in the Carniolan community already known to be art collectors and patrons.77

Notes 1 The research field has been most comprehensively explored for Italy and the Netherlands. For the most recent overview of the state of scholarship, see Sandra

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van Ginhoven, Connecting Art Markets. Guilliam Forchondt’s Dealership in Antwerp (c. 1632–1678) and the Overseas Painting Trade (Boston, Leiden: Brill, 2017), 8–19, and the introduction to this section. Studies on art dissemination in more provincial European regions in the early modern period are sporadic. For some, see Ranieri Varese and Federica Veratelli, ed., Il collezionismo locale (Ferrara: Università degli Studi, 2009). 2 About fifteen years ago, Hans Miegroet and Neil de Marchi emphasized the lack of overview archival data-based studies for Eastern Europe: De Marchi and Van Miegroet, ‘Introduction’, in Mapping Market for Paintings in Europe, 1450–1750, ed. Neil De Marchi and Hans J. Van Miegroet (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), 13. The gap for most Austrian hereditary lands, in fact, a major part of central Europe, has not yet been filled. 3 For a detailed overview of studies into history of collecting in early modern Habsburg Austria, see the select bibliography 1550–1720. 4 See Lubomír Slavíček, ed., Artis pictoriae amatores: Evropa v zrcadle pražského barokního sběratelství (Prague: National Gallery, 1993); Lubomír Slavíček, ‘Antwerpen, Wien und Die Böhmische Länder. Die Antwerpener Malerei 1550–1650 im Lichte des Wiener Kunsthandels und der böhmischen Gemäldesammlungen’, in Die Malerei Antwerpens – Gattungen, Meister, Wirkungen, ed. Ekkehard Mai and Karl Schütz (Cologne: Locher, 1994), 44–54; for collecting habits of Inner Austrian collectors: Tina Košak, ‘Pricing Paintings in Inner Austrian Inventories between the Mid-17th and Mid-18th Century. Results of Preliminary Research’, in Kunstmärkte zwischen Stadt und Hof. Prozesse der Preisbildung in der europäischen Vormoderne, ed. Andreas Tacke, Michael Wenzel, Birgit Ulrike Münch, Markwart Herzog and Christof Jeggle (Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2017), 102–19. 5 See, for example, Renata Gotthardi Škilijan, ‘The Valvasor Collection of the Zagreb Archbishopric’, in Johann Weichard Valvasor to the Slovenes and to Europe, ed. Lojze Gostiša (Ljubljana: National Gallery of Slovenia, 1989), 123, for an assumption that a substantial part of the largest preserved Carniolan collection of prints and drawings, the Collection of Johann Weichard Valvasor (1641–83), was acquired during his travels. 6 For some cases of acquisitions abroad documented in buyers’ expenses and correspondence, see Maja Žvanut, ‘Outline’, in Theatrum vitae and mortis humanae. The Theatre of Human Life and Death: Images from Seventeenth-Century Slovenia, ed. Maja Lozar Štamcar and Maja Žvanut (Ljubljana: National Museum of Slovenia, 2002), 36; Friedrich Polleroß, ‘. . . dem Antiquario zu Rom für sein trinckgeldt undt gemachte Spesa’. ‘Kunst-Reisen und Kunst-Handel im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert’, Reiselust & Kunstgenuss. Barockes Böhmen, Mähren und Österreich, ed. Friedrich Polleroß (Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2004), 14–19, 28–31; Tina Košak, Žanrske upodobitve in tihožitja v plemiških zbirkah na Kranjskem in Štajerskem v 17. in 18. stoletju (PhD diss., University of Ljubljana, 2011), 42–3. 7 Ana Lavrič, ‘Art Collecting and Patronage in the 17th Century. Bishop Otto Friedrich Buchheim’s Artistic Pursuits in Rome, Ljubljana, Vienna, Salzburg and Passau, in Art History in Slovenia, ed. Barbara Murovec and Tina Košak (Ljubljana: Založba ZRC, 2011), 110–14. 8 See for example Berthold Sutter, ed., Graz als Residenz: Innerösterreich 1564–1619 (Graz: Landesmuseum Joanneum, 1964); Alexander Novotny, ed., Innerösterreich. 1564–1619: Historische und kulturhistorische Beiträge (Graz: Styria, 1967).

 Dealers, Agents and Clients in Inner Austria 71 9 On the kunstkammer and art collections at the Graz archducal court at the end of the sixteenth and at the beginning of the seventeenth century, see: Josef Wastler, ‘Zur Geschichte der Schatz-, Kunst-, und Rüstkammer in der k. k. Burg zu Grätz’, Mittheilungen der K. K. Central-Commission für Kunst und historische Denkmale 10 (1884): 83–5; ibid., ‘Nachtragzur Geschichte der Schätz-, Kunst- und Rustkammer in der k. k. Burg zu Grätz’, Mittheilungen der k. k. Central-Commission für Kunst und historische Denkmale11 (1885): 60–1; Gottrfried Biedermann, ‘Zur ehem. Grazer Schatz-und Kunstkammer unter Kaiser Friedrich III. und den Erzherzogen Karl II (reg. 1564-1590) und Ferdinand (reg. 1595–1619, ab. 1619 Kaiser) von Innerösterreich’, Zeitschrift des historischen Vereines für Steiermark 79 (1988): 79–198; Susanne König Lein, ‘“mit vielen Seltenheiten gefüllet”. Die Kunstkammer in Graz unter Erzherzog Karl II. von Innerösterreich und Maria von Bayern’, in Das Haus Habsburg und die Welt der fürstlichen Kunstkammern im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert, ed. Sabine Haag, Franz Kirchweger and Paulus Rainer (Wien: Kunsthistorischas Museum, 2015), 195–226; ibid., ‘Maria von Bayern, Erzherzogin von Innerösterreich (1551–1608), als Auftraggeberin’, in Auftraggeber als Träger der Landesidentität. Kunst in der Steiermark vom Mittelalter bis 1918, ed. David Franz Hobelleitner and Edgar Lein (Graz: Unipress 2016), 139–67. 10 In addition to aristocratic diplomats, international dealers and mediators were employed by the archducal couple to intercede for acquisitions of artworks on spot. Cornelius van Dalen mediated in Frankfurt, the merchant and banker Bartolomeo Buontempelli de Calice in Venice, and Margareta Trivulzio in Milan. See Paul W. Roth, ‘Händler am Grazer Hof, 1570–1610’, in Johannes Kepler, 1571–1971. Gedenkschrift der Universität Graz, ed. Paul Urban and Berthold Sutter, vol. 2 (Graz: Leykam, 1975), 590–5. 11 Helena Seražin, ‘Cesarski veleposlaniki iz vrst goriškega plemstva v vlogi posrednikov novih arhitekturnih smeri’, Kronika:Časopis za slovensko krajevno zgodovino 60, no. 3 (2012): 646–55. 12 For the family relations of the Inner Austrian Archduke Charles II and Maria of Bavaria and the Spanish Habsburgs and their travels to Madrid, see Karl Friedrich Rudolf, ‘Grazer und Madrider Hof um 1600: Familienpolitik, Religion und Kunst’, in Kunst und Geisteswissenschaften aus Graz: Werk und Wirken überregional bedeutsamer Künstler und Gelehrter vom 15. Jahrhundert bis zur Jahrtausendwende, ed. Karl Acham (Wien-Köln-Weimar: Böhlau, 2009), 79–81. 13 See Joseph von Zahn, Steirische Miscellen. Zur Orts- und Culturgeschichte der Steiermark (Graz: Moser, 1899), 53–4. 14 On Theatrum pictorum, see, for example, David Teniers and the Theatre of Painting, ed. Ernst Vegelin van Claerbergen (London: Holberton, 2006); for examples in Inner Austrian aristocratic libraries, see: Igor Weigl, Matija Persky. Arhitektura in družba sredi 18. stoletja (MA diss., University of Ljubljana, 2000), 63; Georg Lechner, Der Barockmaler Franz Carl Remp (1675–1718) (PhD diss., Universität Wien, 2010), 207; Katra Meke, ‘Sliki iz kroga Giandomenica in Lorenza Tiepola iz nekdanje zbirke Ludvika viteza Gutmannsthala-Benvenutija’, Annales. Series historia et sociologia 15, no. 4 (2015): 826. 15 For an analysis of attributions in a sample of approximately 400 probate inventories of Carniolan and Styrian nobility, see my unpublished doctoral dissertation: Tina

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Košak, Žanrske upodobitve in tihožitja, 35–60. See also Košak, ‘Pricing Paintings’, 108–10. 16 See Weigl, Matija Persky, 107–8; Tina Košak, ‘Early Modern Picture Collections of the Counts of Herberstein. The Legacies of Erasmus Friedrich Count of Herberstein, Johann Ernst I and Johann Ernst Count II of Herberstein’, in Auftraggeber als Träger der Landesidentität. Kunst in der Steiermark vom Mittelalter bis 1918, ed. David Franz Hobelleitner and Edgar Lein (Graz: Unipress, 2016), 222–4; Barbara Ruck, Aus Ost und West. Kostbarkeiten der ehemaligen Eggenbergischen Sammlungen, exh cat. (Graz: Schloss Eggenberg 1986), 61. 17 For Meganck’s paintings in Styrian collections, see Graz, Steiermärkisches Landesarchiv (hereafter StLA) Landrecht, Karton 130 (unpaginated), Karton 406, fol. 26v, 28r; Archiv Attems, Karton 8, Heft 59, fol. 28. For Attems’ collection of paintings, see also: Igor Weigl, ‘“Die Einheimischen bewundern die Gemälde”. Graf Ignaz Maria von Attems-Heiligenkreuz als Auftraggeber und Sammler’, Osterweiterung – Westerweiterung, 11. Österreichischer Kunsthistorikertag. Kunsthistoriker 18/19 (2001/2002): 50–5; Katra Meke, ‘Slikarska zbirka Ignaca Marije grofa Attemsa’, Zbornik za umetnostno zgodovino 50 (2014): 81–127. On Johann Ernst Herberstein’s collection, see Tina Košak, ‘Slikarske zbirke grofov Herberstein. Zbirka Janeza Ernesta I. in Janeza Ernesta II. v Gradcu in gradu Hrastovec’, Acta historia artis Slovenica 20, no. 1 (2015): 97–137. 18 StLA, Archiv Attems, Karton 8, Heft 59, fol. 38-42; Landrecht, Karton 130 (unpaginated). 19 See for example: Herbert Haupt, Von der Leidenschaft zum Schönen. Fürst Karl Eusebius von Liechtenstein 1611–1684. Quellenband. 2 vols. Vienna, (Cologne: Böhlau, 1998), 277–328; Axel Christoph Gampp, ‘Dan Geldt kan jeden haben, dergleichen Gemahl aber nicht’. Karl Eusebius Liechtenstein (1611–84) und der Kunstmarkt’. in Tacke et al, 86, 91. 20 Painters, such as Ludwig de Clerick (active 1665 and 1702), Peter Auwercx (?–1715), Justus van der Nypoort (1645–98), Almanach (active in the 1670s) and Herman Verelst (1640/1–1702), were documented in Ljubljana, while Peter van Kessel (?–1668) worked in Graz in the early 1660s. See Uroš Lubej, ‘Prispevki k biografijam na Kranjskem delujočih flamskih in holandskih slikarjev druge polovice XVII. stoletja’, Acta historiaeartis Slovenica 2 (1997): 33–52; Almanach and Painting in the Second Half of the 17th Century in Carniola, ed. Barbara Murovec, Matej Klemenčič and Mateja Breščak (Ljubljana: ZRC SAZU, 2006), 23–62; Barbara Murovec, ‘Netherlandish Painters in Ljubljana. A Work by Peter Auwercx in the Ursuline church’, in Orbis Artium: k jubileu Lubomíra Slavíčka, ed. Jiří Kroupa, Michaela Šeferisová Loudová and Lubomír Konečný (Brno: Masarykovauniverzita, 2009), 175–81. 21 The Flemish art-dealing enterprise Forchondt has long been known mostly through the publications of selected archival documents by Jean Denucé, Art Export in the 17th Century in Antwerp, the Firm Forchondt. Account Books, Registers and Letters (Antwerp: De Sikkel, 1931). 22 While according to Denucé, Alexander Forchondt settled in Vienna in 1660, Duverger argues, based on the study of Alexander’s letters sent to his father, that he arrived in Vienna as late as 1665. His brothers followed him after 1666. Compare Denucé, Art Export, 15–17; Erik Duverger, ‘Zeventiende eeuwse schilderijen mer

 Dealers, Agents and Clients in Inner Austria 73 de signatuur van Gilliam en Guillielmo Forchondt uit Antwerpen’, Bulletin -Musées royaux des beaux-arts de Belgique 38–40 (1989): 307–8 (n. 43). 23 See Van Ginhoven, Connecting Art Markets, 119–23. 24 Denucé, Art Export. 25 Haupt, Von der Leidenschaft; Lubomír Slavíček, ‘Tapezerei ist nicht anderst als wie ein Gemahl’, Marcus Forchondt und die Tapisserien für das Prager Palais Thun’. Opuscula historiae atrium. Časopis Semináre Dějin Umění Filozofické Fakulty Masarykovy Univerzity 52 (2009): 55–88. 26 Stadsarchief Antwerpen (hereafter SA), IB 1124–29. 27 For Van Ginhoven’s analyses of supply to central European buyers, see Van Ginhoven, Connecting Art Markets, 135–9, charts 4.1–4.4 (128–30). 28 For the significance of Linz as central European trade centre, see for example Alfred Hoffmann, Werden – Wachsen – Reifen. Von der Frühzeit bis zum Jahre 1848, Wirtschaftsgeschichte des Landes Oberösterreich 1 (Salzburg: O. Müller, 1952), 138–45; Hans-Heinrich Vangerow, ‘Linz und der Donauhandel des Jahres 1627’, Historisches Jahrbuch der Stadt Linz (1962): 223–332, (1963): 255–377, (1964) 41–98; Wilhelm Rausch, Handel an der Donau 1: Die Geschichte der Linzer Märkte im Mittelalter (Linz: Wimmer, 1969), 11–33, 61–71; Hans-Heinrich Vangerow, Handel und Wandel auf der Donau. Von Ulm bis Wien in den Jahren 1583-1651 (Linz: 2015), 37–59. 29 See SA, IB 1118–19, 1095, 1097 (unpaginated). 30 SA, LZ 84, Detailinventaris op de briefwisseling, 1632–1711; IB 1124–29. 31 StLA, Landrecht; Familienarchieve und Herrschaften. 32 SA, IB 1088, letters from Guilliam the Younger to his father Guilliam sent on 3 and 10 March 1667 (unpaginated); Duverger, ‘Zeventiende-eeuwse schilderijen’, 308. 33 For Johann Seyfried, Prince of Eggenberg, as art patron see Gerhard Bern Marauschek, Die Fürsten zu Eggenberg. Unter besonderer Berücksichtigung ihres Kunstmäzenatentums. 1568–1717 (PhD diss., University of Graz, 1968), 188–261; Barbara Kaiser and Paul Schuster, Schloss Eggenberg. Architecture and Furnishings (Graz: Universalmuseum Joanneum), 48–57. On the Eggenberg collection, see Barbara Ruck in: Aus Ost und West, 60–1. Johann Seyfried’s older brother, Johann Christian, Prince of Eggenberg (1641–1710), who owned the estate Český Krumlov in south Bohemia, was also a frequent purchaser from the Forchondts. 34 Denucé, Art Export, 133–5, 161, 166, 172–4; SA, IB 1040, fol. 6v–7, 87, 89v–91. For the letters from the head of Eggenberg’s household Vogtberg to the Forchondt brothers, see also IB 1129 (unpaginated) 35 Alte Galerie, Universalmuseum Joanneum, Graz, inv. nrs. 57, 58. See Aus Ost und West, 62, nrs. 136, 137. 36 StLA, Landrecht, Karton 162 (unpaginated). ‘11: Der Vniuersal Tott, Von Prigl 150 fl’; ‘29: Die Gotter Festin 75 fl’. 37 Aus Ost und West, 61. 38 Academy of Fine Art and Design, Ljubljana (oil, canvas, 121 × 174.5 cm; 121 × 172 cm). On the paintings, see Federico Zeri and, Ksenija Rozman, European Paintings. Catalogue of the Collection (Ljubljana: National Gallery of Slovenia, 2000), 131, nrs. 83, 84. For the identification of Casteels’ battle paintings in the inventory of Ignaz Maria, Count Attems, see Meke, ‘Slikarska zbirka’, 111.

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39 Denucé, Art Export, 265: letter from Frans Vastenhavons 24 April 1701: ‘/. . ./ de 3 gratien van Maes, t’geloof, hope en liefde per guld. 266-60 /. . ./ Dese stucke hebbe verkocht eenige an den Artshertogh Carel, eenige an den vurst Lockowitz en eenige an den vurst van Eckenberg van Gratz’. 40 Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, inv. nr. MSAZU 95. Maes’ series can be identified in the probate inventory of Ignaz Maria, Count Attems compiled in 1733: StLA, Archiv Attems, Karton 8, Heft 59, fol. 40v, 43: ‘63. Zwey grosße Stuckh, fides, et Charitas Von Maes 66 fl’, ‘118. die hofnung mit Kindlen Von Maes 33 fl’; For the Allegory of Hope, see Zeri and Rozman, European Paintings, 123, nr. 79. 41 StLA, Landrecht, Karton 163 (unpaginated). Several versions of the Pan and Syrinx attributed to Rubens and his collaborators are known; Musée des Augustins in Hazebrouck holds a painting of this subject attributed to Rubens and Wildens (M.N.R 404 / D 85-1), whose provenance reveals no connections with Eggenberg’s piece. 42 SA, IB 1124–29 (letters from Johann Balthasar, Count Wagensperg’s Hofmeister Simon Gossler, Johann Ernst, Count Purgstall’s estate administrator Johann Ulrich Khügler, Purgstall’s Hofmeister Joseph Baratt, Jacob Victor, Baron Prandegg’s main servant Johann Carl Märkonitsch, Siegmund Friedrich, Count Trauttmansdorff ’s estate administrator, Franz Karl Otto and the estate administrator of the Saurau Counts, Johann Fischer). 43 Denucé, Art Export, 173; SA, IB 1040, fol. 91. For Vogtberg see Marauschek, Die Fürsten, 295. 44 Natalia Gozzano, Lo specchio della corte. Il Maestro di Casa. Gentiluomini al servizio dei collezionismo a roma nel seicento (Roma: Campisano, 2015); Ibid., ‘The Maestro di Casa and the Role played in the Art Market by the Professionals of the Roman Court’, in Tacke, et al., 161–74. 45 Steiermärkisches Landesarchiv, Graz, Landrecht, Karton 1326 (unpaginated); Karton 401, Heft 2, fol. 267v–68v; Familienarchiv Herberstein, Urkunden, Heft 393 (Schuber 41). 46 For the letters from Dossena and Tonagello sent to the Forchondts between 1674 and 1676, see SA, IB 1124 (unpaginated); for letters from their assistant Balthasar Forsthueber sent in 1676, see IB 1126 (unpaginated); for delivering invoices see IB 1131 (unpaginated). 47 SA, IB 1127 (unpaginated). 48 SA, IB 1127, letter from Hans Adam Monzello to Alexander Forchondt, 25 April 1675 (unpaginated): ‘/. . ./ damit nun der guete Verstand zwischen Eng baiden mit Aufhöre so rathe ich der Herr thue diesfahls was möglich ist, ich wil mediator sein zu Erhlatung eines Universal Friedens /. . ./.’ 49 SA, IB 1128, letter from Victor Jacob, Baron Prandegg to Alexander Forchondt dating 30 May, 24 July and 5 August 1675 (unpaginated). 50 SA, IB 1128, letter from Victor Jacob, Baron Prandegg, 5 August 1675 (unpaginated): ‘/. . ./ P. S: Ich bitte der Herr wolle mir von seinem bösten, vnd schönisten Tulipänen kiellen gegen billichen werth 500 Stukh beÿ negster gelegencheit zuekhommen lassen.’ For Prandegg’s further commissions, see letters sent between 1676 and 1679 (unpaginated). 51 Denucé, Art Export, 209. 52 Denucé, Art Export 135, 164, 175, 177; SA, IB 1040, fol. 7v, 88v, 92–92v.

 Dealers, Agents and Clients in Inner Austria 75 53 Steiermärkisches Landesarchiv, Graz, Landrecht, Karton 906, Heft 7; Karton 907, Heft 1, Probate inventory of Jacob Victor, Baron Prandegg, 22. February 1695 (unpaginated). 54 StLA, Landrecht, Karton 907, Heft 1 (unpaginated). 55 Ibid. 56 For complaints from more experienced clients regarding the authenticity and price of the artworks supplied to them, see Rasterhoff and Vermeylen, ‘Mediators of Trade and Taste’, 152–6. 57 For the strategies used by agents and art dealers in the Low Countries, see Koenraad Jonckheere, ‘Supply and Demand. Some Notes on the Economy of Seventeenth Century Connoisseurship’, in Art Market and Connoisseurship: A Closer Look at Paintings by Rembrandt, Rubens and Their Contemporaries, ed. Anna Tummers and Koenraad Jonckheere (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008), 69–76; Van Ginhoven, Connecting Art Markets, 137. For a similar strategy applied by Roman dealers, see Francis Haskell, Patrons and Painters. Art and Society in Baroque Italy (New York: Icon Editions, 1971), 121. 58 SA, IB 1127, Letter from Hans Adam von Monzello, 6 May 1675. 59 SA, IB 1127, Letters from Sigmund Friderich, Count Trauttmansdorff, 2 December and 3 February 1672. 60 For the commission of the first set of tapestries of the Acts of the Apostles for Count Khisl, see SA, IB 1106, pro forma receipt by Philip Wauters, 28 September 1674 (unpaginated); IB 1129, letter from Philip Wauters to Alexander and Guilliam Forchondt the Younger, 15 February 1675 (unpaginated); Jean Denucé, Antwerp Art-Tapestry and Trade. Historical Sources for the Study of Flemish Art, lv. Antwerp: Edition De Sikkel, 1936), 376; Denucé, Art Export, 189–90, 195. For Diepenbeeck’s designs for the Apostles series in Michiel Wauters’ testament, see Jean Denucé, De Antwerpsche ‘Konstkamers: inventarissen van kunstverzamelingen te Antwerpen in de 16e en 17e eeuwen’ (Antwerpen: De Sikkel, 1932), 302. 61 See SA, IB 1095, letter from Alexander and Marcus Forchondt to their mother Maria Lemmens, 18. July 1682; Denucé, Art Export, 210–11, 213. 62 Fourteen tapestries with depictions of Apostles in Khisl’s inventory were estimated at 2000 Reichsgulden. StLA, Landrecht, Karton 538, Heft 3, fol. 229v: ‘Neue Niederländische Spalliermit Apostl Geschichten 14 Stukh sambt eine neue dergleiche Teppich . . . 2000 fl’. 63 The first record of payment to the Forchondts in Liechtenstein’s account books is dated 11 December 1669, while the earliest surviving letter from Eggenberg’s principal servant, Vogtberg, to the Forchondts was sent on 4 December 1670. See Stadsarchief Antwerpen, IB 1129 (folder Wagtberg, unpaginated); Haupt, Von der Leidenschaft, 87, document nr. 990. 64 SA, IB 1040, fol. 90. 65 For the transcript of the document see Haupt, Von der Leidenschaft, 213, document nr. 1597, list of paintings offered to Charles Eusebius Liechtenstein (25 December 1674): ‘/. . ./ Ein stuck, ist vän Peeter Breughel, die triumf van die dodt, comt per fl 100 /. . ./’. The entry was crossed out. 66 See Klaus Ertz and Christa Nitze-Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Ältere (1568–1625): kritischer Katalog der Gemälde (Lingen: Luca Verlag, 2010), 3, 1164–8, cat. nr. 542. 67 The relatively small supply of artworks to Carniola is confirmed by the correspondence; neither of the mere two letters sent from Ljubljana testify to larger

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shipments. See SA, IB 1124, letters from Jan Carel van Ceyck (November 1671) and Ignatio Bernneitinger (18 February 1767), unpaginated. 68 Košak, ‘Pricing Paintings’, 8. 69 Ana Lavrič, ‘Rimska sakralna zbirka ljubljanskega škofa Otona Friderika Buchheima ter njegov prispevek za obnovo Germanika in cerkve sv. Apolinarija’, Acta historiae artis Slovenica, 8 (2003): 64–70; Lavrič, ‘Art Collecting’, 110–14. 70 Lavrič, ‘Art Collecting’, 117. 71 For the transcript of the correspondence, see Ibid., 110. 72 While Giovanni Paolo Widmann (1605–48) and his younger brother Lodovico (1611–74) were well known as ambitious art collectors in Venice, their brothers David and Cristoforo lived in Rome, where Cristoforo (1617–60) became Cardinal in 1647. See Henry Simonsfeld, Der Fondaco dei tedeschi in Venedig und die DeutschVenezianische Handelsbeziehungen, Band. 2 (Stuttgart: Verlag der J. G. Gotaa’schen Buchhandlung, 1887), 172; Fabrizio Magani, Il collezionismo e la committenza artistica della Famiglia Widmann, patrizi veneziani, dal Seicento all'Ottocento (Venezia: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 1989); Linda Borean, ‘Widmann, collezione’, Il collezionismo d’arte a Venezia. Il Seicento, ed. Linda Borean and Stefania Mason (Venice: Marsilio, 2007), 322–3. 73 Košak, Žanrske upodobitve in tihožitja, 14–15; Katra Meke, Beneško baročno slikarstvo na Kranjskem in Štajerskem: Naročniki in zbiralci (PhD diss., University of Ljubljana, 2017), 136–79. 74 In addition to Franz Rigoni, a trader of presumably Venetian origin active in Ljubljana since the 1660s, Zaharia Waltreich (1623–82), Jacob Schell von Schellenburg (1652–1715), Franz Anton Zanetti (1661–1705) and Peter Anton Codelli (1660–1727) had close contacts with Venice. Schellenburg, Zanetti and Codelli are documented as commissioners of Venetian paintings. Moreover, Venetian paintings and a number of other Venetian items were also listed in the inventory of merchant Josef Teneffle von Tenau. Archives of Slovenia, SI AS 309, Zbirka zapuščinskih inventarjev Deželnega sodišča v Ljubljani, boxes 105, 112, 121, 128 (S 103, T 9, W 36, Z 10, Z 19, Z 21). Collecting practices of Carniolan traders reveal parallels with those of the Venetians. See Meke, Beneško baročno slikarstvo, 136–204. 75 Cecchini, Quadri e commercio, 228; Linda Borean, ‘Gaspar Chechel’, in Il collezionismo d’arte a Venezia. Il Seicento, 248–9, For Checel as collector, see also Linda Borean, ‘“Desegni e stampa de rame” la collezione grafica de Gaspar Chechel, mercante tedesco nella Venezia del Seicento’, Aprosiana 10 (2002): 155–78. See also Katra Meke, ‘At the Edge of Empire. Venetian Paintings and Other Objects in the Carniolan Noble Residences in the 17th and 18th Centuries’, in Travelling Objects: Botschafter des Kulturtransfers zwischen Italien und dem Habsburgerreich, ed. Gernot Mayer and Silvia Tammaro (Wien-Köln-Weimar: Böhlau Verlag 2019), 155. 76 Painters were occasionally employed and paid substantially to catalogue and value aristocratic collections. See Weigl, ‘Die Einheimischen’, 52; Košak, Žanrske upodobitve in tihožitja, 38, 46, 82; Meke, ‘Slikarska zbirka’, 89, 114. 77 The research for this chapter was funded by the Slovenian Research Agency within the core funding programme Slovenian Artistic Identity in European Context (nr. P6-0061) at the France Stele Institute of Art History ZRC SAZU, and within the research project Visual Representations of the Nobility. Early Modern Art Patronage in the Styria Province (nr. J6-7410).

4

James Thornhill as an agent-collector in early-eighteenth-century Paris Tamsin Lee-Woolfe

James Thornhill (1675–1734) travelled to Paris in 1717 as an established painter of murals, having secured prestigious elite and royal commissions, the most recent examples being St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Royal Naval College. In this chapter, I suggest that his time abroad was spent acquiring fine art, decorative and everyday objects as an agent for English acquaintances.1 The notebook compiled during his stay will be explored in relation to his involvement in the Parisian art market, who he met and the kind of items he acquired. I would argue that Thornhill was a conduit through which an interest in French artistic culture emerged among English audiences during this period. His activities will be placed in the context of other artists venturing abroad during the early eighteenth century. While it is likely that many English artists documented their activities on the continent, such material may not have survived. Yet, for an artist such as Thornhill to have had the financial means and time to travel aboard was certainly rare during this period. Artists travelled abroad not only to fulfil the requests of their patrons, as a commercial venture, but also to improve their own education. Jonathan Richardson junior (1694–1771), who was not a painter, made notes during his visits to Flanders and Holland in 1716, and later France and Italy, that were published by his father, the renowned painter Jonathan Richardson senior (1667–1745), as An account of some of the statues, bas-reliefs, drawings and pictures in Italy &c with Remarks, in 1722.2 The private diary of the portraitist, Joseph Highmore (1692–1780), written during his time in Paris in 1734, reveals that while he spent time visiting the studios or residences of painters,3 there are no entries on purchases made for his own collection or others. However, he did accompany the physician, Dr. Nathan Hickman (1695–1746), to see Nicolas Poussin’s Moses Sweetening the Waters of Marah (Baltimore Museum of Art), which Hickman eventually purchased and sold in England to the painter George Knapton (1698–1778).4 Certainly, for Richardson junior and Highmore, travelling abroad to further their artistic training was of greater importance than acquiring art objects, although these individuals became avid collectors as their careers progressed. While their trips to the continent did not directly result in purchases made for their

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peers, their activities probably had an impact on them, in terms of the knowledge they shared on French collecting and artistic production on returning home.

The commercial art market In eighteenth-century guidebooks and travel accounts, Paris was noted for the growth of its luxury trades and industries specializing in furnishings, jewellery, porcelain, precious metals, prints and paintings. This formed the premise for the satirical publication, A Treatise upon the Modes: or, a Farewell to French Kicks, written by Dr. John Harris, the Prebendary of Canterbury Cathedral, and published in 1715, in which he declared that ‘The End of my Book is, to dissuade my Country-men from the Use of French Fashions, and from applying to Foreigners in Matters of this nature, where we have a Right, and Power, and Genius to supply ourselves’.5 In another section ‘On French Painting’, the author states that he could ‘give a Thousand Instances of their transgressing (I mean the most renowned masters among them) against what, in other Nations, is called common sense. [. . .] it is my Opinion that it proceeds from an incurable Vanity’, and continues: Do not employ a French Painter to copy the Transfiguration, or any other celebrated Piece, and leave him entirely to himself, I will engage that he shall add a Figure or two of his own, with a view to improve the Piece [. . .] which gave occasion to an Italian to say of the Roman Poussin, That he would have made an excellent Painter, if his Father had not been a Frenchman.6

In a similar vein, ‘On the Cheapness of the French Workmanship’ persuaded English readers against being drawn to French commodities due to their affordability, and instead encouraged them to support English craftsmanship.7 In contrast, Louis Liger’s Le voyageur fidèle, ou Le guide des étrangers dans la ville de Paris published in the same year, promoted the unique shopping experience to be had in Paris: There have always been geniuses [amateurs or enthusiasts] who have different tastes on what are true curiosities; there are those who love beautiful furniture, others rare paintings: some have a taste for medals, some look for prints and others fine porcelains: thus each collector bows to his passion whenever he has the opportunity until there is a need to justify the expenditure; today it is in this way that when one sees so many cabinets which are so particular and of such a great value with all the rarities that they contain.8

The semi-luxury markets in London and Paris during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century also gave less affluent consumers the opportunity to purchase affordable items and emulate aristocratic tastes.9 The rue Saint-Honoré represented the vibrant centre of the luxury trade and the base for a diverse group, the

 Thornhill as Agent-Collector in Paris 79 marchands-­merciers, providing their clientele with high quality and imported goods and coordinating the production and repair of objects through their workshops.10

Jervas and Thornhill in Paris Englishmen participated in these overlapping markets for luxury and semi-luxury goods, and the fine arts, particularly prints and paintings, during this period. Charles Jervas (1675–1739), an Irish portrait painter, worked as an established picture agent for clients such as Matthew Prior (1664–1721), John Ellis (1646–1738) and George Clarke (1661–1736) during the period under consideration.11 He was undoubtedly well informed, having furthered his artistic training on the continent between 1698 and 1708. While in Paris during 1698, he embarked on an ambitious project at the request of George Clarke, an amateur architect and Tory politician.12 Jervas arranged for Gérard Audran (1640–1703) to engrave the Raphael Cartoons, then at Hampton Court, from his own copies.13 Audran was an acclaimed engraver of history paintings and was presumably chosen as there were no artists of comparable talent working in England. Only two plates were completed from the set of seven. The value in owning engraved reproductions of the original works was due to the difficulty in studying the Cartoons in the Royal Collection, or the tapestries based on the Cartoons, in Italy or Paris. While it is likely that Clarke intended this to be a commercial venture, he and Jervas may have recognized the benefit such works could have in furthering the academic learning of collectors and artists in England, especially as there was no official academy of art to represent the British school during this period. In addition to this, a letter dated 1 May 1698 from John Ellis, the assistant to the secretary of state, to James Vernon (1646–1727) reveals a list of engravings he required Jervas to source, the majority being paintings by Nicolas Poussin held in the French Royal Collection, among them ‘The Seven sacraments in little’ priced at seven livres and ‘The Death of Germanicus’ at two livres.14 A receipt gives the total value of the prints as ninety-eight livres, with additional costs covering the crate and customs charges. These works were supposedly intended for the merchant Robert Pooley (c. 1644–99), the brother of the Irish painter Thomas Pooley (c. 1640–1723). A subsequent letter written by Jervas to Ellis reveals: ‘Mr Pooley shewd me y[ou]r letter, I went with him to choose the Prints, & went to several other Shops beforehand that I might find the best impressions & the easiest rates.’15 He continues: ‘I have bought some [prints] for Mr George Clarke & some for Pereyra & a great many for our English gentlemen now in Town.’16 Jervas was himself an extensive collector of prints and drawings: his 1739 sale spanned 24 days and included around 2,000 objects.17 Jervas also became involved in the purchase of Poussin’s The Holy Family with St John and St Elizabeth (Figure 4.1) made in Paris during 1735 by James, second Earl Waldegrave (1715–63), the English Ambassador to France, from Thomas de Fraula (1646–1738), the Directeur Général des Domaines et Finances to Emperor Charles VI of Austria, presumably as a result of shared political and social acquaintances.18

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Figure 4.1  Nicolas Poussin, The Holy Family with St John and St Elizabeth, 1645–7. Oil on canvas, 174 × 134 cm. The State Hermitage Museum. Photograph © The State Hermitage Museum. Photo by Pavel Demidov. Waldegrave purchased this picture on behalf of Robert Walpole, first Earl of Orford (1676–1745). Walpole wrote to Waldegrave on 21 March 1735: ‘I will give you £400 for your Picture [which] is I believe the highest price that has ever been given for Picture of Poussin, if y[ou]r Lordship will give y[ou]rself the trouble to offer that, I cannot believe they will refuse it.’19 Within a few months, Waldegrave had successfully negotiated the price. In an unpublished letter sent from Paris on 8 October 1735, Waldegrave informed Walpole of one contemporary response to his painting once it had reached England: ‘I hear that M[r]. Jervas has discovered that the Picture I sent you is not a Poussin. It gives a very good idea of his judgement and the connoisseurs here have been very merry about it.’20 The fact that Jervas’s observation went unchallenged suggests the high regard in which these elite individuals held his opinions on painting. Adopting an advisory role had positive implications for Jervas’s professional development. He became a close political ally to Walpole as a fellow Whig supporter, which ensured his appointment as Principal Painter to the Crown in 1723.21 The Holy Family is now accepted as an original painting by Poussin, which meant that Jervas was in fact wrong.22 According to his notebook entries, Thornhill spent much of his time abroad sourcing and purchasing items. He relied on his existing contacts formed in England

 Thornhill as Agent-Collector in Paris 81 to provide letters of introduction in order to cultivate new networks abroad.23 His companions were predominantly merchants, sculptors and craftsmen, who probably accompanied him to the shops of dealers and craftsmen to advise on the quality of their stock.24 These included the miniaturist Charles Boit (1662–1727), who he had probably met in England.25 Like Thornhill, Boit had attended gatherings of the Society of the Virtuosi of St Luke in London.26 During the 1700s, Thornhill may have become acquainted with French ironworker Jean Tijou (fl.1689–1712) through their mutual association with Christopher Wren, who had supervised their time spent working on royal architectural projects in and around London. Alternatively, Tijou’s son-in-law, the painter Louis Laguerre (1663–1721) working in England, likely introduced him to Thornhill. Thornhill must have made a note of Tijou’s earlier recommendations which he used once in Paris. The jewellery merchant, Guillaume Hubert, of whom very little is known, was Thornhill’s third contact.27 Thornhill’s entries reveal working relationships between English and French dealers, most notably, the interactions of the English picture dealer, Andrew Hay (d.1754), who during this period was an agent for Edward Harley, second Earl of Oxford and Sir Andrew Fountaine (1676–1753).28 Many of these acquaintances had been or would become Thornhill’s artistic patrons. The objects acquired by Thornhill for English individuals were both decorative and functional, and perhaps both newly made and second-hand. For George Clarke, he sourced bronze medals associated with the reign of Louis XIV, having previously worked with Clarke on architectural projects at Oxford University.29 Thornhill was probably already acquainted with another individual, Thomas Walker (d. 1748), the commissioner of customs, through their association with the Society of the Virtuosi of St Luke.30 It would appear from Thornhill’s notes that Boit successfully sourced a Poussin landscape and an engraving of St Catherine for Walker.31 Following this time in Paris, Thornhill painted the staircase at Walker’s London residence at No. 8 Clifford Street, which still stands today.32 Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough (1660–1744), had requested several snuff boxes, having recently commissioned Thornhill to paint the Hall ceiling at Blenheim Palace.33 Thornhill searched for ornamental items, such as painted wall hangings and statues, for Thomas Pelham-Holles, first Duke of Newcastle (1693–1768).34 There were also requests for objects and clothing for everyday use, such as beaver skin gloves for Mr Bateman, a bookseller and auctioneer, and a pair of silver candlesticks for John Huggins (1655–1745), the high bailiff of Westminster.35 However, the notebook provides very few details as to which objects were purchased, the prices paid and how they were transported to England. Like Jervas, Thornhill sourced work by Poussin in Paris, purchasing for his own collection Tancred and Erminia, now at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham (Plate 5).36 I would argue that both individuals were responsible for introducing an early taste for Poussin into England during this period. The items sourced abroad would have informed Thornhill’s contemporaries on the latest French fashions and patterns of material consumption. His visits to private and royal collections, particularly Versailles, Marly and the Palais Royal, provided him with an opportunity to see first-hand examples of French craftsmanship. While eighteenthcentury guidebooks encouraged accessibility to private collections and royal galleries,

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they offered little guidance on the practicalities of gaining entry and the kinds of objects visitors could expect to see.37 It is likely that, as a result of the relationships he formed in Paris with individuals affiliated with the French Academy, whose workshops and cabinets were housed in royal palaces, Thornhill gained access to these interiors and information on the objects displayed.38

Conclusion I would argue that Thornhill’s notebook entries should be understood in terms of their wider resonance, in particular through the Anglo-French exchanges occurring during the period that resulted in the purchase and production of artworks. Furthermore, the activities of Thornhill and Jervas represent the emerging role of English artists as art agents, whereby collectors relied upon their artistic expertise to source and choose art objects, as well as make judgements on the quality and monetary value of items acquired abroad. The forms of consumption in which Thornhill and other Englishmen mentioned here engaged are of interest in what they tell us about the nature of the objects chosen and the reasons why they were purchased abroad. I would suggest that the answer is twofold: first, while some of these objects were readily available in England as imported or imitated goods, albeit inevitably in smaller quantities, those acquired in Paris fulfilled a taste for ‘Frenchness’ due to their perceived provenance, as the place of production or purchase. Second, many of these items would have represented superior French craftsmanship obtainable directly from the workshop. In combination, the status associated with these functional and decorative objects brought English individuals without the means or inclination to travel aboard closer to French collecting practices and taste, which they aspired to imitate.

Notes 1 National Art Library, 86.EE.87/MSL 1455, James Thornhill, Notebook of a visit to France, February–April 1717. This has been transcribed by the author of this essay: ‘James Thornhill’s Paris Notebook, 1717’, Walpole Society Journal 80 (2018): 202–61. 2 See Chapter Six in Carol Gibson-Wood, Jonathan Richardson: Art Theorist of the English Enlightenment (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000), 210–12. 3 See Elisabeth Johnston, ‘Joseph Highmore’s Paris Journal, 1734’, Walpole Society 42 (1970): 75, 86, 88–90. 4 Ibid., 86. See Anthony Blunt, Nicolas Poussin: A Critical Catalogue by Anthony Blunt (London: Phaidon, 1966), 22–3, cat. 28. 5 John Harris, Treatise upon the Modes: Or, a Farewell to French Kicks (London: J. Roberts, 1715), 3. 6 Ibid., 23–4.

 Thornhill as Agent-Collector in Paris 83 7 Ibid., 31–2. 8 Louis Liger, Le voyageur fidèle, ou Le guide des étrangers dans la ville de Paris (Paris, 1715), 369–70. 9 On the semi-luxury markets during this period, see Cissie Fairchilds, ‘The Production and Marketing of Populuxe Goods in Eighteenth-Century Paris’, in Consumption and the World of Goods, ed. John Brewer and Roy Porter (London and New York: Routledge, 1993). On the growth of consumer culture in England, see Maxine Berg, ‘New Commodities, Luxuries and Their Consumers in EighteenthCentury England’, in Consumers and Luxury: Consumer Culture in Europe, 1650– 1850, ed. Maxine Berg and Helen Clifford (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1999), 63–85. 10 See Carolyn Sargentson, Merchants and Luxury Markets: The Marchands Merciers of Eighteenth-Century Paris (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1996), 18–23. 11 On Prior’s own trip to Paris and his activities as agent for English diplomats, see Chapter Eight, ‘The Connoisseurial Advisor: Matthew Prior, 1664–1721’, in Helen Jacobsen, Luxury and Power: The Material World of the Stuart Diplomat, 1660–1714 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 12 See Caroline Pegum, ‘The Artistic and Literary Career of Charles Jervas (c. 1675– 1739)’ (M Phil diss., University of Birmingham, 2009), 52. On Clarke see Howard Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600–1840 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008), 253–5. 13 For a detailed study of the Cartoons, see Arlene Meyer, Apostles in England. Sir James Thornhill and the Legacy of Raphael’s Tapestry Cartoons, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, New York, exh. cat. (New York: Columbia University, 1996), 32–3. 14 BL Add MS 28882, Ellis Papers, ff. 253–4, Letter and list from John Ellis to Jervas, 1 May 1698. Quoted in Pegum, ‘Charles Jervas’, 51. 15 Ibid., f. 292. Letter from Jervas to Ellis, 26 May 1698. Quoted in Pegum, ‘Charles Jervas’, 52. 16 Jervas is most likely referring to Isaac Pereira (c. 1658–1718), a Jewish Portuguese merchant. See Edgar Samuel, ‘Pereira, Isaac (c.1658–1718)’, ODNB, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn., January 2008, http:​/​/www​​.oxfo​​rddnb​​.com/​​view/​​ artic​​l​e​/75​​162. 17 A catalogue of the valuable collection of prints and drawings, in architecture, history, battles, landskips, antiquities, &c late of Charles Jarvis Esq, deceased [London 1740]; in ‘The Art World in Britain 1660 to 1735’, at http://artworld​.york​.ac​.uk. 18 See Andrew Moore, A Capital Collection: Houghton Hall and the Hermitage (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002), 274, cat. 177. On the Fraula family, see Jean-Joseph Expilly, Dictionnaire géographique, historique et politique des Gaules et de France, 2 vols (Paris, 1764), vol. 2, 181–2. 19 Letter from Robert Walpole to Waldegrave, Cambridge University Library, Ch(H), Waldegrave Mss, Correspondence, 797. Only this part of the letter was reproduced in Andrew Moore, Houghton Hall: The Prime Minister, the Empress and the Heritage (London: Philip Wilson, 1996). 20 BL Add MS 73815, Walpole Papers, f. 105, Letter from Waldegrave to Walpole, 8 October 1735. 21 See Edward Bottoms, ‘Charles Jervas, Sir Robert Walpole and the Norfolk Whigs’, Apollo, 145, no. 420 (1997): 44–8.

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22 See Poussin et Dieu, exh. cat. (Paris: Louvre, 2015), cat. 51. 23 Thornhill, Notebook, 1. 24 Ibid., 66, 87. 25 Ibid., inside cover and 3, 75. See Vertue, ‘Notebooks’, Walpole Society 18 (Vertue I, 1930), 33; vol. 20 (Vertue II, 1932), 21; vol. 22 (Vertue III, 1934), 30. 26 Ilaria Bignamini, ‘George Vertue, Art Historian, and Art Institutions in London, 1689-1768: A Study of Clubs and Academies’, Walpole Society 54 (1988): 33. 27 Thornhill, Notebook, 5, 7. 28 Ibid., 5. Iain Pears, The Discovery of Painting: The Growth of Interest in the Arts in England, 1680–1768 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988), 77–87. 29 Thornhill, Notebook, 1. See Timothy Clayton, ‘Clarke, George (1661–1736)’, ODNB, Oxford University Press, 2004, http:​/​/www​​.oxfo​​rddnb​​.com/​​view/​​artic​​​le​/54​​96. 30 See Bignamini, ‘George Vertue’, 23–4. 31 Thornhill, Notebook, 1. This could be Nicolas Poussin, Neptune and Aphrodite, recorded as being in the Dining Room of Clifford house according to an inventory compiled in 1770. See Richard Morris, Thomas Walker (1664–1748): ‘toadeater and notorious usurer’ and Collector of Fine Pictures (Loughton, 2006), 14. 32 ‘Cork Street and Savile Row Area: Clifford Street, North Side’, in Survey of London: Volumes 31 and 32, St James Westminster, Part 2, ed. Francis Henry Sheppard (London: London County Council, 1963), 466–82. British History Online, at http:​ /​/www​​.brit​​ish​-h​​istor​​y​.ac.​​uk​/su​​rvey-​​londo​​n​/vol​​s31​-2​​​/pt2/​​pp466​​-482 (accessed 10 October 2017). 33 Thornhill, Notebook, 1. On the commission see David Green, Blenheim Palace (London: Country Life, 1952), 306–8. 34 For his biography see Reed Browning, ‘Holles, Thomas Pelham-, Duke of Newcastle Upon Tyne and First Duke of Newcastle under Lyme (1693–1768), Prime Minister’, ODNB, online edition, May 2011, at http:​/​/www​​.oxfo​​rddnb​​.com/​​view/​​artic​​l​e​/21​​801 (accessed 30 April 2015). 35 James Thornhill, Notebook. 5. On Bateman, see Henry Plomer, H.G. Aldis, E.R. McC. Dix, G.J. Gray, R.B. McKerrow, A Dictionary of the Printers and Booksellers Who Were at Work in England, Scotland and Ireland from 1668 to 1725 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1922), 24–5. 36 James Thornhill, ibid., 66. For a contemporary discussion on this painting shortly after it arrived in England, see Jonathan Richardson senior, Two Discourses (London, 1719), 75–94. 37 See Etienne Jollet, ‘L’accessibilité de l’œuvre d’art. Les beaux-arts dans les guides de Paris au XVIIIe siècle’, in Gilles Chabaud, Evelyne Cohen, Natacha Coquery and Jérôme Penez, Les Guides imprimés du XVIe au XXe siècle. Villes, paysages, voyages. Papers presented at a congress held at Paris VII-Denis Diderot University, 3–5 December 1998 (Paris: Belin, 2000), 167–8. 38 His entries suggest that he was accompanied by the royal sculptor Corneille van Clève (1646–1732) to the home or royal cabinet of the goldsmith, Nicolas de Launay (1646–1727), and again during a visit to the Palais Royal. See Thornhill, Notebook, 88–90.

Part II

Agents in the long eighteenth century

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II

Introduction Hidden figures – agents in the long eighteenth century Bénédicte Miyamoto

A flurry of biographies of twentieth-century art dealers were published in the 1990s, enhancing the reputation of the art expert’s sharp-eyed judgement, or coup d’oeil.1 In these biographies, the readers also caught a glimpse of hidden figures, who tantalizingly appeared when deals were clinched, or when masterpieces were brought back from obscurity. They are the intermediaries who people the dealers’ and collectors’ networks and underpin the long process by which an expertise is reached, and authority gained. The same confidentiality surrounded the eighteenth century ‘aids in picture-hunting’.2 In his Observation on the Arts, Thomas Winstanley claimed that by the end of the eighteenth century, ‘every corner of Europe has been searched – and, as it were, hunted for Pictures, both by the Collector and the Dealer’, a statement which aggrandized both the collector and the dealer, who appeared unaided in their colossal search, as an allseeing Argus.3 But this ubiquity, Winstanley admits, relied behind the scene on ‘agents employed not only in this country but in every part of Europe’, forming the army of ‘formidable rivals’, which Part II of this book examines.4 A series of portraits sketched by the engraver and auctioneer John Greenwood on an Abraham Langford auction catalogue show the small world of bidders mingling and competing for artworks. The identification of the portraits in the British Museum catalogue is limited, however, to the status of collector, dealer and artists (Figures II.1–3 ). The recent wealth of research on art market stakeholders, and the figure of the art dealer in particular, has shown that the traditional triangle of trade made up of collector, dealer and artist relegates these three actors to positions which are too defined and separate, and that circumstantial and episodic contacts do not frame well with the documents unearthed about intermediary activities. Studies of the primary art market underline the role of ‘boundary spanners’, be they artists, curators or gallerists, constantly relaying and adapting hard-to-get information from their outside sources to their inside network, thus influencing production and valuation.5 Similarly, at the origin of the artworks’ circulation on the secondary market is a specialized group of

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Figure II.1 John Greenwood, Portrait of the French engraver and dealer Gilles Demarteau the Elder, c. 1760. Drawing in pen and brown ink, over graphite, drawn on a sale catalogue. British Museum, Prints and Drawings. © 2019 The British Museum Images. ‘mobilizers’.6 Agents in the eighteenth century were relied on for advice before a sale, asked to reconnoitre a collection or persuade a reluctant seller. At the high end of this role, they described, evaluated and selected artworks, while the more humdrum side of an agent’s trade could also involve packing, shipping or insuring artworks, often evolving under complicated logistical and political constraints. Whether working on one’s entrepreneurial initiative or at someone’s behest, the figure of the agent is often recognized as the driving force of the art trade.7 Research has convincingly shown that the development of a modern art market rested not only on the rise of a ‘dealer-critic’ system that locked the market and the press into a mutually binding and beneficial relationship, but also on the accompanying increase in intermediaries, forming an ever denser network of agents involved in valuing art.8 While the early modern art market was closely linked to court culture and to political or religious patronage, the long eighteenth-century art market was characterized by an accelerating flow of pictures across borders and the diffusion of collecting practices to a wider audience.9 Both these features accrued the number of actors in the art market, and eroded the trust in exchanges that had previously been regulated by princely or aristocratic authority.

 Introduction 89

Figure II.2  John Greenwood, Portrait of the collector Richard Russell, c. 1760. Brush drawing in grey wash, with pen and grey ink, over graphite, drawn on a sale catalogue. British Museum, Prints and Drawings. © 2019 The British Museum Images. For collectors, this meant the quest for reliable agents was all the more important – and historians of the art market are keen to uncover further the extent of knowledge these agents possessed, how much they influenced cultural consumption and how they operated.10 The methods to investigate the first two questions are familiar to historians of the art markets, who have a long practice of the history of connoisseurship, criticism and reception. Answers to the last question are increasingly being unveiled by researchers’ efforts to engage in material culture and social network analysis. This has spotlighted the missing links in traditional provenance documentation. Lists of previous ownerships and locations are indeed incomplete chains of custody, if the paper trail is missing information on transfer, scouting out and selection by proxy. Being an agent in the eighteenth century was an offer of services attached not only to the position of an art dealer but also to that of a painter, a collector, as well as a critic – a flexible and dual role which Sandra van Ginhoven had outlined in her introduction for the seventeenth century. This activity tended to claim an ever-increasing importance on the marketplace, just as it consumed an ever-increasing amount of the agent’s time, in parallel with the growing professionalization of the eighteenth-century art market.11 More research is needed on what actually constituted the position of agents.

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Figure II.3  John Greenwood, Portrait of the artist George Barret the elder, c. 1760. Drawing in pen and brown ink, over graphite, drawn on a sale catalogue. British Museum, Prints and Drawings. © 2019 The British Museum Images. The etymology of the term emphasizes their active participation in the market, through their relentless engagement with the market and their pursuit of ever-closer relationships with consumers and producers. The European artistic centres of production, in the northern countries, Italy, France and the newly developing art markets in Germany and England underwent notable upheavals in the eighteenth century.12 The disruption of aristocratic fortunes and religious worldly goods meant that the flow of artefacts accelerated in Italy, with heirlooms being snatched up by agents from all over Europe scouring the Italian regions and cities, spurred on by diplomatic practices or by the opportunities offered by Grand Tour sociability.13 The Dutch Golden Age had come to a close, and in both the southern and northern Netherlands’ cities, enterprising native agents and artists lacking local patrons were actively fuelling the enduring fashion for Dutch and Flemish artworks all over Europe.14 At the close of the century, the French Revolution uprooted renowned collections and redistributed the spoils of a century’s worth of dazzling connoisseurship on the part of often immensely rich amateurs.15 Since the beginning of the century, the colonial trades and the premises of the industrial revolution had fuelled both established fortunes and an increasing middle-class purchasing power. The circulation of artworks in the eighteenth century diffused connoisseurship and diverse collecting practices in countries such as Germany and Great Britain. Elite commissions and patronage continued unabated but were relayed and sustained by a fast-developing secondary art market. Comparing periods, hands and schools became more attainable; and the public for the arts became more diverse, as it was offered a wider range of spaces to enjoy art – from the artist’s studio to the public auction, from the private gallery to public exhibitions. On the scene at each of these locations, the agents were ready to offer their services. How best can we reconstruct the professional field of these agents who connected the artists, the dealers and the collectors? The ‘spatial turn’ in history has prompted a

 Introduction 91 new approach to professional quarters in cities, yielding many important clues about the urban sociology of agents. Research has uncovered a wealth of information on the background of sellers and dealers of art, thanks to their geographical links to a shop, an auction house or a place of exhibition, which has thrown light on the agent practices of ever varied artistic professions such as print-sellers, carvers, gilders and even booksellers. The rise of collecting practices and the increasing success of public auctions and private sales in the long eighteenth century were intimately linked to strong social networks on the European art scenes. This does not necessarily mean that the strength of these ties was geographically visible. Although the French Ancien Régime art market rested on enduring networks of intermediaries – which branched out into the whole of Europe – the Parisian art scene was organized in urban clusters which had shifting locations, not least because sales and artistic events often took place at the collector’s home.16 In London, art events happened at fixed commercial addresses, with mercantile galleries and auction houses springing up in the urban landscape. But the art market on both sides of the channel was similarly segmented and specialized, with art professionals catering for different sections of art consumers at different locations. These urban clusters of art agents were in keeping with the agglomerating tendencies of cultural production, but they also developed because of the increasing social segmentation of art consumption. In Paris, for example, this reinforced the existence of a ‘small world’ of art professionals and amateurs, a sociability based on trust that deployed itself around the Pont Notre Dame, the Faubourg Saint Honoré and the Palais Royal quarters.17 In London, auctioneers increasingly chose to move away from the commercial and lower quarters of brokers around the Royal Exchange, to fashion the auctions as semi-cultural events. They also left the artistic communities of Soho and Covent Garden, which they gathered were inhibiting to first-time collectors, and they flourished in the genteel district of St. James’s Square.18 However, the study of the day-to-day business of art professionals shows strong social interaction between the three localities, proving the London art worlds formed one large and tightly knit social network. Success for art agents, such as Michael Bryan or Pierre-Joseph Lafontaine, was therefore determined by the ease with which they navigated these urban art scenes and made good use of their contacts.19 These abilities were key to forging a reputation, founded on past successful exchanges and on the status of one’s exchange partners.20 The second section of this volume offers chapters that have justly paid special attention to the analysis of social networks, and to geographical clues in business relationships. A prosopographical approach to art agents in eighteenth-century Europe is hampered by the scarcity of documents on these networks. Aristocratic amateurs have left an abundance of archives to document their collecting practices. But the figure of their agent(s) often remains elusive, as Ulf R. Hansson explains in Chapter 6 of the book by focusing on the enigmatic, misrepresented and controversial role of Philipp von Stosch in early-eighteenth-century Rome and Florence. His collecting and his advising role to other collectors and scholars are easier to retrieve and reconstruct from archives than his active role as agent – commission sums remained largely unbilled, for example, and negotiation practices were left largely unscripted. Furthermore,

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when written records of agents negotiating with sellers and implementing clients’ assignments emerge, an important aspect often underlined is the agents’ discretion and subtle margin of interpretation. Even when on a mission for the king of France Louis XV, François Louis Colins (1699–1760) operated with leeway to exercise his judgement: ‘my main goal was to construe how to carry out your order, and decipher what precisely the proprietor intends to be paid’.21 Defining who these art agents were, what their ethos and practices amounted to, and how they organized their professional field also proves difficult not least because, as Hansson’s Chapter 6 demonstrates, the complex mythologies and apocryphal anecdotes surrounding agents have endured and continue to obscure our understanding of the agent’s role. The skills of agents rested on being multifaceted and multitalented, in the manner of Philipp von Stosch, who was from an artistic background, but capable of mixing in the rarefied circles of the British prime minister, the entourage of Pope Clement XI and the court of the Holy Emperor Charles VI. The damaging reputation that Stosch acquired and that Hansson rectifies is a testimony to the intense competitiveness of agents on the art market, and of practices that were shrouded in secrecy. Often, the intense acquisitiveness that drove agents likened their trade to a disease, and James Christie II recalls in a letter to William Buchanan that John Strange (1732–99) ‘trafficked so much in Pictures when Consul at Venice that the Venetians styled him “Il Fracastore Inglese”’,22 a parallel with the dissemination of the syphilis disease that Christie advises Buchanan to suppress in his forthcoming Memoirs of Painting. Ultimately, the reach of agents was novel, and their role was to build a powerbase where the merchant collecting and scholarly networks of the long eighteenth century intersected. As such, for all their elusiveness in historical records, these agents paradoxically left definite imprints and lasting legacies of taste. Public collections or collections made uniform by public expectations were still rare – as was the idea of collecting for the nation. The emerging art market created unprecedented opportunities for agents who were not only mediators but also initiators – the increased and marketoriented circulation of works of art was still haphazard and remarkably personal in its networks of sociability. In a letter to James Christie in 1811, the Marquess of Bute acknowledged publicly the influence of his agent William Baillie (1723–1810), ‘to whose taste the collection of pictures as well as drawings [at Luton] is much indebted’.23 When the auctioneer Pierre Rémy sold the collection of the king’s secretary LouisJean Gaignat (1697–1768), he stressed the importance of his agent François Louis Colins; the 1768 catalogue underlined that the pictures ‘honoured the memory of M. Gaignat; give me leave to also add that they honour that of the late Collins, Painter, in which he had put his trust; he could not have chosen a better connoisseur’.24 As historians of collecting, display and provenance increasingly emphasize, collections were co-authored. Foreshadowing the ‘agent-scholar’ of the nineteenth century, private collections of the eighteenth century bore the distinctively personal marks not only of their collectors but of their agents as well. What was the typical background of eighteenth-century dealers and agents? Their exact status remains difficult to trace, and they are for example listed in the Getty Collector’s files and the Getty’s Union List of Artist Names© without necessarily having

 Introduction 93 been either collectors or artists. In the Frick’s Archives Directory for the History of Collecting in America, retrieving an entity’s role in the art market leads you to either choose ‘consultant’, ‘dealer/gallery’ or ‘scholar/critic/expert’. All of these were corollary aspects of the role of agents, but the database is careful to only use the term ‘agent’ in its ‘notes’ sections, since only then can intrapersonal information be precisely given about whose orders this agent was serving. With such input choices, these databases crucially underline how vital the agents were in collectors’ and artists’ community networks, and that being an agent was not strictly a profession, but a social link. It is precisely through his relations to two clients that Maria Celeste Cola reconstructs in Chapter 5 the agent practices of the cleric and connoisseur Peter Grant (died 1784), who became the indispensable nucleus of the Scottish amateurs’ network in Rome. Her chapter’s focuses notably on letters, showcasing how they were used to forge, court, publicize and sometimes destroy these social links. At the beginning of the century, the most promising feature of an agent’s profile was to be able to claim or to facilitate access to higher social ranks, as exemplified by the British antiquarian and agent John Talman (1677–1726), who became acquainted with Pope Clement XI and developed an extensive network of contacts.25 Many of these agents’ skills were first and foremost in sociability – a distinct ability to persistently curate social contacts, rather than just ‘social graces’26 – as is made clear in the dense exchange of letters and services in John Talman’s Letter-Book spanning the years 1708–12.27 Agents were diplomats, such as the British consul John Smith (1682–1770); artists granted access to foreign elite circles, such as the Irish painter Robert Fagan (1761–1816) in Italy; and amateurs and scientists who had a laissez-passez from the Republic of Letters, such as the French diplomat and writer Jean-Alexis-François Artaud de Montor (1772–1849).28 The list goes on, but is mainly peopled with white males in networks blending political power and financial clout. In the European eighteenth-century patriarchal society, many women, and especially from the higher ranks, were busy carving out positions as recognized and reputed collectors, artists and amateurs, sealing their status through matronage, prominent commissions and (often published) intellectual correspondences. These activities put them firmly on the map of the Republic of Letters, inscribed them in the annals of a budding art history, and showed them pushing back at institutional exclusion.29 The role of agent, however, seems to have been largely closed to women – a notable exception being the portraitist, memoirist and dealer’s wife Elizabeth Vigée-Lebrun.30 The conspicuous absence of female agent is of course notwithstanding the possible recovery of unknown figures from history or the uncovering of erased records or invisible practices in archives. In truth, too little attention has yet been brought to bear even on agents’ wives, widows, daughters and female relations, and on their exact agency – and a systematic indexing of female relations would be a good place to start in future bibliographical art market studies. Women could be seen to pass definitive judgement in art – although this was still an exploit fraught with the risk of mordant caricature.31 But the closing of financial transaction, the running of logistical operation involving the cross-border movement of artworks and even the possibility of travelling themselves were rendered especially difficult for women in the eighteenth century. Evidence from archived correspondence abundantly shows that consumers specifically

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sought agents who, on top of being experts of sociability, could tour foreign countries; strike up contact with possessors of works of note; and map and track the presence of artworks.32 They were chosen for ‘guidance through the terra incognita of continental art’, and gatekeeping favoured the ‘pragmatic alliance (. . .) espoused by their clubs and learned societies’ which can be witnessed in John Greenwood’s gallery of cross-border homo-sociality recorded on the pages of auction catalogues (Figures II.1–3).33 The art agent Richard Dalton (1715–91) boasted of such mastery in his letters to his client Lord Bute: I’m intent to my entire business in collecting and think of nothing else and shall take care of establishing such a correspondence in each part of Italy that nothing of real Value can be carry’d of without having time to bid for it, as I have taken acct of all things valuable that which likely to be sold hereafter, and shall neglect no present occasion.34

In the same vein, Peter Grant was aptly nicknamed ‘the Introducer’, and Cola concludes in Chapter 5 that the crucial ability of a successful agent and top-most objective was indeed to be able to provide contacts of all kinds, and to maintain these contacts so as to become the mandatory point of reference in the collecting, artistic and dealing communities. Being the eye of the collector was required of the agent as a connoisseur by proxy. From the sixteenth century onwards, collectors had sought an all-encompassing knowledge of the arts through virtuoso practices such as the Wunderkammer. In keeping with the encyclopaedic concern of the Age of Enlightenment, eighteenthcentury art elaborated on the Renaissance macrocosmic project by adhering more closely to the categories of national schools.35 In turn, the discipline of art history was buoyed by the increasing visibility all over Europe of the artworks that sustained the Vasarian narrative, and the subsequent development of standardized canons. Many of the European cultural centres in the eighteenth century boasted of a driving cultural policy. Papal Rome vied to refurbish and consolidate its heritage,36 while French collections, in the aftermath of Louis XIV’s patronage, had at heart to encompass the great national schools, and developed according to academic standards. The agent Alexandre-Joseph Paillet (1743–1814) was called upon to mitigate the lack of Flemish and Dutch paintings in the Royal Collection, for example.37 Even in countries that had little royal support for artistic production or professional education, such as Britain, connoisseurs like John Evelyn (1620–1706) enjoined collectors to strive for ‘an ample enumeration of the most renowned Masters, and their works’.38 Collectors strove for an exhaustive display of national schools in one and the same gallery. However, it is vital to remember that many purchases were based solely on the agents’ ekphrasis of the picture in their letters, and the reliance of the client at the other end on written art historical reference tools. During exchanges with clients, the eighteenth-century agent was, therefore, the purveyor not only of pictures but also of apposite art historical sources and descriptions. Laura-Maria Popoviciu’s Chapter 7 queries the relationship between British diplomats and the Venetian Giovanni Maria Sasso (1742–1803). The

 Introduction 95 role of learned advisor was, therefore, crucial for the eighteenth-century agent. Studying the letters between agent and clients, Popoviciu highlights how important the project of writing an updated history of art in Venice was for Sasso. He thus affirmed his status as a connoisseur and took pride in showing how his agency shaped contemporary collecting practices. Some of the most celebrated agents in eighteenth-century Europe likewise developed a close scholarly exchange with their clients. Lord Bute bought the copy of Pilkington’s Dictionary annotated by his agent, William Baillie, at the latter’s posthumous sale, while upon his death, artist Simon Dubois bequeathed his ample collection of book of prints to complement Lord Somers’s exhaustive library of art historical texts, highlighting the learned relationship Dubois had as an agent with his collecting patron.39 These personal and scholarly exchanges between the community of collectors and the art market professionals helped broaden the vocabulary of artistic consumption available to the public, and the letters between agents and collectors were important templates for the widening variety of printed materials and literary genres discussing art. The relationship between the art market intermediaries and the artistic professions, on the other hand, was fraught with difficulties. The artistic communities in a great many European artistic centres were still constrained by the humanistic and academic ideals, which downplayed the economic interest to guarantee aesthetic value and integrity.40 Part of the reason for the scarcity of documents on agent practices and networks lies on the mundane and ephemeral nature of these documents – which are characteristics that do not traditionally bode well for their archival survival.41 Painter Philippe Joseph Tassaert’s works have been preserved for posterity, while his commercial exchanges with auctioneer James Christie, for whom he acted as an agent abroad, have largely disappeared.42 But the reason why documentation of this activity is hard to come by also lies with the suspicion that artists who dabbled in agent activities verged too close to commerce. It turned them into agent provocateurs, as it were, inciting illiberal activities, which were not supposed to be part of the artist’s career path. This explains why the Parisian art market community obligingly denied having any business links with the painter Guillaume Martin, although this did not ultimately save his academic career, as Christine Godfroy-Gallardo researched for her contribution. Keeping up the appearances of disinterestedness in artistic exchanges meant that academies, amateurs and collectors ultimately turned a blind eye at the extent of artists’ involvement in the art market as intermediaries. Transactions were reshaped as conversations; exchanges were framed as gifts, donations or philanthropic ventures; and the vocabulary used to describe relationships in the art market was markedly divorced from their commercial reality. This continued equivocation of the real nature of the art market’s forces on production and consumption of art drove the need for ever more discreet intermediaries – which both increased their numbers at the time and drove their activities of advisors, dealers and agents further under the radar of the historian. Agents were also increasingly noted for their entrepreneurial skills, and their knowledge in the flow of goods. These skills were tested more frequently by risky

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strategies and by the un-contracted purchase of goods in the hope of resale and lucrative exhibitions.43 Like the eighteenth-century artists, the eighteenth-century agents increasingly chose to step away from the commissions of a single-patron collector. Like Edmé-François Gersaint (1694–1750) in Paris, Jan Baptist Bouttats (1680–1743) in Antwerp or John Anderson in London, the agents played the market by trying to initiate trends and satisfy the consumption patterns of a wider audience.44 What evidence can we consult to outline the role of the merchant-agent in this incipient ‘professionalization’?45 There was by the end of the century a wide social range of art agents. On the one hand, the most high-profile merchant-agents did not advertise a trade. Noël Joseph Desenfans (1745–1807), having started as a merchant from Douai, became active in London as a private gentleman, for example. On the other hand, if we look at registered professionals, the title of agents remains elusive here again. Eighteenthcentury professional directories in both Paris and London do list names and addresses of those we know from archives to have been instrumental in procuring, buying or selling pieces for collectors. However, the professions inscribed next to these names are typically broker, auctioneer, upholder or picture-cleaner; marchands-merciers, tapissiers, vendeurs d’estampes, etc. Their advertised skills in the art market made them soughtafter private intermediaries but the term ‘agent’ or even ‘art dealer’ and ‘consultant’ only became recognized occupation labels later on in the nineteenth century. But it is in the last decades of the eighteenth century that agents, busy expanding their activities into financing and specific expertise, seem to have outgrown their position of ‘Jackof-all-Trades’.46 The professional identities of agents from Flemish, Dutch and German cities are similarly difficult to pinpoint – especially since those cities were dependant on fragmented art markets operating according to different local rules.47 This was the highly personalized art market Renata Schellenberg describes in Chapter 9, highlighting how important it is for historians to be able to reconstruct the human agency that played such a vital role in the selection, the flow and the valuation of pictures in the eighteenth century. Indeed, the eighteenth-century art scene was still shaped overwhelmingly by subjective responses to Old Masters and to contemporary art, and collections were frequently overhauled, and rapidly dispersed, as was the case especially in the volatile world of French collectors.48 Even though the agents participated actively in the shaping of an increasingly standardized art discourse, Schellenberg reminds us that the eighteenth-century art market remained individualized. It could not yet be defined as an integrated system with prevalent institutional players such as the museums and the major dealing houses of the nineteenth century, as defined by the introductions of Anne Helmreich and Inge Reist in this book. The figures of agents extraordinaire at the turn of the century were locally embedded but with European-wide connections. They had achieved an unprecedented international reach but remained first and foremost providers of tailored and personalized services to private collectors, since the public institutions for the arts were yet in their infancy. Their use of numerous intermediaries, their attempts at international arbitrage and their use of stock made them typical of the well-connected, market-savvy eighteenth-century agent who was both a connoisseur and a purveyor, but first and foremost a facilitator.

 Introduction 97

Notes 1 See, for example, Harriet Vyner, Groovy Bob: The Life and Times of Robert Fraser (London: Faber & Faber, 1999); Lillian Browse, Duchess of Cork Street: The Autobiography of an Art Dealer (London: Giles de la Mare, 1999); Ingrid Schaffner and Lisa Jacobs, Julien Levy: Portrait of an Art Gallery (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998); Pierre Assouline, An Artful Life: A Biography of D. H. Kahnweiler 1884–1979 (New York: Fromm, 1991); Lee Hall, Betty Parsons: Artist, Dealer, Collector (New York: Abrams, 1991); Vladimir Visson and Lynn Visson, Fair Warning: Memoirs of a New York Art Dealer (Tenafly, NJ: Hermitage, 1986); Laura De Coppet and Alan Jones, The Art Dealers (New York: Potter, 1984). On the connoisseur’s eye, see Pascal Griener, La République de l’oeil: l’expérience de l’art au siècle des Lumières (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2010), 65–115. 2 Giovanna Perini, ‘Dresden and the Italian Art Market in the Eighteenth Century: Ignazio Hugford and Giovanni Ludovico Bianconi’, The Burlington Magazine 135 (1985): 551. 3 Thomas Winstanley, Observations on the Arts: With Tables of the Principal Painters of the Various Italian, Spanish, French, Flemish, Dutch, and German Schools (Liverpool: W. Wales, 1828), 5. 4 Ibid., 3–4. 5 Tamar Yogev, ‘The Social Construction of Quality: Status Dynamics in the Market for Contemporary Art’, Socio-Economic Review 8, no. 3 (2010): 511–36. 6 See the use of the term in Stephen Greenblatt, ‘A Mobility Studies Manifesto’, in Cultural Mobility: A Manifesto, ed. Stephen Greenblatt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 251. 7 The examination of extant seventeenth- and eighteenth-century correspondences between art dealers and agents have frequently concluded that the latter were the prime mobilizers. See Erik Duverger, Documents concernant le commerce d’art de Francisco-Jacomo van den Berghe et Gillis van der Vennen de Gand avec la Hollande et la France pendant les premières décades du XVIIIe siècle (Wetteren, Belgium: Universa, 2004), v–vi; Neil De Marchi, Hans J. Van Miegroet and Matthew E. Raiff, ‘Pricing in the Mid Seventeenth-Century Antwerp to Paris Art Trade’, in Art Markets in Europe, 1400–1800, ed. David Ormrod and Michael North (Aldershot: Ashgate. 1998), 126–7. 8 Howard Becker, Art Worlds (London: University of California Press, 2008); Nathalie Heinich, Faire voir. L’art à l’épreuve de ses médiations (Paris: Les Impressions nouvelles, 2007); Harrison C. White and Cynthia A. White, Canvases versus Careers. Institutional Change in the French Painting World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965). 9 Natasha Constantinidou, ‘On Patronage, fama and Court: Early Modern Political Culture’, Renaissance Studies 24 no. 4 (2010): 597–610; Jonathan Brown, Kings and Connoisseurs: Collecting Art in Seventeenth-Century Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). 10 For recent research focusing on the role of the agent, see Hans Cool, Marika Keblusek and Badeloch Noldus, eds, Your Humble Servant: Agents in Early Modern Europe (Hilversum: Uitgeverij Verloren, 2006); Jeremy Warren and Adriana Turpin, eds, Auctions, Agents and Dealers: The Mechanisms of the Art Market, 1660–1830 (London: Archeopress, 2008); Sandra van Ginhoven, Connecting Art Markets:

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Guilliam Forchondt’s Dealership in Antwerp (c. 1632–78) and the Overseas Painting Trade (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2017), 55–60. 11 Filip Vermeylen, and Dries Lyna, ‘Art Auctions in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, in Art Auctions and Dealers: The Dissemination of Netherlandish Painting during the Ancien Régime, ed. Filip Vermeylen, Hans Vlieghe and Dries Lyna (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), 139–54. 12 North and Ormrod, Art Markets in Europe; David Ormrod, ‘Art and Its Markets’, The Economic History Review, New Series 52, no. 3 (1999): 544–51; De Marchi and Van Miegroet, Mapping Markets. 13 Ilaria Bignamini and Clare Hornsby, Digging and Dealing in Eighteenth-Century Rome, 2 vols (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010). 14 Filip Vermeylen, Painting for the Market: Commercialisation of Art in Antwerp’s Golden Age (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003); Vermeylen, Vlieghe and Lyna, eds, Art Auctions and Dealers. 15 Charlotte Guichard, Les amateurs d’art à Paris au XVIIIe siècle (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2008); Patrick Michel, Le commerce du tableau à Paris dans la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle (Lille: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2008). 16 Françoise Mardrus, ‘Proposition pour une topographie du marché de l’art parisien sous la régence autour du palais royal et de l’hôtel Crozat’, in Collections et marché de l’art en France au XVIIIe siècle, ed. Patrick Michel (Bordeaux: Centre François George Pariset, 2002), 127–34. 17 Charlotte Guichard, ‘Small Worlds. The Economy of Auction in the Late 18th Century Paris Art Market’, in Moving Pictures. Intra-European Trade in Images, 16th-18th Centuries, ed. Neil De Marchi and Sophie Raux (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 236–56. Sophie Raux, ‘Visualizing Spaces, Flows, Agents, and Networks of the Art Markets in the 18th Century: Some Methodological Challenges’, Artl@s Bulletin 2, no. 2 (2013): article 4. 18 Rosie Dias, ‘A World of Pictures’: Pall Mall and the Topography of Display, 1780– 1799’, in Georgian Geographies: Space, Place and Landscape in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Miles Ogborn and Charles Withers (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 92–113; Bénédicte Miyamoto, ‘“A Pretty General Taste for Pictures”: The Social Construction of Artistic Value in Eighteenth-century London’ (PhD diss., Université Paris Diderot Paris 7, 2011), 416–25. 19 Julia Armstrong-Totten, ‘The Rise and Fall of a British Connoisseur: The Career of Michael Bryan (1757–1821), Picture Dealer Extraordinaire’, in Auctions, Agents and Dealers, ed. Warren and Turpin, 141–50; Carole Blumenfeld, ‘Pierre-Joseph Lafontaine and His Exploitation of European Art Market Imbalance in Paris and London, 1795–1815’, in London and the Emergence of a European Art Market, 1780–1820, ed. Susannah Avery-Quash and Christian Huemer (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2019). 20 Joel M. Podolny, ‘A Status-Based Model of Market Competition’, The American Journal of Sociology 98 (1993): 829–72; and ‘Market Uncertainty and the Social Character of Economic Exchange’, Administrative Science Quarterly 39 (1994): 458–83. 21 Letter of 10th June 1746 from François Louis Colins to Charles Coypel (Paris, Archives Nationales, Séries 01, 1934 B): ‘Ma principale attention a été de songer à exécuter vos ordres, et à démêler au juste ce que le propriétaire en veut avoir.’ Quoted

 Introduction 99 in Anne Leclair, ‘Rubens’s “Rape of the Sabines” and Van Dyck’s “Charity”: A Failed Purchase by Louis XV’, The Burlington Magazine 153, no. 1301 (2011): 527. 22 Autograph letter signed from James Christie, London, to William Buchanan, Esqr., London [manuscript], 10 April 1824, Washington, Folger Shakespeare Library, PN2598.G3 F5 Ex. ill. copy 4, v. 16. 23 Letter of Bute to James Christie 20 March 1811 quoted in Francis Russell, John, 3rd Earl of Bute, Patron and Collector (London: Merrion Press, 2004), 204. 24 ‘[Les tableaux] font un honneur infini à la mémoire de M. GAIGNAT; qu’il nous soit permit d’ajouter qu’ils en font aussi à la mémoire de feu Sieur Collins, Peintre, en qui il avait place sa confiance; il ne pouvait pas choisir un meilleur connoisseur’, in Pierre Rémy, Catalogue raisonné des tableaux, groupes et figures de bronze, qui composent le Cabinet de Monsieur Gaignat (Paris: Vente, 1768), vi. 25 Francesco Feddolini, ‘John Talman in Florence: The Court, the Courtiers and the Artists’, and Cinzi Maria Sicca, ‘The Making and Unraveling of John Talman’s Collection of Drawings’, in John Talman: An Early-Eighteenth-Century Connoisseur, ed. Cinzia Maria Sicca (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008), 127–58 and 1–76. 26 Graham Parry and Hugh Macandrew, ‘The John Talman Letter-Book’, Walpole Society Journal 59 (1997): 3–179, 4. 27 Ibid. 28 Robert Hill, ‘The Ambassador as Art Agent: Sir Dudley Carleton and Jacobean Collecting’, in The Evolution of English Collecting: The Reception of Italian Art in the Tudor and Stuart Periods, ed. Edward Chaney (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003), 240–55. 29 On female artists and collectors, see Christina K. Lindeman, Representing Duchess Anna Amelia’s Bildung, Routledge Research in Gender and Art (Routledge: Ashgate, 2017), 92–109; Sheila Barker, ‘The Female Artist in the Public Eye: Women Copyists at the Uffizi, 1770–1859’, in Women, Femininity and Public Space in European Visual Culture, 1789–1914, ed. Temma Balducci and Heather Belnap Jensen (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 65–80; Heidi Strobel, The Artistic Matronage of Queen Charlotte (1744-181): How a Queen Promoted both Art and Female Artists in English Society (Leviston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2011); Melissa L. Hyde and Jennifer D. Milam, Women, Art and the Politics of Identity in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003). 30 Mary D. Sheriff, The Exceptional Woman: Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun and the Cultural Politics of Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). 31 Karen J. Leader, ‘Connaisseuses and Cocottes: Women at the Salon in French Caricature’, in Women, Femininity and Public Space, ed. Balducci and Belnap Jensen, 131–49. 32 See for example the detailed exposition of agents’ cross-border skills in Renata Pieper, ‘Upper German Trade in Art and Curiosities’, in Art Markets in Europe, 1400, ed. Ormrod and North, 96–8. See also Maria Celeste Cola, ‘Thomas Hope and Gioacchino Marini: “Roman Agent of English Gentlemen”’, in London and the Emergence of a European Art Market, ed. Avery-Quash and Huemer; Hans J. Van Miegroet, Bénédicte Miyamoto and Hilary Cronheim, ‘International Dealer Networks and Triangular Art Trade between Paris, Amsterdam and London’, in ibid., 53–65.

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33 Louise Lippincott, Selling Art in Georgian London: The Rise of Arthur Pond (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983), 60. 34 Letter of Richard Dalton to the 3rd Earl of Bute, Rome, 23 December 1758, reproduced in Russell, John, 3rd Earl of Bute, Patron and Collector. 35 Dries Lyna, ‘Name Hunting, Visual Characteristics, and “New Old Masters”: Tracking the Taste for Paintings at Eighteenth-Century Auctions’, EighteenthCentury Studies 46, no. 1 (2012): 57–84; Chia-Chuan Hsieh, ‘Publishing the Raphael Cartoons and the Rise of Art-Historical Consciousness in England, 1707–1764’, The Historical Journal 52, no. 4 (2009): 899–920; Bénédicte Miyamoto, ‘“Directions to Know a Good Picture”: Marketing National School Categories to the British Public in the Long Eighteenth Century’, in Art Crossing Borders: The International Art Market in the Age of Nation States, 1760–1914, ed. Jan Dirk Baetens and Dries Lyna, Studies in the History of Collecting & Art Markets (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2019), 64–98. 36 Christopher M. S. Johns, ‘Papal Patronage and Cultural Bureaucracy in EighteenthCentury Rome: Clement XI and the Accademia Di San Luca’, Eighteenth-Century Studies 22, no. 1 (1988): 1–23. 37 JoLynn Edwards, Alexandre-Joseph Paillet: expert et marchand de tableaux à la fin du XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Arthena, 1996). 38 John Evelyn, Sculptura: Or the History and Art of Chalcography and Engraving in Copper (London: Beedle & Collins, 1662), 102. 39 Carol Gibson-Wood, ‘Jonathan Richardson, Lord Somers’s Collection of Drawings, and Early Art-Historical Writing in England’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 52 (1989): 167–87. 40 On the interplay of economic interests and cultural values, see Pierre Bourdieu, ‘The Field of Cultural Production, Or: The Economic World Reversed’, in The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature, trans. and ed. Randal Johnson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 29–73. For the eighteenth century, see Richard Wrigley, ‘Between the Street and the Salon: Parisian Shop Signs and the Spaces of Professionalism in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries’, Oxford Art Journal 21, no. 1 (1998): 45–67; Nathalie Heinich, Du peintre à l’artiste. Artisans et académiciens à l’âge classique (Paris: Minuit, 1993); J. G. A. Pocock, Virtue, Commerce, and History: Essays on Political Thought and History, Chiefly in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). 41 Giovanna Perini Folesani, ‘Sir Joshua Reynolds in Rome, 1750–1752: The Debut of an Artist, an Art Collector or an Art Dealer?’ in The Art Market in Rome in the Eighteenth Century: a study in the social history of art, ed. Paolo Coen (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 131–45. 42 A few letters which provide insights both on the importance of the collections scouted out and on the extent of the commercial relationship are preserved at Christie’s Archives, King Street, London. See Bénédicte Miyamoto, ‘“Making Pictures Marketable”: Expertise and the Georgian Art Market’, in Marketing Art in the British Isles, 1700 to the Present, ed. Charlotte Gould and Sophie Mesplède (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), fn19. 43 Inge Reist, ‘Expand the Audience, Increase the Profits: Motivations Behind the Private Contract Sale’, in The Circulation of Works of Art in the Revolutionary Era: 1789–1848, ed. Roberta Panzanelli, and Monica Preti (Paris: Institut national d’histoire de l’art, 2009); J. Pedro Lorente, ‘Art in the Urban Public Sphere: Art

 Introduction 101 Venues by Entrepreneurs, Associations and Institutions, 1800–1850’, in Leisure Cultures in Urban Europe, c.1700–1870: A Transnational Perspective, ed. Peter Borsey and Jan Hein Furnée (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), 21–48. 44 Andrew McClellan, ‘Watteau’s Dealer: Gersaint and the Marketing of Art in Eighteenth-Century Paris’, The Art Bulletin 78, no. 3 (1996): 439–53; David Connell, ‘John Anderson and John Bouttats: picture dealers in eighteenth-century London’, in Auctions, Agents and Dealers, ed. Warren and Turpin, 113–26. 45 Anne Helmreich, ‘David Croal Thomson: The Professionalization of Art Dealing in an Expanding Field’, Getty Research Journal 5 (2013): 89–100. 46 Julia Armstrong-Totten, ‘From Jack-of-All-Trades to Professional: The Development of the Early Modern Picture Dealer in Eighteenth-Century London’, in London and the Emergence of a European Art Market, Avery-Quash and Huemer (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2019). 47 Vermeylen, Vlieghe and Lyna, eds, Art Auctions and Dealers; Thomas Ketelsen, ‘Art Auctions in Germany during the Eighteenth Century’, in Art Markets in Europe, ed. Ormrod and North, 143–52. 48 Edward Chaney, ‘The Italianate Evolution of English Collecting’, in The Evolution of English Collecting, 1–124; Antoine Schnapper, Curieux du Grand Siècle. Collections et collectionneurs dans la France du XVIIe siècle (Paris: Flammarion, 1994); Patrick Michel, Peinture et plaisir: Les goûts picturaux des collectionneurs parisiens au XVIIIe siècle (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2010), 371–80.

5

Scottish agents in Rome in the eighteenth century The case of Peter Grant Maria Celeste Cola

A prominent figure in Roman artistic and cultural life in the eighteenth century, Peter Grant (1708–84) (Figure 5.1 and Plate 6) spent much of his life in Rome. For almost fifty years, he was the point of reference for collectors, travellers and artists to whom he was able to provide contacts of all kinds. He represented the Scottish Mission in Rome for forty-six years and had an unrivalled knowledge of and access to every level of the Roman scene. Through these contacts we can see how Grant moved from guide to advisor, acting as an intermediary for British visitors to Rome. With his knowledge of the key players in the Roman art market, Grant was able to introduce these visitors, whether aristocrats, collectors or artists, to the figures who could assist them in their various endeavours. By examining the role Grant played in relation to two such visitors, James Caulfield, first Earl Charlemont (1728–99), and the architect Robert Adam (1728–92), it is possible to examine more closely the intricate connections that an agent could use to introduce such foreign visitors to important contacts established in Rome. His long Roman career highlights a varied and complex reality in Rome, where the absence of official representatives of the British at the pontifical court meant that the position of the Catholics was complicated. Although the Albani Pope, Clement XI, had welcomed the pretender to the throne, James Stuart, to Rome, his nephew Cardinal Alessandro Albani maintained friendly relations with the House of Hanover, even passing on secret information to the British. At the same time, the interests of the British in Rome required an official representative in the Holy See. For this reason, the Stuart court was able, in some respects, to take on the role of a surrogate British embassy. The position of Cardinal Albani was not an isolated case and the double-sided attitude of Grant is equally an example. Although Robert Adam, who Grant saw very often in 1755, spoke of him ‘as good a Jacobite as Catholic, as true a friend and as worthy a man as a Christian in Europe’, his position in the eyes of the Catholics

 Scottish Agents in Rome in the Eighteenth Century 103

Figure 5.1  Angelica Kauffman, Portrait of Abbé Peter Grant, 1763. Oil on canvas, 60 × 40 cm. Private Collection. The Author. was not clear and Adam also wrote that he wished to be ‘all things to all men, a Jacobite to Jacobites, a Georgite to Georgites, and an agreeable companion to every one’.1 On the one hand, the last pretender to the throne of England (of the Catholic line), Henry Benedict, Cardinal York, (1725–1807), accused Grant of allegedly attempting to convert many British people. It is evident that for the ‘English’ the Cardinal meant the non-Catholics. According to a letter written in February 1775 by Grant, his defence was that he had managed to convert to Catholicism both Margaret Murray and Sophia Pomfrett, wife of Britain’s secretary of state, the Earl of Grenville.2 In 1744 Cardinal Alessandro Albani had already warned that visiting British noblemen in Rome should not be taken in by Grant’s insinuating manners, and in 1745 Horace Mann thought he ‘was totally in the Pretender’s interest’.3 Moreover, in 1773 Isaac Jamineau, the British consul in Naples, alleged Grant was introducing British visitors to the young pretender and called him ‘a damned rascal’, a ‘Scotch Rebel and a Traitor to his Country’; in turn Grant called Jamineau a ‘French Jew’.4 His role as mediator in this complex scene is illustrated by the fact that when Thomas Patch was expelled from Rome in 1755 for his anti-Jacobite espionage, he

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turned to Grant for support. As reported by John Parker to Lord Charlemont in a letter sent from Rome on 24 December 1755: I must inform your lordship that this day we lost Patch, who was obliged to leave Rome in twenty-four hours under pain etc (the second part of Tivoli) by an order from the holy office directed to the cardinal secretary of state, who signed it, and sent it to the governor of Rome with orders to see it put into execution [. . .] he went to abbé Grant (supposing it to be about the academy affair) first and got him to go with him there.5

Arriving for the first time in Rome on 25 July 1726, Grant was welcomed to the Scottish College near the Piazza Barberini, where he was ordained Priest6 and where he stayed until his return to Scotland in 1735. Appointed representative of the Scottish Catholic Mission, he returned to Rome in 1737 where he remained until his death on 1 September 1784. He lived in a large apartment in Piazza Navona, but his work address was The Café Anglais, the famous coffee shop by the Spanish Steps, decorated by Piranesi with Neo-Egyptian paintings, where Grant received his correspondence (Figure 5.2) and where he met artists, travellers and merchants. He often frequented the homes of members of the Roman aristocracy, so much so that he wrote a twentysix-page account concerning Roman Noble Families. Together with the British painter Jacob Ennis, he became one of Rome’s best-known ciceroni (guides)7 with such an extensive network that he was known as ‘The Introducer’; in 1741 Lady Mary Wortley

Figure 5.2  Letters sent in Rome, to the abbé Peter Grant at the Cafè Anglais. ©Archive of Pontifical Scottish College, Rome.

 Scottish Agents in Rome in the Eighteenth Century 105 Montagu described him as ‘a very honest, good natur’d North Briton, who has resided several years in Rome’.8 Indeed, his work as a ‘cicerone’ took up so much of his time that he sometimes neglected his job; he was such a poor correspondent to the Scottish bishops that it took him two months to inform them of the death of Pope Clement XIV.9 Thus both as guide and networker, Grant played a key role in the discovery of Rome and its antiquities by British aristocrats and collectors.

Grant and Piranesi During the 1750s, Grant reached the peak of his popularity within Roman cultural circles. He fitted perfectly into the so-called Piranesien group of artists who were in contact with French artists and Piranesi. Among them were Robert Adam, the collector Lord Charlemont (1728–99), and the painters Thomas Patch (1725–82) and Allan Ramsay (1713–84). Although the colony of French artists in Rome was essential to the cultural life of the city and had been present for a significant time, during the period of Charles-Joseph Natoire’s directorship of the French Academy in Rome (1751–5), British people in Rome began to gain supremacy in the city. For that reason, beginning in the 1750s Giovan Battista Piranesi’s privileged relations with British travellers undermined his connections with the French Academy, which had been so important when he first arrived in Rome. In 1757, Piranesi joined the Society of Antiquaries in London, thanks to his friendship with Thomas Hollis (1720–74). A decisive role in the success of the British in Rome was taken by Lord Charlemont, an Anglo-Irish peer,10 who arrived there for the first time in 175011 and who very soon developed the idea of founding an English Academy, ‘professors of the Liberal Arts’, the leadership of which he entrusted to the painter John Parker, who later became one of his agents.12 Charlemont was behind the idea in the following year, to create a floating ship called ‘Triumph of British Liberty’ for the Carnival of 1751, thus publicly promoting the importance of the British nation, even though he had not received permission from the Roman authorities. One of Grant’s early actions in the field of the arts was to act as agent for Charlemont in the publication of Piranesi’s Antichita’ Romane. Fascinated by the study of ancient architecture, as also shown by the portrait made by Mengs (1756–8, Prague, Narodini Galerie), Charlemont yearned to meet Piranesi,13 whom he met for the first time in 1752. Charmed by the Venetian engraver’s fame and by his extraordinary knowledge of the ancient world, as well as by Robert Adam’s support of the project, Charlemont agreed to finance it in return for the publication being dedicated to him. The Antichità Romane was based on eight years of rigorous excavation and painstaking study and was intended to ensure the artist’s position in European intellectual circles. The four volumes were composed of 250 engraved plates accompanied, for the first time, by 61 pages written by Piranesi. As agreed, Piranesi received a deposit on the Roman Bank of the Santo Spirito, but after that he received no further remuneration. Two months after the departure of Charlemont, Parker reported to Piranesi that the four volumes were too expensive to finance and proposed to pay Piranesi just 200 scudi.

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Angry, Piranesi went into the bank and returned the money from Charlemont and wrote an outraged letter to Charlemont on 25 August 1756. Further, in order to discredit Charlemont in the artistic world, he published the letters he had written on 25 August 1756 and February 1757, in which he accused Peter Grant, John Parker and Edward Murphy of cheating him. Summoned to court on charges of slander, Piranesi was judged guilty by the Governor’s Court; nonetheless, in 1758 he republished the two letters sent to Lord Charlemont, adding a third letter sent to Grant on 13 May 1757 in the volume entitled ‘Lettere di Giustificazione’. In this, Piranesi reproduced in miniature the original frontispieces, the texts of the dedications and three satirical drawings against the Roman agents. Following the controversy aroused by the publication, the governor of Rome, Monsignor Caprara, ordered Piranesi’s arrest, but then, thanks to the protection of Cardinals Corsini, Orsini and Alessandro Albani, the punishment was reduced and changed into an obligation to write a letter of apology.14 In 1757 Piranesi published an additional controversial pamphlet denouncing his benefactor and his agents entitled Lettere di Giustificazioni scritte a Milord Charlemont (Figure 5.3). On 1 April 1758, towards the end of this dispute, Peter Grant sent a letter from Rome to Lord Charlemont explaining what had happened.15 Piranesi’s pamphlet seemed to have impugned the honesty of Lord Charlemont’s agents, but Grant got away with it, unlike the others. In spite of this public confrontation, Grant, unlike John Parker, continued to have business relations with Piranesi – even though his opinion of Piranesi was very low – in the spring of 1763 warning the engraver Robert Strange, Piranesi’s agent in England, not to do business with ‘so wrong-headed and consequently dangerous man’.16 In fact, Grant continued to play an important role in the publication of the works of Piranesi, in particular mediating with Robert Adam for the publication of the Campo Marzio.17

Figure 5.3  Giovan Battista Piranesi, Lettere di Giustificazioni. ms. 29 H 22. Corsiniana Library, Rome. Courtesy Corsiniana Library.

 Scottish Agents in Rome in the Eighteenth Century 107 Piranesi clearly remained a presence in the antiquities market as shown by his presence in the list of the main antique dealers written in Rome by Cardinal Braschi.18 Thus, James Grimston ‘exceedingly clever as an Antiquarian’, was able to earn an ‘immense sum of money selling statues, vases, tripodes’.19 Grant, in turn, acted as an agent on several occasions for Piranesi with British visitors to Italy. At the end of 1774, he accompanied Patrick Hume to Naples and facilitated his purchase of a chimneypiece from Piranesi. The Roman agent of Lord Arundel thus wrote to his client, ‘Piranesi is sorry not to have kept the chimney piece for your Lordship; he sold it very soon after he had given me the sketch of it. It was purchased by Mr. Hume of Scotland who some time ago went to Naples with Abbe Grant’.20 Grant was also in contact with the British architect and builder Richard Norris, who was in Italy from 1770 to 1772. Writing in his diary, Norris noted: We went to Signor Piranesi, to whom I had a letter from Mister Fennie. He showed several chimney pieces one of which he was about disposing to Mister Walters for between 2 and 300 sequins as we were informed by the Abbé Grant.21

Grant’s friendship with Robert Adam The relations between the abbé Grant, Lord Charlemont and Piranesi were intermingled with the many Scottish artists arriving in Rome, such as the painter Katherine Read who, like many other Jacobites, came at the end of the 1750s,22 as well as Anne Forbes and the young Scottish architect Robert Adam. Before arriving in Rome, Adam had stopped in Florence, where in January 1755 he had visited the Anglo-Florentine painter, Ignazio Hugford (1703–78), one of the most important contacts for the art market in Florence. There, he met Charles-Louis Clérisseau, who lived at Hugford’s house, having been introduced by the British sculptor Joseph Wilton. In the following month, Adam and Clérisseau decided to move to Rome, where each of them would get in touch with their respective contacts. Clérisseau had a letter of introduction from Horace Mann (1706–86), British consul in Florence to Cardinal Alessandro Albani, bringing with him as a gift Egyptian engravings from the Scottish antiquarian Alexander Gordon, while Robert Adam chose the abbé Peter Grant.23 In Florence, Grant had also been able to meet Charles Hope, the younger brother of John, second Earl of Hopetoun, who introduced Adam to Grant and, writing to him from Florence, asked him to look for a place for the young Adam to stay. Thus, it was Grant who welcomed Adam to Rome and introduced him to the Scottish artistic circle; among these was first, Allan Ramsay, an old friend, who portrayed him on several occasions, once in a pencil portrait (Plate 6)24 and again in 1755 in a portrait in oil on canvas.25 After two intense months of studying in Rome together with Charles-Louis Clérisseau and Jean-Baptiste Lallemand, Adam decided to leave for Naples to study, ‘sketch-book at hand’ the antiquities of the Campi Flegrei. In April 1755, Adam, Clérisseau, the abbé Grant and the English agent, the abbé Stonor, left Rome. Grant’s

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role in Naples was very important with the British who resided there and who frequented Palazzo Sessa, due to his contact with James Gray, special envoy to Naples from April 1755. Thanks to Grant’s contacts and to his friendship with Allan Ramsay, Camillo Paderni, director of the Portici Museum, gave Adam permission to draw the objects found in the Herculaneum excavations, of which reproduction was forbidden at the time.26 Upon his return to Rome, after a month in Naples, the friendship with Grant, Ramsay and a small group of Scottish friends created ‘my Caledonian Club’ as termed by Adam. After Adam’s departure from Rome, the abbé Grant continued his relations with Clérisseau and with Robert’s brother, James Adam. James, who arrived in Rome in February 1761, chose to live in the ‘Casa Guarnieri’ near the Trinità dei Monti, through Grant’s advice. Clérisseau was commissioned in 1763 for a series of Roman and Neapolitan archaeological views for Hopetoun House by the sons of Charles Hope-Weir, with whom Robert Adam had originally travelled to Italy. Through Grant’s agency, Clérisseau was paid five pounds for each view.27

Grant in the art market Grant’s role in the art market was often to intercede with Roman authorities to enable his circle of British and Scottish contacts to carry out their transactions. The artist Thomas Patch, as already seen, had been a close associate of Grant, arriving in 174728 and forced to leave Rome in 1755. As with many others, Patch was both an art dealer and an agent. With Grant’s assistance, he sent several works to Sir William Lowther before leaving Rome. Patch had been the intermediary with the Muti family for the sale of a group of paintings, among which was the Apollo and the Muses painted in 1652 by Claude Lorrain for Cardinal Camillo Astalli.29 To overcome difficulties with the Roman customs, Patch asked Grant for help, as indicated in a letter from Patch on 9 December 1755, discovered by Francis Russell. [. . .] I have recevd yours and according to Orders have the Picture in my Custody but their was no means for Getting the Monsignior to insure it for he has no friends in the Popes Court on the contrary the Cardinal Secretary is his great Enemie so that it would have made it more impossible had he mentiond or Strove for License on this I consulted Abbe Grant who assurd me he would find means to get it out without any risque but would have me not mention anything till the carnival when they are busie Diverting themselves it may be done with all ease.30

As the letter indicates, the painting had not passed through the export office. Indeed, it does not appear on the Roman list of export licence applicants from 1775 to 1802.31 The subterfuge necessary to secure the export of the picture, characteristic of the activities of British dealers and Roman ciceroni, are nowhere more eloquently described than by Patch. The intervention of the abbé Grant provides an indication of the importance

 Scottish Agents in Rome in the Eighteenth Century 109 attached to the picture. Its exceptional size inevitably increased the problems of packing and transport, which are outlined in the letter. Another pivotal figure in Grant’s long career in Rome was the Scottish painter, architect, designer and art dealer James Byres,32 a member of a pro-Jacobite family33 who arrived in Rome in 1758, where he remained until 1790. From 1763, as Thomas Jones detailed in his Memoirs,34 he became an important cicerone, who organized excursions to the outskirts of Rome, as well as being a dealer in paintings, sculptures, terracotta and antique statues.35 Thanks to his contacts with the abbé Grant, Byres tried to obtain permission for export licences for a series of works that he sent to England to John, third Earl of Bute.36 Before leaving for England, Bute wrote a list of ‘Things of Mine left with Mr. Bires’, which consisted of works that were acquired during his Roman stay.37 On 12 May 1769, by which time Bute had already returned to London, Byres wrote to John Symonds, a dear friend of Bute’s, telling him that he had sent the boxes through Richard Paul Joddrell and Laurence Oliphant. On 20 May 1769, Byres wrote from Rome declaring he was happy that ‘the two Boxes arrived safely’, reminding Bute that obtaining the licences from the Camerlengo in order to send the boxes had been very difficult both for Grant and him. As he wrote: the Large Arabesque sent in the last Box is from the Ceiling in Villa Magnani on the Palatine Hill/formely Villa Spada/ done under Raphael’s direction by his scholars which You Know Abbe Grant and me had so much difficulty to procure the Lycence from the Marquese. It is done by Gioseppi Sublerass son of the Paintress in Miniature, altho exact it’s not quite so well as I could have wished, and I think rather dear having paid him fifteen Zequins for it but he affirms that it was upwards of two Months constant work.38

Grant’s long career ended in Rome on 1 September 1784, when he died in his house in Piazza Navona.39 He was buried in the Scottish National Church, where Lord Bute and his brother built a tomb stone to memorialize his intelligent and free spirit. The long Roman career of Peter Grant testifies to the variety of the Roman art market in the eighteenth century, in particular the complex relationships and networks involved in patronage and the art market. His career demonstrates that relations between Catholics and Protestants were less rigid than what was officially required. The Stuart court in Rome was not merely a centre for Catholics, but surprisingly, it was also important for Protestants. It contained Protestant chaplains and provided access to the new Protestant cemetery beside the Pyramid of Cestius. In addition, the Stuart court controlled the English, Irish and Scottish Colleges in Rome. Thus, it could provide introductions to Italian ciceroni, and could also provide English-speaking guides, antiquarians and agents from among the members of the court and colleges. Grant was of significance through his connections with the Roman literati frequenting, in particular, the salon of Contessa Cheroffini at the palazzo Frascara. His clear objective in this case was to make the acquaintance of one of the greatest patrons and collectors in Rome, Cardinal Alessandro Albani, who defended him throughout his career. This

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connection thus allowed Grant to act as intermediary, so that, though never a major dealer in his own right, his assistance could prove essential in the negotiations by which British aristocrats purchased and commissioned works of art. Grant was one of the many figures who helped to make Rome not only the focus of the Grand Tour, but also the key centre in the re-evaluation of antiquity and in noble conversazioni in the literary salon.

Notes 1 John Fleming, Robert Adam and His Circle in Edinburgh and Rome (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1962), 146–7. 2 Rome, Pontifical Scottish Archive, Box T, Varia, 1737–83, 1/30. 3 I. Giberne Sieveking, The Memoirs of Sir Horace Mann (London: Trübner & Co, 1912), 64. 4 John Ingamells, A Dictionary of British and Irish Travellers in Italy 1701–1800 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997), 420. 5 The Manuscripts and Correspondence of James, first Earl of Charlemont (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode 1891), I, 222. 6 Peter John Anderson, Records of the Scots Colleges at Douai, Rome, Madrid, Ratisbon, (Aberdeen: Printed for the New Spalding Club 1906), n. 273. 7 Rome, Pontifical Scottish Archive, Box T, Varia, 1737–83, 1/30. 8 Robert Halsband, ed., Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965–7), III, 32; Joseph Spence, ed., Letters from the Grand Tour (Montreal & Kingston, ON: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1975), 385. 9 Ingamells, A Dictionary, 420. 10 On Lord Charlemont, see Maurice James Craig, The Volunteer Earl (London: The Cresset Press, 1948); Chintia O’Connor, The Pleasing Hours: James Caulfield, the First Earl of Charlemont (Wilton, Cork: Collins Press 1999). 11 Rome, Historical Archive of Vicariato, San Lorenzo in Lucina, Stati delle Anime, year 1752, c. 37v; year 1753, c. 31v. 12 Charlemont correspondence, I, 221–2, 224–5. 13 Steffi Roettgen, Anton Raphael Mengs 1728-1779 and His British Patrons (London: A. Zwemmer Ltd, 1993), 52–5. 14 Lamberto Donati, ‘Giovan Battista Piranesi e Lord Charlemont’, English Miscellany (1950), 1: 231–42; Heather Hyde Minor, ‘Engraved Porphyry, Printed on Paper: Piranesi and Lord Charlemont’, in The Serpent and the Stylus. Essays on G. B. Piranesi, ed. Mario Bevilacqua, Heather Hyde Minor, Fabio Barry, Supplements to the Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, 4, 123–47 (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2007); Silvia Gavuzzo-Stewart, ‘Irony in Piranesi’s Carceri and Lettere di Giustificazione’, Studi sul Settecento Romano, 32, ed. Elisa Debenedetti (Rome: Edizioni Quasar), 2016, 111–41; Pierluigi Panza, ‘L’araldica e Giovan Battista Piranesi’, Rivista del Collegio Araldico 114, (2017): 142–54. 15 Charlemont Corrrespondence I, 241–3. 16 Jonathan Scott, Piranesi (London: Academy Editions, 1975), 315–16.

 Scottish Agents in Rome in the Eighteenth Century 111 17 Susanna Pasquali, ‘Piranesi’s Campo Marzio as Described in 1757’, Studi sul Settecento Romano, 32, ed. Elisa Debenedetti (Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 2016), 179–90. 18 Seymour Howard, ‘An Antiquarian Handlist and the Beginnings of the Pio Clementino’, Eighteenth-Century Studies 7 (1973): 40–61; idem: Antiquity Restored, Essays on the Afterlife of the Antique (Vienna: Irsa (1990)). 19 Scott, Piranesi, 317 note 18. 20 Roberta Battaglia, ‘Le “Diverse maniere d’adornare i Cammini” di Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Gusto e cultura antiquaria’, Saggi e Memorie di Storia dell’arte 19 (1994): 193–273. 21 Mario Bevilacqua, Piranesi. Taccuini di Modena (Rome: Artemide, 2008), I, 287. Mr Fennie is probably to be identified with the engraver Alexander Finny, in Rome in 1770. 22 Neil Jeffares, Dictionary of pastellists before 1800 (London: Unicorn Press Publishing Group, 2006), 1–17; Margery Morgan, ‘Jacobitism and Art after 1745: Katherine Read in Rome’, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 27 (2004): 157–312. 23 Francesca Lui, L’antichità tra scienza e invenzione. Studi su Winckelmann e Clérisseau (Bologna: Minerva Edizioni, 2006), 87. 24 National Gallery of Edinburgh, inv. n. D 2037. On Ramsay’s drawing, see Alistair Smart, Allan Ramsay. A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992), 125–6, n. 215. 25 The painting cannot be traced today but was recalled by Robert Adam in a letter written in Rome on 2 January 1756. Fleming, Robert Adam and His Circle, 82. 26 Alden R. Gordon, ‘“Subverting the Secret of Herculaneum”: Archaeological Espionage in the Kingdom of Naples’, in Antiquity Recovered: The Legacy of Pompeii and Herculaneum, ed. Victoria C. Gardner and Jon L. Seydl (Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2007), 37–57. 27 Basil Skinner, ‘Nineteen Drawings by C.-L. Clérisseau’, The Burlington Magazine, CV, 721 (1963): 162; Lui, L’Antichità, 126–7. 28 Francis Watson, ‘Thomas Patch (1725-1782). Notes on His Life, Together with a Catalogue of His Known Works’, Walpole Society XXVIII (1939–40): 15–50; idem: ‘Thomas Patch: Some New Light on His Work’, Apollo LXXXV (1967): 348–52; John Ingamells, Patch Thomas, in Dictionary of British and Irish Travellers in Italy, 1701–1800 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997), 745–6. 29 The painting, oil on canvas 1.86 × 2.90, is now in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh. 30 Francis Russell, ‘Thomas Patch, Sir William Lowther and the Holker Claude’, Apollo 102 (1975): 115–19. 31 Federica Cipriani, Francesca Fossataro, Emanuela Gregori, Francesca Gizzi, Gabriella Iosue and Sara Scipioni, ‘Lista dei richiedenti delle licenze d’esportazioni dal 1775 al 1802’, Ricerche di Storia dell’Arte 90 (2006): 43–7. 32 Paolo Coen, ‘L’attività di mercante d’arte e il profilo culturale di James Byres of Tonley’, Roma moderna e contemporanea X (2002): 153–78; idem: Il mercato dei quadri a Roma nel diciottesimo secolo. La domanda, l’offerta e la circolazione delle opere in un grande centro artistico europeo (Firenze: L. S. Olschki, 2010), I, 70–7; II, 667–90; Ilaria Bignamini and Clare Hornsby, Digging and Dealing in EighteenthCentury Rome (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010), 246–9. 33 ‘The Byres Family: An Eighteenth-Century Portrait Group’, The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 81, 479 (1943): 46–7, 49.

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34 Memoirs of Thomas Jones, ed. Adolf Paul Oppé, The Walpole Society XXXII (1946– 48): 94. 35 Brinsley Ford, ‘James Byres. Principal Antiquarian for the English Visitors to Rome’, Apollo XCIX (1974): 446–61. 36 Francis Russell, ‘John, 3rd Earl of Bute and James Byres: A Postscript’, in Roma Britannica: art patronage and cultural exchange in eighteenth-century Rome, ed. David Marshall, Susan Russell and Karin Wolfe (London: British School at Rome, 2011), 121–44. 37 Ibid., 126–8. 38 Ibid., 129. 39 The Scots Magazine, XLVI (1784): 533.

6

‘An oracle for collectors’ Philipp von Stosch and collecting and dealing in art and antiquities in early-eighteenthcentury Rome and Florence Ulf R. Hansson

A popular sight for travellers visiting Florence in the mid-eighteenth century was a curious casa-museo in the borgo degli Albizi. Visitors eagerly climbed the stairs to the piano nobile in the Palazzo Ramirez de Montalvo to admire the remarkable collections kept there and perhaps catch a glimpse of the eccentric and notorious owner, Baron Philipp von Stosch (1691–1757). Florence’s foremost antiquary at the time, Anton Francesco Gori (1691–1757), remarked that one could not fully grasp antiquity unless one had seen the enviable Museo Stoschiano, one of the great jewels of the city and ‘a compendium of the most select museums’.1 That was the extent and significance of the rich collections that Stosch had amassed over the decades. They included antiquities, coins and medals, engraved gems, naturalia, arms and armour, paintings, drawings and prints, rare books and manuscripts, and an astounding topographical atlas containing over 30,000 drawings, prints and maps of cities, buildings and monuments around Europe.2 Stosch had travelled widely in northern Europe and Italy in his early twenties and laid the foundations of an extraordinary network that included popes and cardinals, royalty, statesmen, artists, antiquaries and more or less everyone worth knowing in the Republic of Letters.3 Gaining access to the closely guarded treasures of the period’s leading collectors, even where others before him had failed, he had acquired an almost unrivalled first-hand knowledge of antiquities and artworks, especially coins, medals and gems, and the useful ability to distinguish ancient originals from the many faithful copies and clever forgeries in circulation.4 Stosch’s only published book, a fully illustrated systematic study of ancient engraved gems carrying artists’ signatures, had firmly established him as the foremost expert in this field at a time when gems were at the centre of antiquarian, and increasingly popular, interest.5 After settling permanently in Italy in 1722 on an undercover assignment from the British government, Stosch’s improved financial situation allowed him to intensify and widen his own collecting, and he became deeply involved in the trade in antiquities that was

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then emerging as a major international market, operating as both dealer and agent for a select clientele.6 Stosch’s key position within local antiquarian and collector circles in Rome, his wider European networks, his connections at the courts in Vienna, Dresden and Berlin, his involvement in the masonic movement, and especially his close relations with the English throughout his long sojourn in Italy, offered him a substantial platform for his operations and easy access to knowledge, freshly excavated antiquities, artworks, collectors and markets. All this contributed to making the Museo Stoschiano a key site for the transfer of knowledge and the circulation of antiquities and artworks, a position it held for more than three decades. It was a place where networks intersected, connecting the local antiquarian community with foreign visitors and with art collectors and markets abroad. This suggests a complexity that remains little understood, because it is poorly documented. The surviving information is often fragmentary and obscured by the dense mythology that was already created around the elusive Stosch during his lifetime. The often entertaining, but wildly exaggerated and mostly malicious, tall tales and anecdotes7 routinely and uncritically repeated over the years have undermined Stosch’s reputation as a serious collector and connoisseur, and instead created the disturbing image of an unscrupulous, greed-driven opportunist.8 Although perhaps more tolerated than liked in his later years, contemporary sources confirm that he remained widely respected as an astute expert, whose advice on a wide spectrum of materials was often sought and seldom disregarded.9 This chapter considers some of the contributing factors to Stosch’s remarkable success as a connoisseur, collector, dealer and agent in early-eighteenth-century Rome and Florence.

Early travels and networks Stosch’s life trajectory undeniably has something of the picaresque about it. Winckelmann’s biographer, Carl Justi, considered him the most fascinating among those adventurers whose existence was possible only in the eighteenth century: men who without pedigree, office or wealth managed to climb to the highest social ranks, be on intimate terms with popes, monarchs and statesmen, and without much in the way of scholarly credentials, become oracles in the Republic of Letters.10 The exceptional social skills that the handsome and witty Stosch seems to have possessed in his youth have often been noted, especially his ‘talent’ for befriending the wealthy and powerful and at times receiving extravagant gifts from them.11 The son of a Brandenburg mayor, Stosch started out with no money of his own.12 Abandoning his theological studies at the age of eighteen in favour of travel, he soon ended up in The Hague, where a cousin in the diplomatic corps introduced him to his lifelong and most important patron, the Greffier of the Dutch States General, François Fagel (1659–1746). Fagel, who was a notable coin collector, took Stosch under his wing, sent him on minor diplomatic missions abroad and also employed him as his agent in the acquisition of artworks, medals and books.13 Noting his young protégé’s interest in

 ‘An Oracle for Collectors’ 115 medals, Fagel offered Stosch his own substantial holdings of Greek and Roman coins, encouraging him to start his own collection and to position himself within the Savant Republic with a learned treatise. Their correspondence, which lasted until Fagel’s death in 1746, contains a wealth of information about the items that Stosch purchased, commissioned or negotiated on behalf of his patron during their long collaboration.14 Generously sponsored by this new ‘friend and father’, whose generosity ‘knew no bounds’,15 Stosch was sent to England in 1712. He spent several months in London and at Trinity College in Cambridge as the guest of Richard Bentley, through whom he gained access to the Arundel collection and to those of the Duke of Devonshire and the Earls of Carlisle, Pembroke and Nottingham, Sir Hans Sloane and Sir Andrew Fountaine. Stosch remained in contact with several of these notable collectors, whom he later also met in Rome and Florence.16 In London, he also met the scholars William Whiston, Lüdolf Küster and Francesco Bianchini who made a great impression on him. In 1713 we find him in Paris, moving in the circles of Madame Palatine and her son, the Duke of Orléans, where he conversed with scholars and collectors such as Bernard de Montfaucon, Pierre Crozat, Charles-César Baudelot de Dairval, JeanPaul Bignon and Anselmo Banduri. Although he had admired the Gonzaga gems in the Arundel collection, it was in this intellectual milieu in Paris that Stosch became seriously interested in engraved gems and decided that his book should be on that specific topic.17 From Paris, he travelled south through France and northern Italy, arriving in Rome in the spring of 1715. Stosch hired the ablest of ciceroni, the antiquary Francesco de’ Ficoroni (1664–1747), to guide him around the city’s monuments and collections. A letter of introduction from Montfaucon opened the doors to the court of Clement XI Albani, where he was introduced to the papal antiquaries and leading collectors.18 Of special significance was the close friendship he developed with the pope’s nephew, Alessandro Albani (1691–1779), with whom he roamed the Campagna in search of monuments.19 Stosch also initiated collaborations with local artists, notably Pier Leone Ghezzi (1674–1755) and Girolamo Odam (1681–after 1718), commissioning drawings for his book project on gems, as well as architectural and archaeological illustrations for an ambitious new topographical atlas project. He also visited Naples with the antiquary Matteo Egizio and inspected the earliest finds of sculpture from the buried city of Herculaneum that were surfacing on the property of Prince d’Elbeuf at Portici, decades before excavations officially started in 1738. In Rome, Stosch participated enthusiastically in excavations and in the documentation of finds, training artists in archaeological illustration, building his own collections and advising others on their collecting. He stayed for two years, but with the unexpected death of a brother in 1717 he was called back home. At his farewell audience, the pope gave him a generous pension and some ‘very rare books’,20 and on his leisurely way back north he made several stops to study art collections and expand his networks. In Florence, he was welcomed by Cosimo III and introduced to the antiquaries Gori, Filippo Buonarroti, Francesco Maria Salvini and Sebastiano Bianchi. In Vienna, he advised the Emperor Charles VI and Prince Eugene of Savoy on their collecting. Stosch was, for example, directly involved in the discovery and acquisition

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for the imperial collections of the famous Tabula Peutingeriana and important letters by the jurist and diplomat Pietro della Vigna (1190–1249).21 His services must have been much appreciated, as they resulted in both a knighthood, which he accepted, and an offer to become Imperial Librarian, which he declined.22 Onwards to Dresden, where Stosch was appointed Royal Antiquarian and art agent to Augustus the Strong. This is another significant aspect of Stosch’s operations that unfortunately remains little known. He held this position for several years, and although he soon left Dresden for The Hague on another diplomatic mission, he continued to operate as Augustus’s agent in the acquisition of artworks.23 In Holland, Stosch was visited by Lord Carteret, a close friend from his London period, who was now secretary of state for the southern provinces. Carteret realized that, with his many allies at the papal court, Stosch was in a unique position to supply valuable intelligence information on the Old Pretender who, to the embarrassment of the Hanoverians, was living in Rome as the pope’s official guest. Thus, in the convenient guise of art agent for Augustus the Strong and Fagel, whose generous patronage he continued to enjoy,24 but now also on the secret payroll of the British government, Stosch was able to return and settle permanently in Rome in 1722, where he indulged in his own collecting and dealing activities, and sent weekly dispatches to London about the exiled Stuart court and the Jacobites in Rome.25

Stosch settles permanently in Italy Having already expertly positioned himself at the papal court and within the antiquarian community during his first visit to Rome, Stosch was firmly established in these circles when he returned. The 1720s, probably his most significant period, was a time of intense antiquarian and proto-archaeological activity in Rome, with excavations of the palace of the Caesars on the Palatine, as well as of Roman burial complexes along the Via Appia and imperial villas at various localities in the surrounding Campagna. Stosch knew the principal excavators and sponsors of these digs well, for instance Bianchini, Ficoroni, Albani and Cardinal de Polignac, and his own ‘house artist’ Ghezzi moved freely in these circles and reported on all that was happening. Ghezzi and other artists, such as Gaetano Piccini (active 1702–40), Johann Justin Preißler (1698–1771) and Markus Tuscher (1705–51), also furnished Stosch with hundreds of drawings for his atlas and other projects.26 A critical and demanding patron, Stosch acquired ‘a reputation’ in Rome for training young artists in the difficult art of careful archaeological illustration.27 Although lacking the financial resources for more extravagant acquisitions,28 Stosch’s sharp critical eye and a wealth of opportunities nevertheless made it possible for him to build first-rate collections: no antiquities of any note were dug up, no artworks changed hands or came on the market without his knowledge, putting him in a very privileged position. As a result of the pope’s official recognition of the Stuart Pretender, Britain had no official representation in Rome, and Stosch’s protection was instead negotiated first with the Habsburgs, with whom he was already on good terms, and then with

 ‘An Oracle for Collectors’ 117 France in the important figure of Cardinal Melchior de Polignac (1661–1742), a notable collector who shared Stosch’s intense interest in freshly excavated virtù. Although his undercover assignment did not remain secret for very long and made his presence in the Papal State increasingly awkward, it nevertheless provided him with a notable political and social position and an excellent powerbase for his operations in the increasingly lucrative art and antiquities market. Stosch’s key role here is amply reflected in Ghezzi’s two caricature drawings of the so-called congresso dei migliori antiquari di Roma (1725, 1728), which show him as the only foreigner in the group, seated receiving prominent local antiquaries at a coin auction held in his private museo in the vicolo del Merangolo29 (Plate 7). Within this closely knit community, where there was a widespread distrust of forestieri,30 few outsiders were in fact better situated in the early decades of the century than Stosch. But even here his activities as an informant made his life increasingly awkward and following the election of Clement XII Corsini in 1730, his situation deteriorated further. After his carriage was attacked by a group of masked men late one night in January 1731 and he was told at gunpoint to leave the city, Stosch advertised for his creditors, packed his bags and left for Florence, where he remained for the rest of his life.31 Stosch’s Florentine years are, for various reasons, much better known than his Roman period.32 He received a warm welcome from the last of the Medici, the anticlerical Gian Gastone, a fellow hypochondriac to whom he presented the appropriate gift of a curious mercury pocket thermometer, recently invented by Fahrenheit.33 Stosch also enjoyed the protection of three successive British Envoys, notably Horace Mann (1706–1786) who was no doubt a closer friend and ally than Mann’s correspondence with Horace Walpole reveals.34 Mann directed many visiting English travellers to the Museo Stoschiano and rushed to its owner’s assistance to a greater extent than his duty required. Later, as the executor of Stosch’s will, Mann continued to go out of his way to help the heir, Heinrich Wilhelm Muzell (1723–1782), circumvent the statutory estate tax and to find potential buyers in England for parts of the collections.35 Stosch’s general dealings with the English in Rome was taken over by Albani. Their collaboration seems to have continued more or less undiminished, recommending travellers to each other, exchanging antiquities and exploiting Mann’s diplomatic channels to export artworks to English collectors via Livorno. Thus, their powerbase, where foreign visitors to Italy was concerned, continued, as did their good relations with the courts in Vienna, Dresden, London and Berlin.36 Stosch was already well known to the Florentine erudite community from his earlier visits, and his rich collections and well-furnished library were welcome additions to the city’s cultural life. It was a period of relative cultural regeneration which saw the foundation of academies and learned societies where Stosch became member or correspondent. He was also involved in the foundation of Italy’s first masonic lodge, which he set up in 1733 together with the Earl of Middlesex, Charles Sackville, and a group of English expatriates.37 These were all sites where significant alliances were formed and where information, artworks and antiquities were circulated. The records of the Società Colombaria in Florence and Livorno, and the Accademia Etrusca at nearby Cortona, show Stosch among the most active participants in these circles,

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sending a steady flow of items for discussion at their sessions.38 This was of course an excellent way of boosting collections and a subtle strategy for putting items on the market. Stosch was thus a strong presence in the city. Towards the end of his life he rarely left his house, but he continued to be active in the market well into the 1750s. In 1755, the French numismatist Jean-Jacques Barthélemy visited the Museo Stoschiano and reported to the comte de Caylus in Paris that Stosch had ‘plundered all of Italy’ and was still keeping the country in chains through his efficient networks, adding somewhat disapprovingly that Stosch had shown him everything, but given him nothing.39 Not long thereafter Stosch sent for his nephew in Paris, Muzell, whom he adopted and designated sole heir to the vast collections.40 He died after a brief illness on 6 November 1757, and was buried the next day in the English cemetery at Livorno.41

The collections and their wider significance Stosch was a familiar figure in antiquarian and art market circles across Europe, but the volume and extent of his collecting became more widely known only after 1756, when a detailed account of his astonishing collections was published in the journal Das neue gelehrte Europa.42 Most likely intended to advertise their imminent sale, the summary catalogue divides the treasures of the museo into eleven categories.43 Before Muzell was made heir, Stosch had approached potential buyers in Italy and abroad offering to sell them parts of his treasures.44 What remained of the massive estate at the time of his death in 1757 was valued at 100,000 ducati (low estimate for tax purposes),45 and it comprised large holdings of antiquities, gems, medals, paintings, drawings, prints, books, manuscripts, maps, erotica, arms and armour, and a naturalia cabinet. First refusal was offered to Emperor Francis I, who declined, and no other single buyer with adequate financial resources could be found, thwarting Muzell’s plans to sell everything en bloc. In the end he was forced to break up the collection and again approach various potential buyers.46 Much was sold piecemeal, often far below market value,47 with three notable exceptions: the gem collection, the atlas and the manuscripts. The gem collection (valued at 24,000 scudi) contained 3,065 ancient originals, 379 pastes and 28,000 sulphur impressions of ‘all the stones in the world’ which Stosch had procured for reference purposes from fellow gem collectors.48 When Winckelmann arrived in Florence in 1758 on invitation from Muzell to catalogue it, he found that the cabinet exceeded his wildest expectations and was ‘superior even to that of the kings of France’.49 Four decades of collecting and study had given Stosch unrivalled first-hand knowledge and made him the undisputed expert in the field, to whom everyone turned for advice – an oracle for collectors. With its critical selection and accurate illustrations, his book on signed gems focused on authenticity and aimed at distinguishing ancient originals inscribed with genuine artists’ names. But it also had the undesired effect of providing the forgery industry with many new names of ancient engravers not previously known, from, for example, Pliny (HN 37.8)

 ‘An Oracle for Collectors’ 119 and surprisingly accurate illustrations of their work to copy. Even Stosch himself was suspected of feeding the market with such fake ‘ancient’ gems.50 Contemporary gem-engravers, such as Flavio Sirleti, the Costanzi brothers and Lorenz Natter, made faithful copies of ancient originals, which was common practice at the time, much encouraged by Stosch and other patrons, and the best way of mastering this miniature craft. It remains unclear whether any of the copies and classicizing works that Stosch commissioned were actually produced with the specific intention to deceive, even if that was undeniably often the result.51 Stosch’s broad interest in gems proved widely influential in several ways: his collecting of original gems, pastes and casts and the thousands of drawings of gems that he commissioned, his hugely influential book and his considerable influence as a dealer and agent, not to mention his close association with neoclassical gem-engravers, contributed in no small way to the veritable glyptomania that broke out in the latter half of the century. In the 1730s, Stosch’s manservant Christian Dehn (1696–1770), who had assisted him in making gem casts, opened a successful commercial workshop in Rome for serially produced gem impressions in red sulphur, which he offered in various thematic sets. Several workshops followed in Italy and abroad, producing dactyliothecae (gem cast cabinets) which ranged from custom- or ready-made Grand Tour souvenirs to vast encyclopaedic collections targeting schools and art academies. These cast collections became instrumental in the popular reception of ancient art and mythology in this period.52 Stosch’s own 28,000 sulphur impressions were later acquired by the Scotsman James Tassie (1735–99), who subsequently reproduced them in various materials to considerable success.53 Winckelmann’s catalogue of Stosch’s gem collection presented a classification system, originally developed by the collector himself, which long remained a model for the display and publication of such collections.54 Originally offered to Francis I, the Pope, the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Parma, the king of Spain and others, who were deterred by the price tag, the collection was eventually acquired in the mid-1760s by Frederick II of Prussia for his Antiken-Tempel at Sanssouci.55 However, the future George III did in the end acquire a set of Roman emperor coins from the great numismatic collection, valued at 10,000 scudi.56 Equally famous was the topographical atlas (18,000 scudi). Inspired by Cassiano dal Pozzo’s Paper Museum and Joan Blaeu’s Atlas maior (1662–5) and intended as a sort of ‘world history based on topography’,57 Stosch’s atlas was bound in 324 large folio volumes and consisted of 30,500 specially commissioned or purchased drawings and prints of cities, buildings and monuments around Europe.58 Fifty volumes concerned the city of Rome, where Stosch had made many of his most significant acquisitions, notably Borromini’s architectural drawings and Giovanni Battista da Sangallo’s drawings of Roman monuments, then believed to be Raphael’s lost reconstruction of ancient Rome.59 The atlas was auctioned off in London in 1764, and acquired by the Habsburgs.60 As early as 1721, Stosch’s library contained ‘presque tous les auteurs qui serve à l’intélligence de toute sorte d’Antiquité et Curiosités modernes comme aussi pour connoissance des livres et manuscrits’.61 In addition to its focus on the arts, this wide

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selection of books, encyclopaedias and journals, recently called a ‘key toehold for the radical Enlightenment in Italy’,62 reveals a wide and genuine interest in mathematics and physics, theology and philosophy. Already considered substantial in Rome in the 1720s, it later counted among the most important libraries in Florence, constantly growing with the help of local and foreign booksellers.63 Its substantial holdings of controversial topics and banned books listed in the pope’s Index no doubt contributed to its popularity, but it also attracted the attention of the Inquisition.64 In Holland in the 1710s, Stosch, who was interested in deism and Rosicrucianism and in the writings of Spinoza and Toland, had moved in the circle of the so-called Chevaliers de Jubilation and built a notable library section which reflected these interests.65 Throughout his Italian period he continued to collect these often controversial volumes, importing them via Livorno from the booksellers Prosper Marchand and Charles Levier at The Hague, Pieter Boudewijnsz van der Aa in Leiden and Gaspar Fritsch in Leipzig.66 Through them, and often via Fagel, Stosch also dealt in books and manuscripts that he acquired in Italy, and simultaneously helped find books in the north for clients in Italy.67 He also commissioned copies of manuscripts in Italian libraries for clients in the north, notably Fagel and Richard Bentley.68 A sales catalogue listing 4,000 titles from Stosch’s library was published after his death, but, as no single buyer could be found, a second edition giving individual prices was soon issued and the library was broken up.69 Many books ended up in the Riccardiana and Marucelliana libraries in Florence. The librarian of the Marucelliana, Angelo Maria Bandini, also acquired many of the unlisted controversial titles and moreover catalogued the 571 Greek and Latin manuscripts, later purchased by the Vatican Library much below their market value.70 Parts of the sizeable collection of unlisted erotica were acquired by Frederick the Great.71 Stosch was also a notable patron of the arts. In addition to the several thousand drawings for his various projects,72 he commissioned numerous portraits in various media from the artists he sponsored, and he was a recurring subject for Ghezzi’s caricatures. Among the portraits should be mentioned the marble bust by Edmé Bouchardon, based on a well-known Roman portrait bust of the Emperor Trajan in the Albani collection,73 several portrait medallions by Giovanni Battista Pozzo, François Marteau, Johann Carl Hedlinger and Markus Tuscher, as well as engraved gem portraits by Francesco Ghinghi, Carlo Costanzi, Lorenz Natter, Girolamo Rossi and Lorenzo Masini.74 Stosch lent his likeness to the restored head of King Lycomedes (later removed) in the famous sculpture group from the so-called Villa of Marius in de Polignac’s collection, now in Berlin,75 and to the figures of Demosthenes in a painting by Ghezzi and Diomedes in one by Preißler, both commissioned in Rome on behalf of Fagel76 (Figure 6.1). Inseparable from his own collecting is Stosch’s work as a dealer and agent in the acquisition of artworks, gems, medals and books for a small group of clients. Regrettably, this significant aspect of his contribution to the history of collecting remains only fragmentarily known. In addition to the above-mentioned Ghezzi and Preißler paintings, he acquired numerous artworks, medals and books on behalf of Fagel, notably an important collection of Old Master drawings that had previously belonged

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Figure 6.1  Johann Justin Preißler, Achilles among the daughters of Lycomedes, 1730. Oil on canvas, 570 × 412 cm. ©Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon. to the German artist Joachim von Sandrart (1606–88), which Stosch had discovered in Rome. Now dispersed, the collection comprised works by Italian and northern masters including Mantegna, Raphael, Ligorio, Carracci, Correggio, Parmigianino, Veronese, Baldung Grien, Dürer, Holbein and Rubens.77 These and other acquisitions and transactions are documented in the Stosch–Fagel correspondence, which shows that Stosch often had very specific ideas about taste and collecting priorities, advice that Fagel did not always follow. In the case of Augustus II of Saxony and Poland no specific details are known, but Stosch’s correspondence with the court indicates that he was engaged in procuring antiquities for the Dresden collections from 1717 onwards, even after settling permanently in Italy.78 Stosch was also involved in the collecting activities of Pierre Crozat (1661–1740) who, among other things, shared Stosch’s great interest in gems. The two had met in Paris in 1713, and in 1721 Stosch accompanied Crozat and his brother Antoine on their travels in the Netherlands, visiting collections and advising on the acquisition of paintings.79 Free advice and strategic gifts played a significant part in Stosch’s creation of his reputation as an art agent. To Frederick William I of Prussia he once presented a rare book that the king had been seeking for years without success, and he retrieved another valuable book for the Regent of France, Philippe II d’Orléans, and notably helped to locate precious volumes that had been stolen from the royal library at Versailles, as well as the occasional prized gems stolen from fellow collectors.80 Other significant gifts included a damask-bound luxury

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edition of Montfaucon’s fifteen-volume Antiquité expliquée plus a valuable Roman gem to a Tuscan collector in exchange for a curious Etruscan scarab gem.81 Stosch had also given away another highly cherished gem to William Ponsonby, second Earl of Bessborough, in order to secure the continued payment of his substantial pension from the Foreign Office82 (Plate 8). This cherished gem had been much admired by Horace Walpole when he visited the Museo Stoschiano in Florence in 1740. ‘I find I cannot live without Stosch’s intaglia of the Gladiator with the vase’, he wrote to Horace Mann, who tried his best to secure it for his friend for a hundred pounds, but in vain: ‘Stosch has grievously offended me’, Walpole later exclaimed, ‘I still think it one of the finest things I ever saw and am mortified at not having it.’83 This episode says something about the considerable attraction that gems had in these circles. Bessborough also acquired the famous Venus torso sculpture fragment, the rear of which is prominently displayed in Ghezzi’s drawings of Stosch’s home.84 Only fragments of Stosch’s wide-ranging activities as collector, dealer and agent are known today due to lack of documentation, and, as a result, his contribution to the history of collecting is not fully understood. However, he was undoubtedly one of the most important foreign actors operating in Italy in the first half of the eighteenth century. His standing within the local antiquarian community in Rome, combined with powerful alliances and political backing at the highest level, ensured that he was remarkably well positioned. Moving freely within and between the various social groupings in the city, from humble antiquaries and struggling artists to the salons and galleries of cardinals and aristocratic families, Stosch kept himself remarkably well informed on everything that was happening. Although his unofficial political position and close ties to the British proved socially awkward, they contributed substantially to his early successes in Rome as a collector, dealer and agent, and offered him direct access to English collectors and markets. Apart from Ficoroni, who also met and did business with most English visitors to Rome, few local dealers were better situated than Stosch in this respect. Many of the English collectors who visited him in Italy already knew Stosch well, in person or via correspondence, and they freely recommended him to fellow travellers and collectors. He was able to skilfully link together the local clusters in which he operated in Rome with his wider overlapping antiquarian, diplomatic and masonic networks, often based on intimate male friendship, though not necessarily of a sexual nature. The Museo Stoschiano thus became an important intersection point, and it continued to function as such even after its transfer to Florence. Stosch’s work as an informant complicated his dealing activities; even in Florence, far removed from the Stuarts in Rome, his presence remained controversial and politically charged, and the Inquisition in Rome repeatedly attempted to close down his library and have him expelled from Italy.85 By then, the Museo Stoschiano had become something of an institution and Stosch managed to remain in the city for more than a quarter of a century, making a strong and lasting impact on its antiquarian and cultural life. But, in the words of Lesley Lewis, ‘the Roman years were his best, most significant and probably happiest, and, wherever else at different times he travelled or lived, the strange and murky Baron Stosch always seems something of an exile from the Rome of his generation and of Antiquity.’86

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Notes 1 Anton Francesco Gori, Difesa dell’antico alfabeto degli antichi Toscani (Florence: Anton Maria Albizzini, 1742), ccxxxvii–viii. 2 Philipp von Stosch, ‘Geschichte des Freiherrn Philipp von Stosch’, in Das neue gelehrte Europa, vol.10 (1757), 258–88; Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Description des pierres gravées du feu Baron de Stosch (Florence: Andrea Bonduci, 1760). 3 For Stosch’s contacts see Jörn Lang, ‘Netzwerke von Gelehrten: Eine Skizze antiquarischer Interaktion im 18. Jh am Beispiel des Philipp von Stosch (1691– 1757)’, in Netzwerke der Moderne: Erkundungen und Strategien. Forum, Studien zu Moderneforschung, ed. Jan Broch, Daniel Scholl and Markus Rasiller (Würtzburg: Königshausen and Neuman, 2007), 219–21. 4 A good indicator of Stosch’s extensive network is the collection of 28,000 sulphur impressions of gems in all important collections across Europe, which he had procured for reference purposes. Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Briefe, ed. Walter Rehm (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1952), vol. 1, 442–4, no. 261. 5 Philipp von Stosch, Gemmae antiquae caelatae/Pierres antiques gravées (Amsterdam: Picart, 1724). The sequel to the book, advertised in the volume, never appeared. 6 Hanns Gross, Rome in the Age of Enlightenment: The Post Tridentine Syndrome and the Ancien Regime (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 319: ‘Stosch was perhaps the most notorious example of a foreigner who profited from Europe’s greed for the treasures of ancient Rome by dubious means. But his misfortune, if we may call it such, was that he lived in the first half of the 18th century.’ 7 See Charles de Brosses, Le président de Brosses en Italie: Lettres familières écrits en Italie en 1739 et 1740 (Paris: Didier &c, [1768] 1861), 289f.; Horace Walpole, The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole’s Correspondence, ed. W. S. Lewis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 48v., 1937–83). 8 From irony in Carl Justi, ‘Philipp von Stosch und seine Zeit’, Zeitschrift für Bildende Kunst 7 (1872), 293–307, 333–46, to misrepresentation and ridicule in Dorothy MacKay Quynn, ‘Philipp von Stosch: Collector, Bibliophile, Spy, Thief ’, Catholic Historical Review 27, no. 3 (1941), 332–44; cf. also Walpole, Yale Ed., vol. 17, xxxiii (comment by W. S. Lewis); Lesley Lewis, Connoisseurs and Secret Agents in Eighteenth-Century Rome (London: Chatto and Windus, 1961), Gross, Rome in the Age of Enlightenment, 318f. The list is long. 9 John George Keysler, Travels Through Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, Switzerland, Italy and Lorrain (London: A. Linde, 1757), vol. 2, 51; Winckelmann, Briefe, vol. 1, 227, no. 146. 10 Justi, ‘Philipp von Stosch’, 295. 11 Ibid., 296. 12 Unless otherwise stated, biographical information is from Stosch, ‘Geschichte’, vol. 5 (1754), 1–54; 10 (1757), 257–301; 13 (1758), 242ff. 13 On Stosch and Fagel, see Jan Heringa, ‘Die Genese von Gemmae antiquae caelatae’, Bulletin Antieke Beschaving 51 (1976): 75–91 and idem, ‘Philipp von Stosch als Vermittler von Kunstankäufungen François Fagels’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 32 (1981): 55–110. 14 Den Haag, Nat. Arch. (hereafter NA Hague), Collectie Fagel, 1.10.29. Stosch’s work as an art agent for Fagel is discussed in Heringa, ‘Philipp von Stosch’.

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15 Justi, ‘Philipp von Stosch’, 296. 16 For coin collections in England, Nicola Francesco Haym, Del tesoro britannico (London: Tonson, 1719–20). Cf. also Jeffrey Spier and Jonathan Kagan, ‘Sir Charles Frederick and the Forgery of Ancient Coins in Eighteenth-Century Rome’, Journal of the History of Collections 12, no. 1 (2000): 35–90. 17 ‘. . . c’etoit ma passion ou si Vous voulez ma folie dominante’. NA Hague, inv. 1726 f. 22: Stosch to Fagel 13 April 1714. 18 Marcantonio Sabbatini, Francesco Bianchini, Cardinal Filippo Antonio Gualterio, Alessandro Gregorio Capponi, Leone Strozzi, Pietro Andrea Andreini and many others. Stosch, ‘Geschichte’ (1754), 22–6; Bruno Gialluca, ‘Filippo Buonarroti’, in Seduzione etrusca: Dai segreti di Holkham Hall alle meraviglie del British Museum, ed. Paolo Bruschetti, B. Gialluca, P. Giulerini, S. Reynolds and J. Swaddling (Geneva and Milan: Skira, 2014), 298, 304 n. 118f.; Marzia Guerrieri, ‘Collezionismo e mercato di disegni a Roma nella prima metà del Settecento: Protagonisti, comprimario, comparse’ (PhD diss. Università degli studi di Roma III, 2010), 191, 195. 19 ‘Sie waren fast nie von einandern’. Stosch, ‘Geschichte’ (1754), 25, mentions excavations at Anzio, Albano, Nemi, Grottaferrata, Tusculum, Tivoli and Praeneste. 20 Ibid., 27. 21 NA Hague, inv. 1731: Stosch to Fagel 8 September 1717 and 29 January 1718. See also Stosch, ‘Geschichte’ (1754), 30; Heringa ‘Die Genese’, 98 n. 6 and refs. 22 Stosch to K. G. Heraeus, 19 December 1722. Robert Schneider, ‘Ein Brief Philipp von Stosch’ an Heraeus’, Jahreshefte des Österreichischen Archäologischen Instituts in Wien 10 (1907): 346f. 23 Dresden, Hauptstaatsarchiv, 10026 Loc. 380/4, Stosch-Graf Flemming corr. Cf. Carl Justi, Antiquarische Briefe des Baron Philipp von Stosch (Marburg: C.L. Pfeil, 1861), 6–14. Stosch, who received a pension of 600 Thaler for his services, was still in service when Augustus II acquired the Chigi and Albani sculpture collections (1728), negotiated by Stosch’s associate Francesco de’ Ficoroni. It remains unclear if and to what extent Stosch was involved in the negotiations. 24 Stosch to Flemming 11 October 1721. Justi, ‘Antiquarische Briefe’. 12f. no. vi. 25 Stosch used the pseudonym ‘John Walton’. See esp. Lewis, Connoisseurs and Secret Agents; Edward Corp, The Stuarts in Italy 1719–1766: A Royal Court in Permanent Exile (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 26 For the atlas, see Stosch, ‘Geschichte’ (1757), 285–7; Winckelmann, Description, 578–96; Hermann Egger, ‘Philipp von Stosch und die für seinen Atlas beschäftigten Künstler’, in Festschrift der Nationalbibliothek in Wien (Vienna: Österreichischen Staatsdruckerei, 1926), 221–34; Rudolf Kinauer, ‘Der Atlas des Freiherrn Philipp von Stosch der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek’ (Unpubl. PhD diss., University of Vienna, 1950). Cf. also Alessandra Themelly, ‘Pier Leone Ghezzi tra “erudizione” e nuova scienza archeologica: riflessioni sul ms. Ottoboniano lat. 3109’, Evtopia 2, no. 1 (1993), 65–89; Luisa M. Connor Bulman, ‘Gaetano Piccini, the Neatest Handed, Idlest Fellow I Ever Met With’, Xenia Antiqua 10 (2001), 219–38. 27 Walton [Stosch] to Lord Carteret, 28 February 1722. Kew, Nat. Arch. (hereafter NA Kew) SP 85/14 f. 9–12. 28 Following the death of the Clement XI in 1721 Stosch lost his papal pension, and a few years later apparently also that from Dresden (Justi, Antiquarische Briefe, 14). His obsessive collecting during this decisive period was financed by the British, by his patron Fagel, who also settled some of the debts that Stosch constantly ran up, and by his own dealing activity.

 ‘An Oracle for Collectors’ 125 29 Albertina, 1263 (dated 1725); BAV, Cod. Ottob. lat. 3116 f. 191 (dated 1728). Justi, (‘Philipp von Stosch’, 301) first identified the event as a coin auction. 30 Cf. the famous controversy between Ficoroni and Montfaucon. See Tamara Griggs, ‘The Local Antiquary in Eighteenth-Century Rome’, in The Rebirth of Antiquity: Numismatics, Archaeology and Classical Studies in the Culture of the Renaissance, ed. Gretchen Oberfranc and Alan H. Stahl (Princeton: Princeton University Library, 2009), 285–97. 31 There exist several accounts of this dramatic incident, by Stosch himself (‘Geschichte’ 1754, 44f.), Stosch to Polignac (Ferdinand Noack, ‘Stosch, Albani, Winckelmann’, Belvedere 13 (1928): 42) and to the British government (Walton 25.1 1731. NA Kew, SP 98/32 f. 146–9; Lewis, Connoisseurs and Secret Agents, 87–90); also by Pier Leone Ghezzi, ‘Memorie del cav. Leone Ghezzi scritte da se medesimo da Gennaro 1731 a Luglio 1734’, in Maria Cristina Donati da Empoli, Pier Leone Ghezzi: Un protagonista del Settecento romano (Rome: Gangemi, 2001), 62f. and Graf Wackerbarth-Salmour (Justi, Antiquarische Briefe, 14f.). The specific motives behind Stosch’s forced exile remain unknown, but his work as an informant is a likely explanation, in combination with allegations of atheism and (open) homosexuality. 32 Fabia Borroni Salvadori, ‘Tra la fine del Granducato e la Reggenza: Filippo Stosch a Firenze’, Annali della Scuola Normale di Pisa, Cl. di lettere e filosofia, ser. 3 vol. 8 no.2 (1978): 565–614. 33 Walton 3 March 1731. NA Kew, SP 98/32 f. 165. 34 Walpole, Yale Ed., vols 17–27, passim. 35 Walpole, Yale Ed., vol. 21, 380. 36 Albani was the Habsburg representative (protector) in Rome, and Stosch had been very well received in Vienna. As a sign of gratitude, the emperor was offered first refusal of Stosch’s collections following his death. Albani had sold his first sculpture collection to Dresden while Stosch served as royal antiquary there, although he does not seem to have been directly involved in the acquisition. As late as 1754 Stosch was still calling himself Königl. Polnischen Rats zu Florenz (Stosch, ‘Geschichte’ 1754, 1). The acquisition of the Albani and Chigi collections (the latter negotiated by Ficoroni, a close associate of Stosch’s) in 1728 are documented in the correspondence of the Dresden emissary Baron Raymond Le Plat (Dresden, Hauptstaatsarch. 10026 Loc. 033060/06). Stosch’s nephew F. L. H. Muzell was Royal Physician to Frederick II of Prussia. Wilhelmina Schartow, ‘Friedrichs der Großen Leibartzt Dr Ludwig Hermann Muzell und dessen Bruder Baron Wilhelm Muzell-Stosch’, Mitteilungen des Vereins für die Geschichte Berlins 26 (1909), 220–2. 37 On Stosch and the Florentine masonic lodge see Paolo Casini, ‘The Crudeli Affair: Inquisition and Reason of State’, in Eighteenth-Century Studies Presented to Arthur M. Wilson, ed. Peter Gay (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1972), 131–52; Morelli Timpanaro, Tommaso Crudeli Poppi (1702-1745): Contributo per una storia sulla Inquisizione a Firenze nella prima metà del XVIII secolo (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2003). 38 See Baldassare Peruzzi, Memorie di varia erudizione della società Colombaria fiorentina (Florence: Apollo, 1747): xxvii–lxxvi passim, esp. lvii. For Stosch and the Accademia Etrusca, Donata Levi in L’Accademia Etrusca, ed. Paola Barocchi and Daniela Gallo (Milan: Electa, 1985), 176–89. 39 ‘je me suis abaissé jusqu’aux prières!’ Jean-Jacques Barthélemy, Voyages en Italie de M. l’abbé Barthélemy (Paris: F. Buisson, 1801), 24–6; Stosch to Venuti 11 October

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1755. Rudolf Engelmann, ‘Vier Briefe an Filippo und Rudolfino Venuti’, Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 7(3) (1909), 322–38: 332, no. 2. 40 Stosch’s will was published in Maria Augusta Morelli Timpanaro, Per una storia di Andrea Bonduci (Firenze 1715-1766): Lo stampatore, gli amici, e loro esperienze culturali e massoniche (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano, 1996), 425–8. 41 ‘Stosch is dead at last. He expired last Sunday after a short illness, or rather weakness, for he did not appear to suffer at all.’ H. Mann to H. Walpole, 1 November 1757 (Walpole, Yale Ed., vol. 21, 149). 42 Stosch, ‘Geschichte’ (1757), 258–87. 43 I antiquities II coins and medals IV engraved stones V Old Master original paintings VI etchings and woodcuts VII Greek and Latin manuscripts VIII library IX naturalia cabinet X arms and armour XI geo- and topographical atlas. 44 See, for example, the detailed sale offer to William Constable of Constable Burton Hall. Beverley, E. Riding RO, DDCC/145/34. I am grateful to Dr. David Connell for bringing this document to my attention. 45 Stosch, ‘Geschichte’ (1758), 242; H. Mann to W. Pitt. NA Kew SP 98/64 c. 152. 46 See Walpole, Yale Ed., vol. 21, passim. 47 See, for example, John Fleming, Robert Adam and His Circle in Edinburgh and Rome (London: John Murray, 1962), 278. 48 Winckelmann, Briefe, vol. 1, 442–4 no. 261. Parts of the collection were sold, notably, to Giovanni Carafa, Duke of Noja, prior to Winckelmann’s catalogue (1760). For Stosch’s gem collection and Winckelmann’s work on it, see Axel Rügler in J. J. Winckelmann, Description des pierres gravées du Feu Baron de Stosch, ed. Adolf H. Borbein, Max Kunze and Axel Rügler (Mainz: von Zabern, 2013), xi–xxvi; Ulf R. Hansson, ‘“Ma passion . . . ma folie dominante”: Stosch, Winckelmann, and the Allure of the Engraved Gems of the Ancients’, MDCCC1800 3 (2014): 3–31. 49 Winckelmann, Briefe, vol. 1, 444f. no. 262. 50 See Lorenz Natter, A Treatise on the Ancient Method of Engraving on Precious Stones, Compared with Modern (London: Natter, 1754), xxviii–xxix, xxxii. Cf. also Borroni Salvadori, ‘Tra la fine del granducato’, 583, 595f.; Gabriella Tassinari, ‘Antonio Pichler e gli incisori di pietre a Napoli’, Napoli nobilissima 1–2 (2010), 31f. and refs. 51 Stosch is said to have bought the tools and remaining coins of the notorious coin forger Nicolò Dervieux, whom he knew, after the latter’s death in 1735. Spier and Kagan, ‘Sir Charles Frederick’, 70f. 52 See Daktyliotheken: Götter und Caesaren auf der Schublade, ed. Valentin Kockel and Daniel Graepler (Munich: Biering & Brinkmann, 2006). 53 Rudolf Erich Raspe, A Descriptive Catalogue of a General Collection of Ancient and Modern Engraved Gems (London: John Murray, 1791), lxiv. Catherine II of Russia acquired a double set, in sulphur and glass paste, of Tassie’s whole stock. 54 The catalogue was initially intended as a simple sales catalogue. See Peter Zazoff, Gemmensammler und Gemmenforscher (Munich: Beck, 1983), 71–7. 55 The sum was 12,000 Thaler (30,000 ducati); Zazoff, Gemmenforscher, 131–4 and refs. 56 Walpole, Yale Ed., vol. 21, 231. The rest of the coin collection was probably auctioned off piecemeal in Florence. See Borroni Salvadori, ‘Tra la fine del granducato’, 614 n. 248. Coins had been Stosch’s earliest focus and he remained a leading authority and collector throughout his life. Cf. Keysler, Travels, vol. 2, 51: ‘As to his skills in the Greek and Latin antiquities, he is in such reputation at Rome that in all things of that kind, as when an explanation of an ancient medal or intaglio is to be determined, his judgment is generally appealed to.’

 ‘An Oracle for Collectors’ 127 57 Lewis, Connoisseurs, 60f. 58 Winckelmann, Description, 571–96; Egger, ‘Philipp von Stosch und die für seinen Atlas beschäftigten Künstler’; Kinauer, ‘Der Atlas des Freiherrn Philipp von Stosch des Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek’. 59 Ian Campbell and Arnold Nesselrath, ‘The Codex Stosch: Surveys of Ancient Buildings by Giovanni Battista da Sangallo’, Pegasus: Berliner Beiträge zum Nachleben der Antike 8 (2006): 9–43. 60 Langford, London 24 March 1764. Now divided between the Albertina and the Austrian National Library, Vienna. A printed catalogue, not Winckelmann’s abridged version (1760), is mentioned by Horace Mann (Walpole, Yale Ed., vol. 21, 192). The Codex Stosch, now in the RIBA Library, London, was not included in the purchase, but resurfaced at auction in 2005 (Lyon & Turnbull, Edinburgh, Sale 125 Lot 1). 61 Stosch to Flemming 18 March 1721 (Justi, Antiquarische Briefe, 6f. no. ii). 62 Jonathan I. Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 133. 63 Booksellers such as Bernardo Paperini, Giuseppe Rigacci and Antonio Ristori. Borroni Salvadori, ‘Tra la fine del granducato’, 581; Emmanuelle Chapron, ‘Ad utilità pubblica’: Politique des bibliothèques et pratiques du livre à Florence au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Droz, 2009), esp. 49–51. Cf. also Stosch to F. Venuti 24 February 1739 (Engelmann, ‘Vier Briefe’, 328f.). Stosch had left many of his books in the north, and his library was not complete until after 1739 when Fagel shipped the last of the books to Livorno. Ibid. 64 See Timpanaro, Tommaso Crudeli, vol. 1, 129–31 no. 101. 65 Sandro Landi, Il governo delle opinioni: Censura e formazione del consenso nella Toscana del Settecento (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2000), 57 and refs. 66 Heringa, ‘Philipp von Stosch’, 57; Giuseppina Totaro, ‘Nota su due manoscritti delle “Adnotationes” al “Tractatus Theologico-politicus” di Spinoza’, Nouvelles de la République des Lettres 2 (1990): 115; idem, ‘Da Antonio Magliabecchi a Philipp von Stosch: varia fortuna del “De Tribus impostoribus Impostoribus” e de L’“Esprit de Spinosa” a Firenze’, in Bibliotecae selectae da Crisano a Leopardi, ed. E. Canone (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1993), 377–417. 67 Corr. Fagel to Stosch 1722–25. Heringa, ‘Philipp von Stosch’, 57f. and refs. Cf. also Stosch to M. Egizio 30 October 1730. Rudolf Engelmann, ‘Briefe von Philipp von Stosch an Matt. Egizio in Neapel’, Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 6 (1908): 343–5. 68 Stosch to R. Bentley 1 July 1729. The Correspondence of Richard Bentley D.D. Master of Trinity College Cambridge (London: John Murray, 1842), 706 no. cclx. 69 Stosch, Bibliotheca Stoschiana (Lucca: Jacobi Justi, 1758; Florence, 1759). 70 Vatican Lib., MS Codex Vat. Lat. 7806a f. 81-5; Borroni Salvadori, ‘Tra la fine del granducato’, 613f.; Totaro, ‘Nota su due manoscritti’, 111; Walpole, Yale Ed., vol. 21, 284. Much later it was discovered that many of the items had actually been stolen from the same library at some point, although the theft had gone unnoticed. Stosch had probably acquired them in good faith, as he never made any secret of the fact that they were in his possession. See Georges de Manteyer, ‘Les manuscrits de la reine Christine au Vatican’, Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire de l’École française de Rome 17 (1897): 285–322, 18 (1898), 525–35, 19 (1899), 85–90. Rudolf Engelmann, ‘Die Manuskripte des Barons Philipp von Stosch’, Centralblatt für Bibliothekswesen 26 (1909): 547–77 convincingly argued that Stosch himself was unlikely to have been involved in the actual theft, but cf. MacKay Quynn, ‘Philipp von Stosch’, esp. 342–4.

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71 Walpole, Yale ed., vol. 21, 202. 72 Only parts of this material have so far been positively identified. 73 Bouchardon’s bust (Berlin; Staatl. Mus. M 204) is based on the bust of Trajan now in the Musei Capitolini, inv. 276. See Philippe Sénéchal, ‘“Attaché entièrement à l’Antique et à mon caprice”: Die Büste des Barons Philipp von Stosch von Edme Bouchardon’, in Jenseits der Grenzen: Französische und deutsche Kunst vom Ancien Régime bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Uwe Fleckner, Martin Schieder and Michael F. Zimmermann (Cologne: DuMont, 2000), 136–48. Bouchardon’s bust is also the model for J. J. Preißler’s drawing, engraved by G. M. Preißler, in the illustrated luxury edition of Winckelmann’s catalogue of Stosch’s gems. 74 For most portraits see Julia Kagan, ‘Philipp von Stosch in Porträts auf geschnittenen Steinen aus den Sammlungen der Leningrader Hermitage under der Berliner Museen und einige Fragen der Ikonographie’, Forschungen und Berichte 25 (1985): 1–15. Cf. also Tassinari, ‘Antonio Pichler’, 31f. 75 Restoration (now removed) by Lambert Sigisbert Adam(?). Found damaged and with several heads missing, the group was initially interpreted as Achilles among the daughters of Lycomedes, quickly re-identified as Apollo and the Muses. See Justi, ‘Philipp von Stosch’, 299f.; Heringa, ‘Philipp von Stosch’, 67f. 76 Stosch appears as Demosthenes in Ghezzi’s Alexander and Diogenes (1717, 1726–8, private collection), loosely based on Salvator Rosa’s painting of 1632, now at Althorp House, Northampton; and as Diomedes in Preißler’s Achilles among the Daughters of Lycomedes (1730, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon). Heringa, ‘Philipp von Stosch’, 58–61, 63–9. 77 Part of the inventory list in Stosch’s hand survives (NA Hague, inv. 2028), but the collection is reconstructed in Heringa, ‘Philipp von Stosch’, 69–97. Fagel’s art collection was sold by Phillips in London in 1799 and 1801. Ibid., 106 n.82. 78 Some letters to Reichsgraf Flemming are published in Justi, Antiquarische Briefe, 6–15. 79 Stosch 1754, 37. 80 For Jean Aymon’s 1707 book theft see Henri Omont, ‘Le vol d’Aymon à la Bibliothèque du Roi et le Baron de Stosch’, Revue des bibliothèques 1 (1891): 468f. Cf. also Stosch, ‘Geschichte’ (1754), 36f.; Engelmann, ‘Die Manuskripte’, 555f. For the stolen gem signed by the gem-cutter Polyclitus, Stosch to P.A. Andreini, 16 September 1720 (Justi, Antiquarische Briefe, 4 no. 1). 81 Hansson, ‘Ma passion’, 22–4 and refs. 82 Walpole, Yale Ed., vol. 21, 151. This gem is no. xxvi in Natter, Catalogue des pierres gravées, tant en relief qu’en creux, de mylord comte de Bessborough (London: J. Haberkorn, 1761). Cf. also Gertrud Platz-Horster, ‘Der Ölgießer des Gnaios Granat in der Walters Art Gallery’, Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 51 (1993): 11–21. 83 Walpole, Yale Ed., vol. 17, 232f.; vol. 20, 157. 84 Liverpool Museums inv. 59.148.63. 85 For example, Casini, ‘Crudeli Affair’; Timpanaro, Tommaso Crudeli. 86 Lesley Lewis, ‘Philipp von Stosch’, Apollo 85 (1967): 320.

7

Shaping the taste of British diplomats in eighteenth-century Venice Laura-Maria Popoviciu1

The Italian connoisseur and art dealer Giovanni Maria Sasso (1742–1803) was a leading figure in the Venetian art market. As biographer of the most important artists from Guariento to Sebastiano Zucatto, Sasso did not complete his work, entitled Venezia Pittrice, which survives in a manuscript in Padua.2 Although transcribed by Raimondo Callegari, the biographies have not previously been studied in relation to Sasso’s correspondence with his English clients.3 Looking at the material from this perspective will help to reveal the motivation behind its preparation, as well as shed light on Sasso’s legacy. This chapter also extends and deepens the analysis of distinguished scholars such as Professor Linda Borean, who has edited the vast corpus of letters relating to Sasso4 and has written extensively on his activity as an art dealer and his prominent presence within the Venetian art collecting world,5 by offering a detailed perspective on Sasso’s Venezia Pittrice, its context and dates. Most of the information on Sasso’s life comes from Memorie,6 a biographical account in which Sasso supplied significant details about the beginnings of his activity as an art dealer: I rapidly acquired familiarity with painters of every sort and became an expert; and now, when I am asked to judge various paintings whose author is uncertain, my opinion is generally accepted.7

Other noteworthy episodes include his time spent advising his English clients. For instance, he acted as agent for the British residents in Venice, James Wright (1717–1804) and John Strange (1732–99),8 respectively, and was paid 10 per cent of the price of every painting bought on his recommendation.9 This indicates that there were new demands on the part of collectors to acquire high-quality paintings with the help of an expert and that there was a new market, which the agent could not exploit until the collector was ready.

The correspondence with Abraham Hume ‘A melancholic’ and ‘hypochondriac’,10 as he often describes himself in the letters addressed to the English collector Abraham Hume (1749–1838),11 Sasso was

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an indispensable figure for the collecting world, especially the English one. His correspondence with Hume lasted from 1787 to 1803 and provides invaluable information about Sasso’s views on Venetian paintings and his selling strategies. For instance, he bought a Virgin and Child by Giovanni Bellini from the Casa Soranzo and encouraged Hume to add it to his collection. Although Sasso considered Bellini’s manner of painting to be somewhat hard, this piece looked softer in his opinion, and ‘the head of the Virgin seemed to be by Titian’.12 Hume, however, remained silent about Bellini’s painting and instead showed interest in works by Tintoretto and Giorgione. Moreover, when Sasso tried to convince him to acquire Bellini’s Christ at Emmaus from the Zanetti collection,13 supporting his positive assessment with a passage from Carlo Ridolfi’s Le maraviglie dell’arte (1684), Hume was reluctant to pay 200 zecchini for it.14 Similarly, Sasso wrote enthusiastically about a painting by Palma Vecchio, ‘much softer than Giovanni Bellini’s, with a beautiful landscape which resembled Leonardo’s style’. Again, Hume rejected it and disapproved of Palma’s dry and old-fashioned manner, adding, however, that he would have bought the painting straightaway if it had been by Leonardo.15 Hume preferred works by later painters such as Tintoretto, Veronese and Titian, and was prepared to invest higher sums in the acquisition of their works. The highest price he paid for a painting by Giovanni Bellini was 200 zecchini. Other early Venetian paintings ranged between 15 and 100 zecchini, while paintings by Veronese, Tintoretto, Titian, Guercino, Lodovico Carracci and Rubens cost between 100 and 500 zecchini. The price of small paintings, landscapes, drawings and sketches ranged between 15 and 60 zecchini. Hume was a demanding client, confident about his taste, but nevertheless keen to get specialist advice from Sasso. For his part, Sasso showed his expertise by responding to such requests with thorough examinations of the works. An example of his connoisseurship is the careful examination of Tintoretto’s Nativity which, according to Sasso, had ‘significant faults’ which adversely affected its quality.16 As a result of his thorough assessment, Hume decided against the purchase.17 The examples above allow us to discover two distinct personalities: on the one hand, an enthusiastic connoisseur who provides detailed accounts of paintings which he supports with solid arguments from the available artistic literature and, on the other hand, a demanding client, with a real interest in art who has clear ideas about his future purchases. While Sasso’s attempts – often unsuccessful – to sell early artworks to his clients may have reflected a genuine interest on his part, it is possible that this was primarily a selling strategy, enabling him to establish himself as a dealer of Renaissance paintings in the Venetian art market of the eighteenth century.

Sasso’s Venezia Pittrice and its context In September 1785, the diplomat and British resident in Venice, John Strange, wrote to Sasso asking for his manuscript of Pittura veneta ‘for his own instruction and delight’.18 In another letter, he insisted that Sasso should send him the manuscript without delay.19 Sasso’s response, however, was not very prompt; there were a variety of reasons

 Shaping the Taste of British Diplomats in Venice 131 for his delay: first, he was still gathering documentation; second, the production of illustrations was a lengthy process and third, he lacked the financial means to get it published.20 Strange’s letters indicate that Sasso was already working on his project as early as 1785 and that Strange had commissioned the text.21 Moreover, this was not their only collaboration: Sasso was in charge of new editions of Gaetano Zompini’s Arti che vanno per via nella città di Venezia (1785) and Vari Capricci del Castiglione (1786) and Antonio Maria Zanetti’s Varie pitture a fresco (1760), which Strange intended to promote in England.22 Sasso himself was particularly interested in Zanetti’s writings since Venezia Pittrice was based on Della pittura veneziana (1771).23 Sasso had a good knowledge of the published literature on art, which provided guidance on shaping the preferences of collectors. As appears from two letters by the abbot and antiquarian Giovanni Battista Nalesso, Sasso intended to buy, either for his own library or for his patrons, a large number of biographies of artists from different parts of Italy.24 Ridolfi, in particular, proved to be a popular author among English collectors: in 1789 Sasso informed Hume, who had previously asked him to procure for him a copy of Le meraviglie dell’arte, that Ridolfi is more expensive in Venice than elsewhere because all the copies have been exported, and here a foreigner pays up to twelve zecchini for the book – a terrible price. Anyway, I found a copy at 3 zecchini for Mr Hoare last year. But now I am behind with the printing of the Storia pittorica veneta, which everyone is longing to have published, so that it will be used like Ridolfi and something more, since I leave out all the annoying poetic touches of this man, and there will be many more interesting things on art.25

Here, Sasso touches on two major points: firstly, that there was a demand from the English collectors for Ridolfi’s book and secondly, that he was planning to publish a treatise, more complex than Ridolfi’s, which would provide collectors with a knowledgeable source on Venetian art.26 As we have seen, Sasso had been working on the Venezia Pittrice as early as the mid-1780s,27 and the letter to Hume confirms that his project was still ongoing at the end of the decade. For his treatise, Sasso drew on earlier writings28 as well as contemporary sources including Flaminio Corner’s Notizie storiche (1758),29 and Giambattista Verci’s Notizie intorno alla vita e alla opera de’ pittori, scultori e intagliatori della città di Bassano (1775).30 For the Muranese painters, he referenced Matteo Fanello’s Notizie storico geografiche di Murano, published in 1797, which indicates that Sasso added these biographies between 1797 and 1802.31 Sasso’s draft provides a unique insight into his approach to art history. Each biography includes information about a range of works, a review of the previous literature and Sasso’s own views. Such detailed analyses and the addition of prints after a number of paintings discussed, make the manuscript stand out from the previous biographies of Venetian artists.32 Sasso also ranked painters and made comparisons between them. An example is his discussion of Giusto de Menabuoi’s

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frescoes in the baptistery of Padua, which he considered superior to works by Guariento and even to Giotto since it was ‘painted with good colouring, with most beautiful heads and beautiful folds, with softness and expression’.33 For an eighteenth-century reader who was familiar with the previous artistic literature, Sasso’s statement would, no doubt, have been surprising. This, however, was not his only striking observation. In his assessment of Francesco and Jacobello del Fiore, Sasso states that Jacobello’s style was inferior to his father’s, and describes the latter’s Virgin and Child with St Jerome and St John the Baptist in Strange’s collection as ‘most beautiful for those days; the heads of the saints are full of devout gravity, the folds are rich and soft, and the whole ensemble is well composed’.34 He considered Jacobello’s style to be very dry, influenced by the Greek manner,35 and therefore, overrated.36 Finally, Sasso considered Alvise Vivarini’s St Jerome in the Scuola di San Girolamo to be equal to the painting of Giovanni Bellini and superior to that of Vittore Carpaccio,37 praising the ‘beautiful and elegant church’ and the ‘ingenious and well-situated figures’.38 That Sasso sought to promote a taste for early Renaissance paintings is apparent from the way he compiled his material for Venezia Pittrice. His biographies of painters who lived between approximately 1350 and 1530 were written at different stages and can be dated according to the publications on which he drew. One reason for this restricted time frame is that the work was commissioned by a private collector and was intended to publicize his collection of early paintings. While in the case of Ridolfi and Zanetti, the main emphasis was on publicly displayed paintings, in Sasso’s biographies there is a shift towards privately owned works. For instance, Sasso mentions fifteen paintings in private collections,39 none of which were referred to by Ridolfi in his accounts of the same artists. Clearly, Sasso did not intend to write a guide for visitors to Venice; instead, his work provided information on the history of collecting early paintings, with details on the provenance and ownership of these works. The correspondence documenting the history of Sasso’s manuscript after his death shows that he succeeded in producing a reference work.40 Strange’s collection, though particularly strong in Quattrocento paintings, ranged from works by Guariento to the Italian vedutisti of the eighteenth century.41 His chronological display reflected eighteenth-century tendencies in collecting,42 enabling viewers to see an evolution in style over time and served as an illustrated historical overview of Venetian painting. One of the earliest collectors who applied the same criteria of display was Padre Carlo Lodoli (1690–1761). A monk, patron of the arts and mathematician, whose theories on architecture were transmitted through his pupil, Andrea Memmo,43 Lodoli possessed an impressive collection of Italian, German and Flemish works of art,44 displayed chronologically and by school.45 Another important example of a collector who followed this methodology was Sasso’s client and neighbour, Girolamo Manfrin,46 who assembled a collection of 400 paintings.47 Such an environment inspired Sasso and led him to encourage other collectors such as Strange to adopt similar principles. Sasso’s chronological presentation of early painters, highlighting works from Strange’s collection, both enhanced the Englishman’s reputation as a collector and gave Sasso the opportunity to demonstrate his expertise.

 Shaping the Taste of British Diplomats in Venice 133 Even though Sasso’s attempts to convince English collectors to purchase early Venetian paintings were backed up with solid arguments, he sometimes failed to persuade them. This was probably due to the preference of his clientele for more recent paintings. It is noteworthy that Sasso’s attitude towards early Italian art both in his correspondence and in Venezia Pittrice remained consistent, even though he was writing for different purposes: on the one hand, to sell and promote specific paintings on the art market; and, on the other, to carry out, in a well-documented and scholarly manner, a private commission. Sasso’s artistic views and knowledge were built on a tradition which went back to the earliest Venetian writings on art and to which he added an original touch, complemented by his expertise in art dealing and collecting. Through his network and erudition, Sasso was instrumental in shaping the taste for early Italian paintings and increasing their acquisition in eighteenth-century Venice.

Notes 1 This article derives from my doctoral thesis which I completed at the Warburg Institute in 2014. I thank my supervisors Professor Jill Kraye and Professor Charles Hope for their help and support. 2 Padua, Biblioteca Civica, MS 2538: Memorie di Giovanni Maria Sasso pittore veneziano da lui medesimo scritte con altre sopra alcuni pittori veneziani e padovani, 1804, fols 1r-17r. The manuscript survives as a copy made by Sasso’s friend, the collector Giovanni de Lazzara (1744–1833). For the transcription, see ‘Trascrizione del manoscritto di Giovanni Maria Sasso’, Memorie di Govanni Maria Sasso pittore veneziano da lui medesimo scritte con altre sopra alcuni pittori venezani e padovani 1804, conservato nella Biblioteca Civica di Padova (ms. B.P. 2538), in Raimondo Callegari, Scritti sull’arte padovana del Rinascimento (Udine: Forum, 1998), 296–324. 3 Sasso corresponded regularly with Gavin Hamilton, John Strange, Richard Wolsley and Abraham Hume; see Alessandro Bettagno and Marina Magrini, Lettere artistiche del Settecento (Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 2002), 431–61, and Linda Borean, ed., Lettere artistiche del Settecento 2: Il carteggio Giovanni Maria Sasso-Abraham Hume (Vicenza: Cierre Edizioni, 2004). 4 See note 2 above. 5 See Borean, ‘Abraham Hume e Giovanni Maria Sasso: il mercato artistico tra Venezia e Londra nel settecento’, in Auctions, Agents and Dealers: The Mechanisms of the Art Market, 1660–1830, ed. Jeremy Warren and Adriana Turpin (Oxford: Beazley Archive, Arcaeo Press, 2007), 161–8; and Borean, ed., Lettere artistiche . . ., and Borean, ‘Sir Abraham Hume as Collector and Writer’, in Peter Humfrey, ed., The Reception of Titian in Britain from Reynolds to Ruskin (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 85–97. 6 An extract of the Memorie was published in Giovanni Antonio Moschini, Della letteratura veneziana del secolo XVIII fino a’ nostri giorni, 4 vols (Venice: T. Gattei, 1806–08), vol. 3, 51. 7 Padua, Biblioteca Civica, MS 2538: Memorie di Sasso, fol. 8r: ‘presi in breve grandissima pratica degli autori di ogni classe e ne divenni pratichissimo, ed ora chiamato a dar giudizio di alcune pitture dubbiose che non si conosceva l’autore, ed in ciò fui da tutto compatito.’

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8 There are eighty-two letters which confirm their fruitful collaboration; see Attilia Dorigato, ‘Storie di collezionisti a Venezia: Il residente inglese John Strange’, in Per Giuseppe Mazzariol, ed. Manlio Brusatin, Wladimiro Dorigo and Giovanni Morelli (Rome: Viella, 1992), 127, and Venice, Biblioteca del Museo Correr: Epistolario Moschini, ‘John Strange’. 9 Padua, Biblioteca Civica, MS 2538, fol. 7r: ‘mi pagava a parte il 10 per cento delle pitture che comprava col mio mezzo.’ 10 London, NGA 8/1/16, letter of Sasso to Hume, 28 April 1788: ‘per solevarmi un poco dalla mia ipocondria’; ‘mi farà bene alla mia malinconia un poco di distragion’. 11 The Sasso-Hume correspondence is divided between the National Gallery Archive (NGA 8/1-8/1/144) and the Biblioteca del Seminario Patriarcale (MSS 565-6); see also n. 4 above. 12 London, NGA 8/1/10, Sasso to Hume, 21 February 1788: ‘dirò prima di aver acquistato un bel Giovanni Bellino, Vergine e putino col nome del’autore in casa Soranzo – è un autore un poco duretto al suo solito ma è de l’ultima maniera cioè della più morbide e la testa della Vergine sembra di Tiziano.’ 13 For the dispersal of the Zanetti collection, see Gianluca Tormen, ed., L’epistolario Giovanni Antonio Armano-Giovanni Maria Sasso (Verona: Cierre Edizioni, 2009), 39–54. 14 London, NGA 8/1/44, Sasso to Hume, September 1789: ‘La maniera è la più grandiosa e calda de l’autore e le teste più morbide del solito. Questo quadro . . . è citato nel Ridolfi pagina 56.’ 15 Ibid., 8/1/40, Hume to Sasso, 24 June 1789: ‘Ma per il ritratto di Palma Vecchio temo che sia d’una maniera secca, ed antica. Ditte che somiglia alla maniera di Lionardo da Vinci, se fosse di lui non esitarci a prenderlo.’ 16 Ibid., 8/1/14, Sasso to Hume, 28 April 1788: ‘ho ritrovato de diffeti notabili.’ 17 Ibid.: ‘E penso che sarà meglio a non prendela’; and NGA 8/1/19, Hume to Sasso, 31 May 1788: ‘come mi confido nel vostro giudizio e dalla vostra delicatezza, non ponderò più al gran quadro di Tintoretto.’ 18 Epistolario Moschini: ‘John Strange’, Strange to Sasso, 20 September 1785: ‘mi faccia avere prima che puolo quell manoscritto suo della Pittura Veneta ultimato come vole evvi, per mia istruzione e piacere.’ 19 Ibid., letter 25, Strange to Sasso, 10 September 1785: ‘Per l’amore del cielo sbrighi e mi mandi quell suo Manoscritto Pittura Veneta.’ 20 Strange offered his financial support. Epistolario Moschini: ‘John Strange’, letter 81, Strange to Sasso, 24 September 1785: ‘éccole in prestito perciò venti zechini.’ 21 See Michela Orso, ‘Giovanni Maria Sasso: mercante, collezionista e scrittore d’arte della fine del Settecento a Venezia’, in Atti dell’Istituto veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti, 144 (Venice, 1985–6), 42. 22 Epistolario Moschini: ‘John Strange’, letter 18, Strange to Sasso, 19 June 1785: ‘per dare un’idea del libro; poco conosciuto fuori’; see also Orso, ‘Giovanni Maria Sasso’, 44–5. 23 An unpublished transcription by Emmanuele Antonio Cicogna of Sasso’s notes on Zanetti survives in Venice, Biblioteca del Museo Correr, MS Cicogna 3042/40: Annotazioni scritte da Giammaria Sasso nel margine del suo Zanetti ‘Della pittura veneziana’ dell’edizione 1771. 24 Epistolario Moschini: ‘Giovanni Battista Nalesso’, letter 123, Nalesso to Sasso and letter 4, Nalesso to Sasso, 17 September 1788.

 Shaping the Taste of British Diplomats in Venice 135 25 NGA 8/1/47, Hume to Sasso, 12 October 1789: ‘Ridolfi su la scuola veneziana è un libro assai difficile a trovar in Londra. Se potrebbe comprarme un esempio a Venezia inviatelomi’; and NGA 8/1/48, Sasso to Hume, 30 October 1789: ‘Il Ridolfi è molto più caro a Venezia che oltre i monti poiche sono stati esportati fuori tutti li esemplari e qui fu pagato Ridolfi da un forestiero sino dodeci zecchini, prezzo teribile- ad ogni modo l’anno passato l’ho trovato per Mr Hoare per tre zechini, ma ora io sono dietro a stampare la Storia pittorica veneta che tutti la brama stampata cosi; servirà come il Ridolfi e qualche cosa più poiche lascio fuori tutte le secature poetiche di quest’huomo e vi sarà molte cose più interessanti a l’arte.’ 26 See Borean, Lettere artistiche, 10. 27 Orso, ‘Giovanni Maria Sasso’, 52. 28 For example, Allegretto Allegretti, Marin Sanudo, Scipione Maffei, Giorgio Vasari, Carlo Ridolfi, Marco Boschini and Antonio Maria Zanetti. 29 In the copy held in the Warburg Institute Library (classmark: CNH 2025), there is a page in Sasso’s handwriting stating that the book was given to him by Pietro Cornaro in 1779. 30 For Sasso’s use of Verci’s text, see Callegari, Scritti sull’arte, 304. 31 Sasso stopped working on the manuscript on 12 May 1802. 32 Sasso’s treatise belongs to a tradition of illustrated Venetian writings on art, including Valentin Lebfevre’s Opera selectiora (1682), Carla Catterina Patina’s Pitture scelte e dichiarate (1691), Domenico Lovisa’s Il gran teatro delle pitture e prospettive di Venezia (1720), Corner’s Notizie storiche (1758) and Zanetti’s Varie pitture (1760). Sasso’s prints are held in the Biblioteca del Museo Correr, Venice; see Evelina Borea, ‘Per la fortuna dei primitivi: La Istoria pratica di Stefano Mulinari e la Venezia pittrice di Gian Maria Sasso’, in Hommage à Michel Laclotte. Études sur la peinture de Moyen Age et de la Renaissance (Milan: Electa, 1994), 503–21, and Christopher Lloyd, Art and Its Images: An Exhibition of Printed Books Containing Engraved Illustrations after Italian Painting (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 1975), 75–6. 33 Callegari, Scritti sull’arte, 305. 34 Ibid., 307. 35 Ibid., 309. 36 Sasso disagreed with Ridolfi; see Ibid., 308: ‘Bisogna perdonar se tanto lodava questo Jacobello per tale pittura.’ 37 Ibid., 310: ‘The paintings by both Bellini and Carpaccio in the Scuola were of St Jerome.’ 38 Ibid. This work is now lost; see John Steer, Alvise Vivarini: His Art and Influence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 174–5. 39 For example, the collections of Lodovico Maffei, Filippo Ercolani and Girolamo Manfrin. 40 Giovanni de Lazzara copied the manuscript in 1801. In 1807, Lazzara recommended to Gianantonio Moschini that he use Sasso’s manuscript, which was now in the possession of Giacomo della Lena, for his Guida per l’isola di Murano. In an undated but presumably later note, Lazzara wrote that Daniele Francesconi owned Sasso’s prints for Venezia Pittrice. Fortunato Federici, deputy librarian in Padua and biographer of Francesconi, also mentioned that Francesconi had bought Sasso’s manuscript and prints in Venice for publication alongside his Padova pittrice; see Campori, ed., Lettere artistiche, 344; Epistolario Moschini, ‘Giovanni de Lazzara’,

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letters 1 and 16 May 1807 and 57; and Fortunato Federici, Notizie intorno la vita e gli studi dell’abate Daniele Francesconi (Venice: Luigi Plet, 1836), 29–30. 41 Dorigato, ‘Storie di collezionisti a Venezia’, 127. The Christie’s sale of Strange’s collection of 256 objects (42 paintings and 16 drawings) took place on 15 February 1856; see Frits Lugt, Répertoire des catalogues de ventes publiques, 4 vols (Hague 1938–87), vol. 2, no. 22828. 42 For example, Carlo Lodoli, Jacopo Facciolati, Daniele Farsetti and Francesco Algarotti; see Callegari, Scritti sull’arte, 291 and Francis Haskell, ‘Francesco Algarotti’, in Patrons and Painters: A Study in the Relations Between Italian Art and Society in the Age of the Baroque (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1980), 347–60. 43 Andrea Memmo, Elementi di architettura lodoliana, ossia l’arte del fabbricare con solidità scientifica e con eleganza non capricciosa (Rome: Pagliarini 1786); on Lodoli’s life, see Haskell, Patrons and Painters, 300–21, and Sullivan Kaufman, Francesco Algarotti: The Elegant Arbiter of Enlightenment Architecture, 2 vols (London: Kaufmann, 1998), vol. 1, 161–5 (‘The Life of Carlo Lodoli [1690–1761]’). 44 Giovanni Previtali, La fortuna dei primitivi dal Vasari ai neoclasici (Turin: Einaudi, 1964), 220–1. 45 Ibid., 221. 46 Haskell, Patrons and Painters, 379. 47 For an inventory of Manfrin’s collection, see Francesco Zanotto, Nuovissima guida di Venezia e delle isole della sua laguna (Venice: G. Brizeghel 1856), 340–7.

8

Establishing honest trading relationships Academic painters in the art market of eighteenth-century France Christine Godfroy-Gallardo

Despite the presence of prominent art dealers in the French capital during the long reign of Louis XV, collectors did not always require the services of these specialists for major acquisitions. They also turned to other intermediaries, particularly painters, who were best able to fulfil their requirements. These distinguished artists frequented the same circles of amateurs as their wealthy clients and developed a wide network of correspondents, both in France and abroad. In this select group of collectors sharing the same taste in art, exchanges, bequests, gifts or paintings sales contributed to an extensive circulation of artworks among the members. Paintings switched rapidly from one collection to another without always involving monetary compensation. The three cases examined further highlight the major role of artists as intermediaries in the purchase and sale of outstanding paintings, for both monarchs and private individuals. These artists acted as agents for renowned collectors, searching for artworks or putting clients in contact with sellers. Renowned for their expertise, they were invited to evaluate paintings before any purchases took place, but they were also intimately linked to the trade as they did not hesitate to personally sell pictures to rich purchasers. The first painter of the king, the recently ennobled Hyacinthe Rigaud, Guillaume Martin, an artist without great talent, and the engraver J. G. Wille were all honoured by the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, while engaging in the art trade. This institution, however, forbade all its members from selling pictures under the threat of exclusion. Painting was considered as a noble art but should not be used for private gain. Despite commercial practices and a good knowledge of market prices, these artists refused to be considered as dealers involved in a degrading occupation. As trade was seen during the entire Ancien Régime as an act of ‘dérogeance’ for noblemen, Rigaud, Martin and Wille wished above all to maintain their reputation of ‘gentlemen’ and developed the skill of selling without looking as though they were doing so. The sophisticated relationships they enjoyed with their clients, showing off excellent

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manners and using an appropriate vocabulary of civility, prevented them from being associated with abhorred commercial activities.

Skills and sociability: The multiple roles of Louis XV’s first painter The statutes given by Louis XIV to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture prohibited Academicians from engaging in commercial activity, either directly or indirectly. A clause added to the academic requirements specified that ‘any member of the academic body, at the risk of being excluded, should refrain from owning a shop, displaying their works inside, showing them at the windows of their house, applying inscription concerning sales, and finally from allowing nothing to confuse two things so different as a mercenary profession and academic status’.1 Artists were encouraged to give up commercial practices in order to clearly distinguish their status from that of the painters-dealers attached to the French ‘maîtrise’ or the craft guild known as the Académie de Saint-Luc. Running a shop drew a social distinction between academic painters and those belonging to the maîtrise.2 However, this clearly defined separation between Academicians and dealers who sold paintings was used purely for convenience. As for the case of the dealings by Hyacinthe Rigaud (1659–1743) with the Elector of Saxony, the future king of Poland, Augustus III (1696–1763), the relative roles of artist, connoisseur, agent and dealer frequently overlapped or were carried out in parallel. First as rector and later Director of the Academy, Rigaud often gave expert opinions on paintings. Antoine-Joseph Dezallier d’Argenville recorded Rigaud’s talents as an artistic advisor as follows: When a sovereign had the intention to collect pictures, Rigaud was preferred; his great knowledge of schools and different masters’ characteristics and famous probity justified the choice of this man.3

Rigaud did not limit his activities to the evaluation of paintings for distinguished collectors. He was also active in commercial transactions, particularly at the very end of his life. One year before his death, Rigaud agreed to act as an intermediary for the king of Poland, when the monarch sought to acquire master paintings in Paris to develop his collection. In April 1742, Heinrich, Count von Brühl, prime minister of Augustus III, contacted Samuel de Brais, the secretary at the Saxon embassy in Paris, to entrust him with the task of purchasing works of art on behalf of the Royal Gallery in Dresden.4 In addition to these investigations, Samuel de Brais also commissioned Rigaud to find some good deals for him. The painter had been personally acquainted with the official members of the Polish legation in Paris, since the visit of the Prince Elector of Saxony, Friedrich August, to the French capital in 1715. Rigaud’s reputation as a portrait painter (Figure 8.1) made him a sought-after artist, in particular by all the crowned heads of Europe when they visited Paris. The portrait commissions Rigaud

 Establishing Honest Trading Relationships 139

Figure 8.1  Hyacinthe Rigaud, Louis XIV King of France standing in royal costume, 1701. Oil on canvas, 277 × 194 cm. Musée du Louvre. ©Réunion des musées nationaux, Paris. undertook enabled him to establish good relations with renowned French and foreign collectors. After having painted portraits of the prince of Saxony and Karl Heinrich, Count von Hoym, before he was appointed ambassador of Saxony to France, Rigaud continued to maintain close contact with the Saxon court until the end of his life. The catalogue of the Dresden Gallery compiled by Julius Hübner specifies Rigaud’s different activities on behalf of Augustus III. Among all the paintings bought in Paris in 1742 and 1743, some were acquired either by de Brais with Rigaud or by Rigaud alone, and, finally, by Rigaud, but from his personal collection. Looking for great masters’ paintings, Rigaud accompanied de Brais to dealers’ shops; he also informed de Brais of all the works of art most likely to interest him, held in private collections, such as that of the dealer-jeweller Pierre Dubreuil and that of the maréchal de Noailles, or in the old collections of Cardinal de Polignac and the engraver Roger de Piles.5 Auctions of prominent collections of paintings also provided great opportunities to acquire artworks with prestigious provenance for Augustus III. At the Parisian sale of the collection of Victor-Amédée de Savoie, Prince de Carignan, in 1742, Rigaud made two lists of about twelve paintings to be purchased by the monarch. An Etat des tableaux choisis par M. Rigaud pour sa majesté le roy, preserved in the

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General Directorate Archives of the Dresden Royal Collections, included specimens of Maratta, Trevisani, Van Ostade and Wouwermans.6 The pictures chosen by Rigaud were subsequently acquired before the auctions began directly by the dealer responsible for the sale, Noël Araignon, who secured a pre-emptive right to the Carignan collection by contract: he bought a Susannah Bathing by Veronese for 4,500 livres and two paintings by Francesco Barbieri for the sum of 4,000 livres.7 During the transaction, the name of Théodore Le Leu, agent for the king of Poland, was added to that of Rigaud. Le Leu was acting as the middleman and probably also as consignor for paintings to be sent to Dresden, after the death of Samuel de Brais in November 1742.8 Augustus III was not the only monarch to request Rigaud to choose the most beautiful pictures from the Prince de Carignan’s collection. At the same sale, the king of France also asked the painter to select pictures among ‘the best and the rarest’9 in the gallery for the Crown. Priority being given to Louis XV, purchases for Augustus III took second place.10 Thirteen Italian and nineteen Flemish, Dutch and seventeenthcentury French pictures were bought in 1742 by the same dealer, Araignon, for the French monarch. The list of the paintings purchased on this occasion can be found in the inventory made by Ferdinand Engerand under the title ‘Etat des tableaux de la collection du Prince de Carignan achetés pour le roi très-chrétien par Noël Araignon, écuyer, valet de S.M. la Reine’. The total amount of 182,000 livres was ultimately reduced to 150,000 livres, after a discount of 32,000 livres was granted.11 In addition to his assistance in giving expert advices, Rigaud also acted as a picture dealer. He alerted de Brais that he had been offered a magnificent picture by Sebastien Bourdon. The Academician said he was ready to purchase the painting personally and to sell it to him: I must confess that I am enchanted by the work and it is one of the most beautiful paintings this great master has ever done, worthy to be kept in the King of Poland’s gallery. I asked the person who has it to come and tell me about the price he can offer.12

As a further option, Rigaud resolved to sell masterpieces from his own collection to satisfy the king of Poland’s expectations. In addition to the pictures purchased at public auctions, de Brais bought a portrait of an old man by Rembrandt directly from Rigaud for 1,500 livres, as well as a Veronese representing Lot and his daughters for 900 livres.13 These pictures belonged to Rigaud himself, who had a great collection of about 150 paintings, which he kept in a special room in his Parisian hotel located in rue Louis-le-Grand. In gratitude for his work, some noble presents were given to Rigaud, and the artist was rewarded with prestigious gifts from the greatest princes in Europe. Two bronze groups attributed to Foggini: The Flaying of Marsyas (Plate 9) and Mercury binding Prometheus were offered to him by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo III de Medici, in appreciation for Rigaud sending a replica of his Self-portrait with palette, after the first version of the painting was destroyed in a storm.14 Apparently greedy for gain, the painter knew how to defend his private financial interests, in particular when he felt

 Establishing Honest Trading Relationships 141 aggrieved. Thus, when Rigaud was paid too little for the portrait of the future Augustus III, in comparison with portraits executed on other occasions for foreign princes, he had no hesitation in asking the monarch directly for ‘a mark of distinction’. The prince’s father, Augustus II, granted his request, since he sent him a gold medal struck with his motto in 1726.15 One of the paintings listed in the 1742 auction catalogue of the Carignan collection, A River by Rubens, can be traced to Rigaud’s posthumous inventory. Did the painter purchase the Rubens to complete his own collection, or, more probably, did he hope to be rewarded for his services by one of the monarchs in connection with this prestigious painting? It seems that such practices were common, since de Brais, in a letter to Count von Brühl, explained that at the time of the sale, a portrait of a young girl by Rembrandt was given to him ‘into the bargain’.16

Guillaume Martin, painter, dealer and Academician If they were tolerated until the middle of the eighteenth century, offences against the Academy’s statutes were condemned more strictly by the new Director of the royal institution, Jean-Baptiste-Marie Pierre. Although the painter Jacques-Philippe Caresme had his name taken off the academic registers in 1778 for having been involved with his student in a very mysterious ‘pecuniary transaction’,17 threats of exclusion turned out to be difficult to implement in practice, as is illustrated by the case of the painter Guillaume Martin. ‘Agréé’ by the Academy in July 1771, he took risks by selling not only his own paintings but also those of his colleagues. In December 1773, February 1776 and May 1778, Martin organized public auctions alone or together with other famous Parisian dealers. Considering such practices intolerable, in September 1780 Pierre condemned this activity, which he argued was prohibited by the article 34 of the Academic Statutes of 15 March 1777.18 Martin was charged with ‘the tremendous crime of having bought paintings on one occasion and then having sold them at another opportunity’.19 The first painter of the king demanded his exclusion from the Academy. A survey was conducted among the most renowned dealers to know whether in reality Guillaume Martin had close trade relations with them. Read aloud in front of the Academy, the dealers’ answers indicated that it was true they did business, but not with him. Some letters, whose authors’ names were kept hidden, mentioned, however, that many Academicians, and even great lords, regularly bought paintings in order to sell them for profit. In a letter addressed to the authorities of this institution, Martin did not deny the charges against him, but he defended the legitimacy of his action by insisting on his discretion: I have no display, no boutique, no shop; my paintings are kept in the studio where I work; I have no printed address; my cabinet of paintings is not open to anybody as is the case for a dealer’s shop or boutique; I have never done any assessment,

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any price estimate; written any catalogue, held any sale for particular persons. I therefore, Sir, dare to expressly deny the right to be considered as a paintings’ dealer.20

Martin strongly defended his interests because the allegation could have had very serious consequences. A definitive exclusion could be pronounced if evidence confirming the suspicion of commercial practices was found. The slightest misconduct would be considered sufficiently serious to justify his expulsion from the Royal Academy. The painter had to prove, above all else, that he could not in any way be regarded as a dealer, defined by Savary des Bruslons in his Dictionary as a person ‘who buys, barters or produces goods, either to sell them in shops and stores, or to bring them to fairs and markets’.21 Aware of the potential risks involved, Martin pointed out the fact that he did not own a boutique. He knew that, for this prestigious institution, to run a shop overstepped the boundary outlined in the academic statutes. Although Martin had no shop open to the street, he acted like a true dealer. He published two commercial notices in the Almanach historique of 1776: one under the heading ‘painters, sculptors and engravers agréés at the Royal Academy of Painting’ which described him as a ‘history painter, rue du cimetière Saint André’,22 and another, a few pages further on, where he was called ‘art dealer on Cimetière Saint André des Arcs’.23 A complaint about a fraud filed against him in 1787 before the Châtelet Court explained how Martin was able to sell a large quantity of paintings without sounding like a dealer. The court document specified that ‘the sieur Martin furnished his apartment with many pictures looking as beautiful as expensive; a lot of people came often to see the paintings to buy them or out of mere curiosity, and among these persons, there was the late Prince de Conti to whom the sieur Martin has sold and bought many pictures’.24 Martin worked ‘en chambre haute’ (in an upper room), in his own apartment, a fairly common practice in the Parisian business community,25 which enabled him to see potential clients, sometimes noblemen, without drawing attention to his commercial activities. In the same document, Martin was presented as a painter, member of the Académie de Saint-Luc. He was indeed made a member of this institution in 1763, before being ‘agréé’ to the Royal Academy eight years later.26 Martin was so anxious to hide a status considered incompatible with trade that, to conceal his identity, the text never specified his first name. Anxious to sweep under the carpet an issue that might involve other members of the Academy, J. B. M. Pierre abandoned the prosecution. Martin’s justifications were considered sufficient to show his innocence. All the dealer’s letters indicated that he did not trade with them. Having no good evidence to determine whether or not one of their members did business with dealers, the Academy could not give final judgement in the matter. The only sanction imposed on Martin was that in the future he had to avoid doing anything that could give rise to such rumours. Indeed, he would not be excluded from the Academy and would continue dealer’s activities until his death. However, in reprisal, Martin would never be elevated to the status of Academician. Treated with hostility by the director of the Academy, Martin was defended by an unexpected ally: the secretary of the Academy, Charles-Nicolas Cochin (1715–90).

 Establishing Honest Trading Relationships 143 According to him, artists could trade paintings without shame, provided that they respected certain rules of decorum: ‘We never considered it as a sin’, Cochin protested. ‘M. Aved27 also traded and earned money, and although his colleagues displayed some jealousy towards him, the Academy never quarrels with him about this subject. Indeed, in my opinion, it is not trade that is shameful but the way business is done: however, Martin conducts his business decently’.28

A few years later when seeking admission to the Royal Academy, the painter Elisabeth Louise Vigée-Lebrun (1755–1842) had to endure some sharp criticism concerning the profession of her husband, the picture dealer Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Lebrun (1748– 1813). In her Memoirs, she recalled that her candidacy was strongly opposed by the director of the Academy, J. B. M. Pierre. Although there were already a few women in the institution, she was refused admission to the Royal Academy due to her husband’s business.29 Whereas Queen Marie-Antoinette clearly expressed her wish that her favourite painter enter the Royal Academy, the Count d’Angiviller, demonstrated the impossibility of members accepting an artist ‘who is very talented indeed, but whose marriage with a dealer renders her ineligible’. As d’Angiviller pointed out in a report addressed to the king, the constitution prohibited its members from dealing in paintings. Obviously, Mme Vigée-Lebrun was not involved in trade, but, in France, a woman had no other standing than that of her husband.30 To gain admission for her into the Academy, Pierre suggested that Lebrun buy an ennobling charge which could offer him a title other than that of a dealer, but apparently the project was not successful.31 At the queen’s insistence, d’Angiviller had to find an ingenious compromise more likely to satisfy both the royal request and the Academicians’ intransigence. To prevent an infraction of the law, an exemption was granted to Madame Lebrun. Compelled to make one exception in her favour, the members had no choice but to accept Vigée-Lebrun’s admission to the Academy (Plate 10). The minutes of the session made mention of their reluctance to submit to this obligation, since the writer was careful to note that the artist had been admitted ‘by order’.32 At the same time, it was agreed that the number of women appointed to the Academy should not exceed four.33

Establishing relations of honest dealing Academic painters could be forgiven for practising a form of manual labour only if they did not take part in commerce. Louis XIV’s support for the creation of the Royal Academy gave artists a higher status than that of simple craftsmen. According to the official records of Parliament dated 7 June 1752, Academicians were regarded as ‘noble men’, whereas master painters of the Académie de Saint-Luc were simply presented as ‘honourable men’. Academic painters became an elite that the king himself honoured, even if very few artists, such as Hyacinthe Rigaud or Charles Le Brun, were actually

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ennobled. In accordance with the aristocratic contempt for trade, commercial activities were seen as a ‘déchéance’, resulting in a loss of noble status, as the lawyer Florentin Thierriat expressed as early as 1606: ‘Bargaining, which has the sole purpose of financial gain and consists in buying in order to sell at a higher price is vile and dishonest, and, as such, forbidden for noblemen or men of dignity.’34 Le Grand Vocabulaire françois, printed in 1770, lists the following activities as dishonourable: ‘Gentlemen lose their nobility by doing acts of derogation, that is by trading, practising the mechanical arts, carrying out vile and despicable activities . . .’35 Until the end of the eighteenth century, relationships between members of the aristocracy, supposed to be entirely devoted to military service, and traders, who were seen as a source of wealth for the country, led to the publication of treatises on the concept of dérogeance. Lawyers debated among themselves as to whether the derogation entailed a simple suspension of the privileges of the nobility, the gentleman resuming his rank as soon as he ceased his reprehensible activities, or, on the contrary, if it caused a definitive exclusion. Even if wholesale and maritime trade were tolerated for nobles, retail trade, which was considered as a mode of transaction used to generate maximum profits, was still perceived as an undignified occupation. Taking a personal profit from a transaction was reputed to be a degrading act.36 The lucrative occupations that generate profit were reserved only for commoners. Endowed with prerogatives and privileges due to their courage in battle, their loyalty to serve the kingdom and their disinterest for money, the nobility must live only on the rents provided by their land estates. Images assimilated to retail trade as the sign in front of the door, the handling of goods and, especially, bargaining with customers were considered particularly incompatible with the condition of a gentleman.37 But it was not only the academic painters who had to trade very discreetly. Amateurs, particularly those admitted to the Royal Academy, also feared being considered as professional dealers.

J. G. Wille and the importance of personal relationship exchanges Amateurs, who acted as intermediaries for buying paintings or engravings, had always been willing to distinguish themselves from dealers. Living in Paris, the German engraver J. G. Wille (1715–1808) maintained contacts by correspondence with artists and amateurs all over Europe. Through his network of amateurs abroad, he was able to disseminate his own engravings and to acquire drawings, paintings or prints to complete his collection (Figure 8.2). Wille asked his intermediaries to send him prints he intended to engrave or to resell in Paris. He was willing to use his personal relationships to promote foreign artists among Parisian amateurs and possibly to find them some future purchasers. Despite activities that might seem similar to those of a dealer, Wille never considered himself as a trader. In a letter addressed to the engraver J. F. Clemens from Copenhagen, he wrote: ‘not being a dealer, I gave M. Basan the five prints (you sent to me).’38 He also informed one of his correspondents in Leipzig ‘that nobody looks for paintings in my house, not being known for dealing in pictures’.39 His activities were more similar to an exchange of good services than a successful business.

 Establishing Honest Trading Relationships 145

Figure 8.2 Frontispiece, Catalogue des bronzes et autres curiosités égyptiennes, étrusques, indiennes et chinoises, du cabinet de feu M. Morand, 1773, Paris. Collections Jacques Doucet. ©Bibliothèque de l’Institut national d’histoire de l’art. The favours he did for his correspondents were not always followed by financial compensation, but they had to give rise to gifts and donations. Wille recorded in his diary on 18 July 1770: I had a little Wouwermans for two paintings by Dietrich with little compensation; but on the same day I gave this painting to M. de Livry and I obliged him. That very day, M. de Livry offered the gift of L’Esprit de la ligue in three volumes written by M. Anquetil.40

When Wille agreed to cede a picture or to act as an intermediary in transactions, it was first and foremost to ‘oblige’ his correspondent. He said in his diary that he sold ‘as a favour’ two paintings by Dietrich for 960 livres. Wille and his contacts did honest business in which exchange of goods remained the only economic system that could be tolerated for an honest man. As he recorded in his diary: Answered M. Nilson, engraver in Augsbourg. He wished, in his letter, that I assume responsibility for the commission of sending the engravings for M. Schweiger, a print dealer in Bareith; but as M. Basan has taken charge of his commissions for

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many years and as I was for M. Basan the translator of the dealer’s letters, I politely declined M. Nilson’s request. It is not enough to have talent, it is also important to be an honest man and not to betray the trust of a friend who shares business secrets with you.41

Exchanging prints was also a process used by the engraver P. J. Mariette (1694–1774), particularly in the case of duplication. He explained to one of his correspondents: I received a letter for you, from M. Heinecken, that I have the honour to give you and I send back at the same time two drawings of animals by Roos you left in my hands last year, thinking I’ll be satisfied in exchange for some duplicate etchings I own and might please you.42

Belonging to a family of dealers, Mariette, a friend of the painter Rigaud, knew how to add free offers to financial imperatives. To Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich, painter to the Saxon court, he readily gave prints from his portfolios, in particular landscapes by great masters: ‘having imagined you will not be displeased to possess them’ wrote Mariette, ‘I add some more prints in the parcel, but I don’t mind at all obliging you, being a gift I beg you to accept’.43 Supplying etchings or engravings sometimes led to financial remuneration. In the same letter, Mariette accepted payment for having sent Rembrandt’s prints, provided that Dietrich himself valued the prints and gave back some of his own drawings in return. If the painter assigned his own works a greater value than the prints Mariette sent him, the latter agreed to give him cash. Being a fine connoisseur, Mariette managed to be admitted to the Royal Academy as an ‘associé-libre’ in 1750. However, this was after he had decided to give up the print trade and to sell his bookstore. These practices among art lovers, sometimes living far apart, correspond to distinctions the ethnologist Alain Testart makes in archaic societies between barter, market exchanges and non-market exchanges. In this case, sending pictures or prints to amateurs may be related to non-market exchanges, since it was above all ‘the relation between men that makes it possible to exchange objects’.44 Personal relationships between individuals played a key role in non-market exchanges. This type of exchange cannot be dissociated from the friendship established between the two parties. It could not occur if they did not have pre-existing links. In market exchanges, people may know each other or may even have friendly relationships, but the completion of the exchange depends only on ‘the terms of exchange (price, finding a potential buyer, etc.)’, that is ‘on the proposed consideration’.45 Exchanges of goods may happen without a lasting bond between the two protagonists. As soon as each player gives what he is obliged to supply, this relationship can stop. Contrary to the exchange market where the buyer can always decline a purchase, particularly because of the price or the state of the object, in the non-market exchange, the person who initiates the exchange is obliged to accept goods supplied in return: We can’t refuse gifts coming from a friend, especially a prestigious piece one would be very happy to have: ‘this sounds like a great insult’, explains Alain Testart. ‘This

 Establishing Honest Trading Relationships 147 obligation to receive is an obligation to enter into the process of exchange, that implies not only the receipt of the goods presently given, but also the commitment to provide adequate compensation afterwards’.46

By erasing the commercial aspects of exchanges, players behave as though it was just about giving gifts to friends. No allusion is made to the return of the goods to the owner, to deadlines or to the pecuniary value of objects. Contrary to the market exchange, where legal action is still possible if one participant or the other feels that they have been cheated, non-market exchange involves no legal sanction. In case of disappointment with the value of works, partners simply decide to end their relationship and to engage in no further exchanges. The successive acts of exchange which appear to have no direct link between them seem to suggest that there is no obligation to give something back. Words employed by the various stakeholders confirm their desire to consider these exchanges as simple gifts. Using the words ‘to oblige’ indicates no compulsion, because this usually means ‘to do favours, to please, to provide a good service’.47 In the eighteenth century, the word ‘exchange’ was used much less than ‘barter’. The former word is associated with nobility, whereas the second has a very low connotation. Bartering or ‘exchanging furniture’ represented not only a common commercial practice among traders, but also among the eighteenth-century ‘curieux’. According to Abbot Trublet, ‘the curieux enjoy bartering’.48 They traded ‘jewels and paintings by barter rather than with money’. ‘Gentleman’s barter’ means dealing ‘but à but’ or ‘barter for barter’, ‘without giving money in return’.49 By not receiving any sum of money directly from the buyer, paintings and prints amateurs avoid being considered as vulgar dealers.

Conclusion Artists related to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture acted as respected agents not only for amateurs of paintings or engravings, but also for foreign monarchs who wished to complete their collections with purchases in Paris. Thus, the first painter of the king of France, Hyacinthe Rigaud, took the role of an intermediary in transactions, relying on his individual network of correspondents to find masterpieces. These agents, whose reputation was well established, maintained close relations with the main Parisian dealers and the emissaries of the major European courts. They also knew how to use their knowledge and expertise to justify the choice of acquisitions and assist buyers in their decisions. Finally, these artists did not hesitate to sell works themselves directly to wealthy buyers, without ever claiming for themselves the status of a dealer. While the Academy formally prohibited its members from engaging in trade, they used sales techniques such as barter or exchange to avoid any confusion with commercial practices reserved for commoners. The recognition of painting as a liberal art favoured the privileged status granted to academic painters. All must avoid any interference with manual practices and financial profits considered incompatible with the nobility of their profession. Before the outbreak of the French Revolution, Academicians were less and less inclined to get involved in commercial activities deemed unworthy of royal artists.

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Called as experts in legal proceedings, they even refused to evaluate paintings, arguing that market prices were the exclusive competence of dealers. Thus, academic painters left the field open to the emergence of the expert-dealer, who, against all odds, managed to acquire in turn the honorific title of ‘connoisseur’.

Notes 1 Louis Vitet, L’Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture: étude historique (Paris: Michel Lévy frères, 1861), 77–8. 2 See Antoine Schnapper, Le Métier de peintre au grand siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 2004). 3 Ariane James-Sarazin, ‘Hyacinthe Rigaud (1659–1743), portraitiste et conseiller artistique des princes Electeurs de Saxe et rois de Pologne, Auguste II et Auguste III’, in Dresde ou le rêve des princes, exh. cat., musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon (Paris: RMN, 2001), 138. 4 Letter from Count von Brühl to Samuel de Brais, 8 April 1742. In the same letter, Brühl asked de Brais to buy masterpieces to complete his own famous collection of paintings. Virginie Spenlé, ‘Les Achats de peintures d’Auguste III sur le marché de l’art parisien’, in Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire de l’Art français (2003): 93–134. 5 Rigaud had developed personal relationships with the Maréchal de Noailles and the Cardinal de Polignac, having once painted their portraits. The Academician had presumably a good knowledge of their collections of paintings. 6 Stephan Perreau, Hyacinthe Rigaud (Sète: Nouvelles Presses du Languedoc, 2013). 7 Rudolf Juninus Benno Hübner, Catalogue de la Galerie royale de Dresde (Dresden: E. Blochmann, 1856). 8 Alexandre Gueidon, Le Plutarque Provençal. Vie des hommes et des femmes illustres de la Provence, ancienne et moderne (Marseille, 1862), vol. 1, 57. 9 François-Bernard Lépicié, Catalogue raisonné des tableaux du Roi (Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1752), viii. 10 Virginie Spenlé, ‘Karl Heinrich von Hoym ambassadeur de Saxe à Paris et amateur d’art’, in Dresde ou le rêve des princes, 146. 11 Ferdinand Engerand, Inventaire des tableaux commandés et achetés par la direction des bâtiments du roi (1709–1792) (Paris: 1901), 539. 12 Letter from Rigaud to de Brais, 3 July 1742. Cited in James-Sarazin, 2001, 139. 13 Nowadays the Veronese is attributed to Alessandro Turchi (Dresden: Staatliche Kunstammlungen, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister). 14 The two bronzes are in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, A.2-1967 and A.3-1967. 15 Letter of 4 March 1726, from Hoym to the Baron Gautier, secretary in the king of Poland’s cabinet, in Vies de Charles-Henry, comte de Hoym: ambassadeur de SaxePologne en France et célèbre amateur de livres 1694–1736, ed. Jérôme Pichon (Paris: Techener, 1880), vol. 1, 277. 16 Spenlé, ‘Karl Heinrich von Hoym’, 146. 17 Michael Bryan, Dictionary of Painters and Engravers, Biographical and Critical (London: G. Bell and sons, 1886), 232. 18 The measure that prohibited any Academician from opening a shop to display his works and exhibit them in the window was not included in the Academy’s statutes

 Establishing Honest Trading Relationships 149 until March 1777. Previously, only a simple deliberation taken by the Academy shortly after its creation forbade Academicians to engage in trade. 19 Letter dated 3 December 1780. Quoted by Adolphe Decorde, ‘Quelques lettres inédites de Cochin’, Revue de la Normandie. Littérature, sciences, beaux-arts 10 (1870): 121. 20 Letter from Guillaume Martin to the Academy’s members cited in ‘Plainte en escroquerie de Coutant contre Martin marchand de tableaux (1787)’, followed by ‘Addition de Coutant contre Martin’, Nouvelles Archives de l’art français (1873): 462. 21 Jacques Savary des Bruslons, Dictionnaire universel de commerce, vol. 3 (Paris: Vve Estienne, 1741), 275. 22 Guillaume Martin was indeed ‘agréé’ at the Academy as a history painter on 27 July 1771. 23 Almanach historique et raisonné des architectes, peintres, sculpteurs, graveurs et ciseleurs (Paris, 1776). 24 Nouvelles Archives de l’Art français, 415. 25 Natacha Coquery, Tenir boutique à Paris au XVIIIème siècle. Luxe et demi-luxe (Paris: Editions du comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques, 2011), 52. 26 Jules-Joseph Guiffrey, Histoire de l’Académie de Saint-Luc (Paris: E. Champion, 1915), 384. 27 The portraitist Jacques-Joseph Aved was elected member to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1734. 28 Revue de la Normandie (1870): 85. 29 Mémoires secrets pour servir à l’histoire de la République des lettres en France, depuis MDCCLXII jusqu’à nos jours (London: John Adamson, 1784), 103. 30 ‘Mémoire présenté au Roy par M. le Comte d’Angiviller le 14 May 1783’, in Procèsverbaux de l’Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture (1648-1793), ed. Anatole de Montaiglon, vol. 9 (Paris: Charavay frères, 1889), 156. 31 Archives nationales, Paris: AP 3923, f°212, note from J. B. M. Pierre to d’Angiviller, around 16 May 1783. Quoted in Nicolas Lesur and Olivier Aaron, Jean-BaptisteMarie Pierre 1714–1789, premier peintre du roi (Paris: Arthéna, 2009), 174. 32 Montaiglon, Procès-verbaux de l’Académie 9,152. 33 Ibid., 153. 34 Florentin Thierriat, Trois traictez, scavoir 1) de la noblesse de race, 2) de la noblesse civile, 3) des immunitez des ignobles (Paris: Lucas Bruneau, 1606). 35 Le grand vocabulaire françois, vol. 12 (Paris: C. Panckouke, 1770), 98. 36 Mathieu Marraud, ‘Dérogeance et commerce. Violence des constructions sociopolitiques sous l’Ancien Régime’, Genèses 95 (2014/2): 2–26. 37 Henry Lévy-Brühl, ‘La noblesse de France et le commerce à la fin de l’Ancien Régime’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 8–8 (1933): 209–36. 38 Christian Michel, ‘Les stratégies économiques et sociales de Wille’, in Johann Georg Wille (1715–1808) et son milieu. Un réseau européen de l’art au XVIIIème siècle (Paris: École du Louvre, 2009), 81. 39 Patrick Michel, ‘Johann Georg Wille: collectionneur désintéressé ou agent d’art’, ibid., 141. 40 Mémoires et journal de J.G. Wille, graveur du roi, ed. George Duplessis, vol. 1 (Paris: Vve Jules Renouard, 1857), vol. 3, 447–8. 41 Ibid., 565. 42 Letter addressed to M. Jenincks, dated 6 March 1772, in Philippe de Chennevières & Anatole de Montaiglon, eds, Abécédario de P.J. Mariette et autres notes inédites de cet amateur sur les arts et les artistes, vol. 3 (Paris: Dumoulin, 1854–6), 6.

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43 Letter dated 17 March 1761. Duplessis, Mémoires et journal de J.G. Wille, vol. 1, 160. 44 Alain Testart, ‘Echange marchand, échange non marchand’, in Revue française de sociologie 42, no. 4: 719–48. Available online http:// www​.p​​ersee​​.fr​/d​​oc​/rf​​soc​_0​​035​ -2​​969​_2​​001​_n​​um​_42​​_4​_53​​95. See also Pierre François, Sociologie des marchands (Paris: Armand Colin, 2008), 726–7. 45 Ibid., 727. 46 Testart, ‘Echange marchand’, 737. 47 Thus, the abbot Morvan de Bellegard emphasized the pleasure gained by doing favours to others when he stated: ‘Isn’t it a rare contentment to serve people by doing good to them?’ Dictionnaire français et latin (Paris: Compagnie des libraires associés, 1752), 19. 48 Jean-Louis Féraud, Dictionnaire critique de la langue française, vol. 2 (Marseille, 1787), 745. 49 Antoine Furetière, Dictionnaire universel contenant généralement tous les mots français tant vieux que modernes et les termes des sciences et des arts, 3rd ed., vol. 3 (Rotterdam: Leers, 1708).

9

The German art market in the eighteenth century Renata Schellenberg

In the eighteenth century, Germany was a composite mix of principalities, each of which governed its territory separately, claiming political and cultural autonomy. The unique conditions of this state structure had an effect on aspects of everyday life, including activities that pertain to the domains of leisure and free time. Lacking an authoritative focal point to centre the intellectual, cultural and social activities occurring among its population, everything was geographically dispersed in Germany, scattered across various courts and nascent urban centres with little apparent overlap and interconnection. There was no real state capital, nor was there a uniform cultural focus on a particular city to act as a model urban epicentre. The pockets of activity that existed operated for the most part independently and were not coordinated with each other, developing an insular idiosyncrasy that reflected the piecemeal incongruity of this Kleinstaaterei structure.1 The impact of this disjointed state structure was felt throughout society, including on the commercial plane and affected national economic interactions and progress, as well as the transactions taking place in the art market. This chapter investigates processes of art exchange in Germany in the long eighteenth century, isolating its recurrent peculiarities and anomalies, while highlighting some features that define this market as unique when compared to other European counterparts. This chapter emphasizes the key role human agency played in shaping the art market in eighteenth-century Germany. In the absence of protocols and clear political stability, it was the concerted effort of individual personalities that ensured the emergence and success of the German art market, providing the vital link between sellers and buyers and creating the necessary circumstances in which such a specialized market could thrive. Through their involvement and expertise, art dealers and art agents navigated the disparate sociocultural landscape of eighteenth-century Germany, creating networks of contact and commerce that facilitated the acquisition and exchange of artefacts among collectors in Germany and abroad. In doing so, they not only created a system of interaction that propagated collecting practices across a wide spectrum of society but also helped to establish the very foundation of a functional and professional art market on a national scale. As this chapter will show, the activities of these individuals

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informed multiple aspects of art sales in Germany in the eighteenth century, providing an indispensable service that facilitated the distribution of artefacts on the market. While their skills can be seen as conflated, making it difficult to fully differentiate the work of the art dealer from that of the art agent, this chapter argues that the intervention of both parties had an impact on the nascent and fragmented art market in Germany, making a strong contribution to its overall history and development. The German art market of the eighteenth century mirrored the larger framework of culturally fragmented principalities from which it originated. It was not centred around established auction houses in a single city, as was the case, for example, in London, where well-known auction houses like Sotheby’s (founded 1744) and Christie’s (founded 1766) managed most of the art trade taking place.2 Instead, the art market in Germany was dispersed across the country, demonstrating an appropriate, if discordant, diversity that interfered with trade. Despite the inconvenience this caused, these inchoate circumstances came with advantages not related to commerce, as they revealed unexpected insights into cultural aspects of German society and everyday life. Because it was dispersed and non-standardized, the German art market of the eighteenth century was a highly individualized market that showed authentic markers of ownership, revealing information concerning the personal provenance of objects. Moreover, because the market was not homogenized to a set state standard, it reflected regional circumstances that underlie both the procurement and sale of artefacts, including the particularities of specific locations and the distinctive tastes of people engaging in the sale. This information left a personalized trace of ownership on objects passing through the market and presented these economic transactions in a more complex way, inviting an interpretation of items that goes beyond commercial estimation alone. These art transactions have been preserved in the form of sales catalogues, and these publications are a resource that unmasks distinct patterns of collecting and acquiring material culture during this time. Because matters of regional taste and custom are such discernible elements in catalogues, these documents become a valuable source of information on prevalent sociocultural trends of German society. Their contents communicate more than simply the commercial aspects of the transactions and serve as a broader ethnographic tool for eighteenth-century Germanophone society, highlighting some nuances of everyday life. Unfortunately, they do not survive in large numbers, and this paucity of material limits basic statistical evidence of the art market. From the sources available, it is known that certain urban localities, such as Hamburg, Frankfurt and Augsburg, flourished and kept careful records, whereas other places were not as diligent with their documentation of art sales. It is also known that there are substantial gaps in the accumulation of data and a deliberate focus on documenting the acquisition of certain types of commodity, the most reliable data coming from the sale of paintings. In 2002 Thomas Ketelsen and Tilmann von Stockhausen assembled an impressive index of paintings sold at auction in Germany prior to 1800 and capped the number of recorded auctions at 298.3 To date this remains the most reliable directory of such catalogues. They based this number of auctions on known archival copies of sales catalogues, pairing the auction with the catalogue and vice versa. To

 The German Art Market in the Eighteenth Century 153 the outside observer 298 may appear to be a small number of auctions (and a small number of documented catalogues), when compared to the robust trade activities of other European countries, where the number of art catalogues can run into the thousands (in Belgium or the Netherlands, for example).4 Art agents and dealers countered the inherent instability of the German art market by mediating its unfavourable circumstances and contributing to the proliferation of art in eighteenth-century German society. On initial inspection, the activities of these figures may appear to overlap a great deal as both parties operated with the explicit intention of selling art, and in both cases there is indeed a patent mercantile aspect to what they do. The manner in which they operated was, however, profoundly separate and should be distinguished accordingly. For their part, agents would organize auctions and oversee the event of selling art, bringing it to a commercial trading space and facilitating public access to these items. In doing so, they operated in a decidedly detached way, focusing attention on the physical conditions concerning the sale, rather than on the cultivation of contacts and/or the appreciation of the aesthetic value of objects. Simply put, they gathered art together for the purpose of commerce, concentrating their efforts on moving art from the private venue to the public space in order to sell it. Art agents cannily used the disparate conditions of the market to their own financial advantage, regarding the entire affair of the art trade as a commercial, rather than a cultural, enterprise and thus benefitting from this activity. Agents were particularly active in the urban centres of German eighteenth-century society, where there was a ready supply of and demand for artefacts and where the exchange of art was an immediate physical reality, a context that did not necessitate extensive lobbying and promotion of items. Art agents were active in trade cities like Hamburg. As Michael North has noted, the Hamburg art market was a vibrant site of commerce in the eighteenth century due to its location that facilitated easy trade.5 It benefitted from its status as a port city and from its vicinity to established art markets, such as the Amsterdam market where substantial international art trade took place. As North explains, the success of the Hamburg art market was also due to liberal auction laws that did not hamper the exchange of goods and encouraged an uncomplicated trade in them. The Hamburg market was also an open venue and most auctions took place in the stock market, the BörsenSaal, a site belonging to the city, rather than to a particular individual. This setting was a recognized public space, a factor that depersonalized the transaction by physically separating the sale of objects from their previous owners. This separation was particularly relevant in the matter of posthumous sales, where all the belongings of the deceased were sold in a public space, rather than in the house of the owner, as it was traditionally done elsewhere. The public nature of these sales invariably included the involvement of several outside parties to organize the sale, and this presence brought an additional degree of professionalism to the transaction, making it a truly commercial event. The success of public sales raised the commercial profile of the art agent, establishing him as a competent and viable entrepreneur on the art scene in the eighteenth century. In Hamburg, there were numerous agents at work and certain names dominate the sales catalogues available, such as Johann Heinrich Naumann, Michael Bostelmann and Peter Texier, to mention only a few.

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When reading these catalogues, it becomes apparent that the involvement of agents frequently eclipsed the significance of the sellers at the art sale. This is partly evidenced by the fact that the name of the owner is often not mentioned explicitly in the sale catalogue. Rather than revealing the proprietor’s actual name, the seller is referred to as ‘ein alter Kenner’ (‘an old connoisseur’), ‘ein alter Liebhaber’ (‘an old art amateur’) or is simply not mentioned at all.6 This anonymity accentuated the context of the sale, by stripping the object of previous social or personal affiliation, thereby ensuring that public focus remained on the mercantile aspects of the transaction. What also frequently occurred in Hamburg was that mixed lots of paintings were recycled, replenished and resold for profit. Paintings were purchased en masse and reassembled by the dealer, who mixed items from various owners and then put the entire lot back onto the market. Through such sales, art became a truly commercial commodity, with the focus of all parties directed exclusively to the sale, moving attention away from previous ownership and any sentimental value these objects may have previously had. This is not to say that prominent names are completely absent from catalogues and that agents were the sole figures entrusted with the valuables of known personalities. Sometimes the opposite happened. The sale of paintings belonging to the Baroque poet Barthold Heinrich Brockes is a case in point. It took place on 6 April 1747, and while directed to the ‘Meistbietenden’, (‘the highest offer’), it can be traced back to Brockes as the initial seller.7 In addition to highly commercialized transactions, other types of art brokerage were taking place that were not solely driven by financial considerations and which reflected an individualized transfer of art ownership. For example, Johann Heinrich Merck was active in Weimar. Merck was a known ‘literato’ and a frequent contributor to print media that specialized in aesthetics and material culture, such as the Frankfurter Gelehrte Anzeigen, a journal which he founded. Some critics refer to him as ‘connoisseur marchand’, recognizing his intermediary skills and aesthetic expertise, in addition to his commercial skills, thereby attributing a certain level of knowledge to his involvement in art.8 Merck was a member of the Weimar social scene and part of an intricate social matrix that included Duchess Anna Amalia and author Wolfgang von Goethe, both of whom were known collectors. Because of his ability to navigate various social echelons and a gift of sociability that allowed him exclusive access into private homes and lives, Merck had intimate knowledge of people’s personal tastes and was familiar with their collecting preferences. Drawing on this social advantage, he communicated this information in the various circles in which he moved, de facto negotiating the transfer of items and the completion of other people’s collections. Because he did not deal in money, but only in terms of knowledge, he was deemed credible and entrusted with networking that resulted in the selling and acquisition of art. His copious correspondence reveals the number of contacts he helped to establish and documents the number of art exchanges he helped to oversee.9 This activity happened under the auspices of culture and although Merck gained favour and social capital from these transactions, his contribution was perceived by contemporaries as a type of societal finesse, rather than in terms of financial gain or advantage.10

 The German Art Market in the Eighteenth Century 155 The difficulty of balancing the monetary aspect of the art trade with a more refined approach to art itself was a genuine concern for art dealers who sought to develop a sound social reputation in addition to facilitating the sale of artefacts. In some cases, they would work directly with other experts to enhance the possibility of a sale. In 1763 the Frankfurt art dealer Johann Christian Kaller collaborated with the noted Frankfurt artist Justus Juncker and they jointly oversaw an auction of 263 paintings.11 Kaller used Juncker’s creative expertise to create a catalogue, citing Juncker’s name and drawing on the artist’s ability to properly articulate the value of art to the connoisseur buyer. Generally speaking, the ability to communicate about art in credible terms was a vital skill for the art dealer, due to the unorthodox way in which art was disseminated in eighteenth-century Germany. Because of the private nature of collections and the fragmented state of cultural artistic holdings, there was a great reliance on printed material to convey information about art. People knew about the existence of other people’s art, not because they necessarily saw it, but because they read about it and experienced it through the medium of print. There is, consequently, an inherent discursivity about most collecting practices in eighteenth-century Germany, a connection that binds the aesthetic artefact to the printed word and vice versa. As a subject, art was fervently discussed in print and matters pertaining to the acquisition and ownership of material culture were deliberated in mainstream journals alongside more serious issues. The significance of these journals should not be underestimated, for in the late 1700s there were more than 1,000 titles in circulation, demonstrating that the German reading public may have been disconnected, but certainly not disengaged, from the world around them. The act of reading is, consequently, closely associated with the public’s understanding of art in Germany, as people voraciously read the many compendia that listed the newest ‘Nachrichten’, the news and activities of contemporary artists. The task of identifying the role of the art dealer within society was taken up by institutional authorities who queried the scope of their activities. For example, as early as 1737, Johann Heinrich Zedler’s Universal-Lexicon, the leading encyclopaedia of the age, attempted to define the role of the German art dealer, including this figure in the array of other concepts covered in its publication. Its definition seeks to distance the profession from commerce by emphasizing the various epistemological qualities art dealers should have. In doing so, it stresses the specific focus inherent to the work of a good art dealer, noting that these activities should be directed to a particular type of interaction, stating, so ‘the designation of the art dealer should be attributed to those who deal in uncommon artefacts, those things directed to and recognized by (true) art lover’.12 In other words, the Zedler Lexicon states that a knowledgeable selection of items needs to be made before a sale, an assertion that implies that agents dealing in such objects should have the necessary discernment and critical acumen to make informed choices for the clients they serve. Moreover, as the Zedler Lexicon seems to imply, art dealers operate on demand, by responding to the needs of existing art aficionados who require their services and to whom they thus cater, thereby proliferating good taste in society. Any monetary connotation associated with commerce and trade is omitted

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from this description, appearing to be a secondary concern when conceptualizing the figure of the art dealer. It is easy to see how traditional cognoscenti would have a problem with this new energetic agency on the art market. The growing intellectual prominence given to art dealers on the market threatened the expertise of the traditional aesthete, whose ponderous views were increasingly disregarded in favour of the expedient and practical perspective of the art dealer. There was great tension between the two sides, a disagreement that was well captured in print. Christian Ludwig von Hagedorn, an erudite, well-known Hamburg collector and the brother of poet Friedrich von Hagedorn, wrote a series of reflections on painting entitled Betrachtungen über die Mahlerey, in which he described the importance of carefully construed art criticism formed by the connoisseur and owner of art.13 In his work, he remonstrated against the growing dilettantism and commercialism dominating public discussions of art, arguing for a more sophisticated approach to the enterprise as a whole. Hagedorn compared the activities of the art dealer to those of a satanic creature, lamenting the fact that this new figure cheapened and sullied the sacred realm of art. As he emphatically stated: ‘There is no such perceptible devil as the art dealer. One cannot even begin to grasp their backstabbing, defamation, false promises.’14 As the involvement of reputable art dealers increased, the language of sales catalogues improved. Objects were no longer described through the discourse of art aficionados, which tended to praise the item in a florid, exaggerated way. With the emergence of the commercial sale catalogue, auctioned objects were observed critically and scrutinized in terms of their visible value. They were documented in concrete terms, with notes documenting their size, technique and the materials used. A notable improvement was the implementation of more precise attributions, with reference made to the identity of the artist as a significant aspect of the sale. Rather than attributing a painting to a particular school or style, stating things like ‘in the manner/taste of Rembrandt’ and using vague and descriptive language, the name of the artist was used as a marker to establish provenance and ensure authenticity. This critical information gave the painting additional commercial value. With this enhanced focus on accuracy and fact, the sales catalogue contributed directly to the dissemination of knowledge in the art market, bolstering its autonomy and status. Regardless of the location of their sales, private auctions did have to be strategic in planning in order to garner revenue. Capitalizing on the popularity of print media, art auctions were advertised in journals such as the Teutsche Merkur to attract buyers. Advertisements were published months in advance not only to ensure adequate travel time for buyers to arrive at the market, but also to allow this information to circulate among cognoscenti, sellers and collectors and stimulate social interest in the event. These sales were frequently organized to overlap with other calendar events, such as the annual Osternmesse. While this was done to ensure profitable conditions for the auction, it was also done through the conviction that an art auction should be seen as a genuine social event, an autonomous occasion, capable of distracting attention from larger cultural festivities. The interest that art sales evoked among the public created a specific type of sociability that brought

 The German Art Market in the Eighteenth Century 157 people together to interact in a dynamic and direct way. Art connoisseur Gault de Saint-Germain summarized the lively auction atmosphere of the eighteenth century by stating: ‘[they] provide opportunity of comparing, appreciating and listening freely to the different opinions voiced as to the degree of esteem to be granted to each object on display.’15 The role of the commercial art dealer in Germany was perceived by some as questionable. Despite this, Gerhard Morell, who was a strong presence in the Hamburg art market in the 1740s, operated on behalf of a network of princely contacts, negotiating the acquisition and sale of artefacts for various court collections.16 He had a reputation for dealing with art in a purely commercial fashion, focusing on the economic transaction taking place and paying little attention to extraneous matters concerning its epistemological or cultural value. Morell, a Danish art dealer, is important for the Germanophone art context as he specialized in the acquisition and sale of Dutch paintings for German courts, engaging primarily with cross-border, transnational trade in Germany. His success as an art dealer was determined by a willingness to adapt his astute market capabilities to the needs of the individual patrons who hired him. In doing this, he adopted and honed an international business profile and benefitted from the range of professional exchanges he undertook, easily navigating competing demands. As Michael North has chronicled, Morell moved around a great deal, using his mobility to advance his career. For example, he began his career as a curator at a court gallery in Bayreuth and then used that position to plan later career advancements in the Hamburg market.17 Another art dealer active within the context of eighteenth-century Germany was Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky, a Berlin merchant who worked closely with Frederick the Great and who was a seminal figure in acquiring large numbers of works for Catherine the Great, which are now in the Hermitage. A passionate collector, Gotzkowsky had a much more chequered career than Morell, notably falling in and out of favour with patrons and suffering many financial misfortunes, until he eventually went bankrupt towards the end of his life. Gotzkowsky’s presence in the market is notable not only for the royal contacts he nurtured but also for the way in which he negotiated and viewed art. As his memoirs suggest,18 Gotzkowsky viewed himself primarily as a Prussian merchant, staking a national claim and operating within this particular context. In his dealings with art, however, he attempted to acquire additional sophistication to enhance his trading activities. He was principally keen to ensure an erudite presentation of the artefact and calculatingly looked beyond his own mercantile world to achieve this aim. He aligned himself with known experts in order to adopt a more knowledgeable approach. One of the significant contacts he made in the art world was that of Karl Heinrich von Heinecken, director of the engravings cabinet in Dresden. Through Heinecken’s expertise, Gotzkowsky learned to exercise greater discernment in his own appreciation of art, acquiring a cultivated manner of articulating matters pertaining to taste and style. Contact with Heinecken had political advantages as well; it afforded him inside knowledge of the collecting tendencies in neighbouring Saxony at the court of Augustus III, information that Gotzkowsky used to stimulate additional consumption of such artefacts at home.19

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Gotzkowsky was instrumental in enhancing the academic standing of some wellestablished collections as well and actively collaborated with others to do so. In 1757, for example, he brought the painter Matthias Oesterreich from Dresden to Berlin as the new director of Sanssouci gallery, thereby consciously placing a true connoisseur at the helm of Prussia’s art establishment.20 Gotzkowsky’s place in the collecting world was recognized nationally and abroad, with international figures such as James Boswell paying a visit in 1764. On the whole, Gotzkowsky’s activities as both collector and dealer make an interesting study, for they demonstrate how intricate and delicately balanced success in the art trade was in eighteenth-century Germany. It required contacts, money and knowledge, all of which Gotzkowsky acquired in his dealings with the art world, but all of which he also lost at the end of his life (dying in poverty), demonstrating the fickleness of the entire enterprise. His career appears, thus, an interesting historical example of combining connoisseurship and entrepreneurship on the German art market in the eighteenth century, while most certainly reflecting a genuine and personal enthusiasm for collecting objects in general. In closing, it is important to recognize that Gotzkowsky’s work encompasses the complexities of the new profession of the art dealer in eighteenth-century Germany, revealing not only its precariousness but also its responsibility on the sociocultural plane. Rather pertinently, it shows the degree to which collecting remained a subjective endeavour within Germanophone society in the eighteenth century and the inherent value collectors placed on agency (in addition to the object) when trading in artefacts affirming, thereby, that the entire act of collecting could be tied to a particular person, rather than to a given protocol. Consequently, the market became, at times, a business of personalities, rather than objects alone, but this interaction may indeed be the element that enriched it, driving its success. For, despite their presumed intrusion into the field of artistic and aesthetic connoisseurship, the presence of ‘outside’ personalities, such as art dealers and art agents, did ultimately lead to a better and more sophisticated trade of artefacts on the German art market, assisting in its commercial development precisely by interfering and thereby expanding both its epistemological scope and merit.

Notes 1 Mary Fulbrook, A Concise History of Germany (Cambridge University Press, 1991), 69. 2 See Brian Learmount, A History of the Auction (Barnard & Learmont, 1985). 3 Thomas Ketelsen and Tilmann von Stockhausen, Verzeichnis der verkauften Gemälde im deutschsprachigen Raum vor 1800, 3 vols (Munich: Saur, 2002). 4 This data is available on the Getty Provenance Index; www​.getty​.edu​/research​/tools​/ provenance /search​.ht​ml 5 Michael North, ‘The Hamburg Art Market and Influences on Northern and Central Europe’, Scandinavian Journal of History 28, no. 3 (2003): 253–61. 6 Sale catalogue of ‘Ein alter Kenner’ (Jürgen Hinrich Köster Auction house, Hamburg, 23 May 1778). pipro​​d​.get​​ty​.ed​​u​/sta​​rweb/​​pi​/se​​rvlet​​​.star​​web, catalogue no. D-A110. The custom of anonymous sales was prevalent at the time and has continued since.

 The German Art Market in the Eighteenth Century 159 7 Sale catalogue of ‘ein alter Liebhaber’, 6 April 1747, Anonymous Auction House, pipro​​d​.get​​ty​.ed​​u​/sta​​rweb/​​pi​/se​​rvlet​​​.star​​web, catalogue no. D-A17. 8 Hans Peter Thurn, Der Kunsthändler: Wandlungen eines Berufes (Munich: Hirmer, 1994), 84. 9 Johann Heinrich Merck, Briefe, ed. Herbert Kraft (Frankfurt: Insel, 1968). 10 Johann Wolfgang Goethe referred to Merck as a multitalented person who combined various skills and could act ‘. . . bald ästhetisch, bald literarisch, bald kaufmännisch . . .’ (aesthetically, literarily and in a mercantile fashion, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Sämtliche Werke: Briefe, Tagebücher und Gespräche, eds, Henrik Birus, et al. 40 vols, 14 vol. (Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1985ff.), 5. 11 See for example the sale catalogue of 9 November 1763 by Juncker and Kaller Auctioneers; Frankfurt, pipro​​d​.get​​ty​.ed​​u​/sta​​rweb/​​pi​/se​​rvle​t​​.star​​web /catalogue no. D-A42. 12 Johann Heinrich Zedler, ‘Kunst-Händler’, Johann Zedlers Grosses Universal-Lexicon, aller Wissenschaften und Künste (1737), vol. 15, 2143. Author’s translation. 13 Christian Ludwig von Hagedorn, Betrachtungen über die Mahlerey (Leipzig: Wendler, 1762). 14 Cited in Ketelsen and von Stockhausen, 35. 15 Cited in Krzysztof Pomian, Collectors and Curiosities: Paris and Venice 1500–1800 (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990), 161. 16 See Gero Seelig, ‘Archival Note: Gerhard Morell and the Last Acquisition of Christian-Ludwig of Mecklenburg-Schwerin’, Journal of the Historians of Netherlandish Art 4, no.1 (2012). 17 See Michael North, Material Delight and the Joy of Living: Cultural Consumption in the Age of Enlightenment in Germany (Farnham: Ashgate, 2008), 99–103. 18 Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky, Geschichte eines patriotischen Kaufmanns (Augsburg: Brinnhauser, 1789). 19 For more on Gotzkowsky’s life and career, see Nina Simone Schepkowski, Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky: Kunstagent und Gemäldesammler in friderzianischem Berlin (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2009). 20 Schepkowski, Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky, 407.

10

Playing the market Lord Yarmouth, the Prince Regent and the role of the royal agent 1806–19 Rebecca Lyons

This chapter explores the nature of the friendship and business relationship between George IV, before his ascendancy to the throne, and one of his most significant advisors, Francis Seymour Conway (1777–1842), Earl of Yarmouth, later 3rd Marquess of Hertford (here referred to as Yarmouth). This period, broadly the Regency years of 1811–20, not only witnessed some of George’s most significant purchases of Dutch and Flemish pictures, but also saw a broader shift in the use of agents, from the aristocratic ‘courtier’ of previous centuries to the use of the professional advisor or artist. The chapter investigates whether George’s use of agents reflected this wider shift, or whether royal collecting by nature always required the services of a ‘courtier’. Yarmouth’s influence on George’s collecting might seem at first more akin to the model of previous centuries, where princely collectors were advised and assisted in their purchases by courtiers working as their agents (and often also collectors in their own right). Scion of a noble family, well connected at court, Yarmouth would have been at ease in the prince’s circles. And yet, both his letters and the purchases he is known to have made make it clear that he was also operating as professionally as many of the contemporary agents and dealers in the wider market of the period, while sometimes also making use of their services. Yarmouth enjoyed a role in the Prince Regent’s circle that was political and strategic, as well as companionable.1 Although he was officially appointed Vice-Chamberlain to George in 1812 (his father, the 2nd Marquess, being Chamberlain), for political reasons he renounced this position some three months later. He was instead made Lord Warden of the Stannaries (a sinecure nominally overseeing the tin mines of the Duchy of Cornwall) and had a great deal of financial responsibility for lands and other investments within the Prince Regent’s ‘appanage’. He brought the same shrewd eye for investment and financial acumen to the business of buying and selling pictures. John Ingamells noted Yarmouth’s first apparent appearance in the London salerooms at the Holderness sale in March 1802, where he purchased a Palamedes and

 Playing the Market 161 a Rembrandt ‘Hermit at Devotion’.2 In fact, there are several records in 1801 where Yarmouth appears, purchasing Bloemart, Metsu and Holbein paintings and several sculptures at the Earl of Bessborough’s sale.3 Both he and his father also purchased a great deal at the Desenfans sale in 1802.4 In all cases, Yarmouth’s Francophile taste for Dutch and Flemish works is already clear. A great deal of public uncertainty existed about Yarmouth during his time working for George, mainly because of his familiarity with France and the French and the amount of time he had spent there in the early years of the nineteenth century. A letter to Lord Hertford (the father) from George dated 2 December 1802, mentions the possibility of Lord Hertford ‘taking a journey to London to have seen Lord Yarmouth previous to his departure for France’.5 In France, Yarmouth was a regular visitor to the Paris salerooms, taking note with a keen eye of comparative pre- and post-Revolution prices. Several of the sale catalogues from this period and from earlier sales survive in the Wallace Collection archive, with his careful annotations and comments.6 Yarmouth was detained in France for two years after hostilities between Britain and France resumed in 1803, but it was a relatively flexible detention during which it seems he had quite a degree of freedom, though still under police surveillance.7 Several of the sale catalogues in the Wallace Collection archive prove that he was acquiring pictures during this period, often via auctioneers or dealers such as Jean-BaptistePierre Lebrun. In the catalogue of the Van Leyden sale, Lot 87 Teniers, which now correlates to the Wallace Collection’s P231 David Teniers the Younger, Gambling Scene at an Inn (Plate 11), notes ‘Delaroche for Yarmouth 5000’.8 Lot 67 on the second day of the sale records the Caspar Netscher Lacemaker (P237) as ‘Paillet for Yarmouth 7000’. Annotated with prices and occasional comments about doubts over authenticity, the volumes record a careful summary of prices for each work and total sums from the sale.9 This demonstrates Yarmouth’s attention to detail and his financial interest in picture-buying, as well as an interest in the paintings themselves. Back in Manchester Square in 1806, in the midst of London’s French émigré society, Yarmouth continued to move in French aristocratic circles and, through his parents’ connections, he re-entered the orbit of the Prince of Wales.10 The love of French style and taste was an enduring characteristic of George’s own collecting throughout his life, beginning before his association with Yarmouth and well nurtured as early as the 1790s by a social group in London with a taste for, and connections to, France.11 Bills in the Royal Archive prove that several of the works that had entered George’s collection by the early 1800s either had French provenance or demonstrated an interest in French art.12 This may have been influenced by Richard Cosway, painter of portrait miniatures for George and another great Francophile and collector. They might equally be indebted to Maria Fitzherbert, George’s wife by clandestine marriage, who was a fluent French-speaker, well-travelled and who had been educated in France (including having been presented at Versailles). It was certainly George’s passionate interest in all these aspects of France and French taste, and his desire to be surrounded by those who had associations with France, that subsequently drew him to the relationship with Yarmouth, as well as their shared family connections and leisure pursuits.

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George, who had no formal education in connoisseurship or art, nor any Grand Tour experience, had also been collecting prints, presumably in part to educate himself about a world he had been unable to visit or see in person. His acquisition of engravings from the Palais Royal collection in Paris is recorded in the Royal Collection from at least 1803, but may have begun even earlier.13 This was the famed collection that had come to London to be sold in 1790s in the Orléans sales. George had been one of the first signatories in an (unsuccessful) attempt to buy the whole collection, through a syndicate brokered by James Christie, and he was clearly aware of the significance of the collection. The fascination with France could be seen as an expression of a fundamentally conservative outlook expressed in Ancien-Régime-style collecting. As reflected in many of George’s letters, it also demonstrated an admiration for the grandeur and magnifi­ cence of the French court and the means by which French rulers expressed the nature of kingship through splendour and artistic patronage. The developing relationship with Yarmouth in the years after 1806 deepened this interest, with Yarmouth providing George with a vital link to the French market and to aristocratic French taste. George’s initial purchases of Old Master pictures show only a limited interest in Dutch and Flemish works. However, by 1806 he seems to have made a deliberate shift away from Italian art towards Dutch and Flemish pictures. In that year he secretly consigned around fifty pictures from his collection to Christie’s auction house, in a move that was unlikely to have been financially motivated. The prices raised were moderate and the pictures were unlikely to have been his to sell as they were most likely Crown property and not personal property. Though not significant financially, it forms a clue to George’s interests – a statement of taste, a shift away from the kind of works purchased by his father, George III, signalling a more determined decision to collect Dutch and Flemish pictures, while also championing contemporary British genre and portrait painting. The careful record-keeping of prices paid at auctions in Paris would have continued to be important to Yarmouth back in London, as the works he had seen pass through the French auction houses earlier in the century made their way to the London salerooms within the next decade. In 1807 and 1808 Yarmouth consigned several of his own Dutch and Flemish pictures to Christie’s, but was listed in several cases as buying them back again.14 He may have been testing the market for such works or even trying to stimulate interest in the field. But, at this point, Yarmouth did not have an official role in George’s circle – he was still just part of the social ‘set’ around George. In addition, both he and George were avid fans of horseracing and of the gaming tables of London, bidding and betting and addicted to the thrill of the high stakes. There are some similarities between this and their later engagement in the art market, speculating, paying comparatively high sums, ‘winning’ where they could and keen to get the better of their competitors. Playing the market was another way to experience the thrill of the chase, competing with other high-stakes bidders, and sometimes, the excitement of the winning bid. Yarmouth’s study of provenances and prices meant that his advice to George was not only aesthetic or connoisseurial, but also based on shrewd market research, underpinning

 Playing the Market 163 the ‘game’ of bidding at auction. In this way, Yarmouth, though part of the court, was also necessarily engaged with the professional behaviour of the dealers around him. Yarmouth went to sales ready to do business, but also having done his homework. He was not always prepared to bid, where he felt the prices were excessive, as this 1810 letter attests: In obedience to your Royal Highness’s commands I attended W Grevilles sale & exceeded the commission it pleased your Royal Highness to give me by One Hundred and Ten Guis. notwithstanding which I did not buy the Centaurs . . . On reference to Peter Coxe’s books, this picture was sold at Sir John Nesbitt’s sale in Grattan Street in 1802 for 254 Guis to Sir William Hamilton who left it to Greville . . . . I believe the M. of Douglas to be the purchaser at a price certainly Two Hundred Guineas beyond its value, Five Hundred I thought a price quite beyond reason . . .15

A newly discovered letter from George to Yarmouth in reply to this represents one of the very rare occasions on which George is known to have discussed his picturebuying, though of course more such letters may once have existed. He wrote: A thousand thanks, my dear Yarmouth, for your kind note, & for all the trouble you have been so good as to take upon yourself respecting the Centaurs; indeed you have done everything that I would have wished respecting this Picture, for which you certainly bid quite as high as, in my humble opinion (but who am myself but a very indifferent Judge) was the intrinsic value of it. The consolation however I receive from the not having been the Purchaser of this Rubens today . . . it at least affords a little batch more (if required) for you to have the goodness to go to market with for me, for the Girard Dous . . .16

George’s response demonstrates an interest in engaging with the market and an awareness of the sums of money and the values involved, which was not always the case with his spending patterns elsewhere. The same note of market awareness is evident in 1812 at the Humble sale, when Yarmouth wrote to George: I bought for your Royal Highness this morning the Fishermen for 430 guineas & the Coup de Pistolet for 390 Guineas – the Horse Fair being by Peter not Philip Wouw I left at 230 Lord Mulgrave bought it – I thought his Lordships bidder a puffer & having seen the picture sold last year by Phillips for Eighty I did not like to Treble the Sum.17

There is rarely a sense of aesthetic appreciation of the works acquired in any of the letters, but more a sense of satisfaction at the ‘game’ of bidding and buying with a close eye to past and to currently rising prices. George’s acquisition of pictures at sales during the period 1810–19 and Yarmouth’s involvement as agent have been well researched and documented, both within the

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Royal Collection literature and at the Wallace Collection.18 As Ingamells noted, by the time Yarmouth had made his last purchase for the Prince Regent in 1819 ‘he had acquired 43 paintings, 13 bronzes and numerous pieces of furniture for Carlton House’. However, there are still aspects of these acquisitions that require greater clarification, in particular the role of other agents in the saleroom bidding ‘against’ Yarmouth, and sometimes winning, even though the picture itself ultimately made its way to the Royal Collection. Certain works that are attributed to Yarmouth in the buying process often have other names beside them in the Christie’s auction books, suggesting the use of other agents. Apparently, while Yarmouth wanted to acquire many of these works, he was not always keen to be seen as the buyer. This, of course, also created the suggestion of a healthier saleroom environment with more than one person interested in purchasing and it avoided other buyers identifying the royal purchaser. Alternatively, it may be that Yarmouth negotiated strongly post-sale, on behalf of his royal patron. The Lafontaine sale of 12 June 1811 was a case in point, with several purchases, some marked with an X in the Christie’s book, that were marked as ‘bought-in’ by other observers. As Burton Fredericksen noted in the Getty Provenance Index entry for the sale, an annotation in the John Paul Getty Museum copy of the catalogue reads: ‘The Pictures marked as bought by the P. of Wales at a very high Price it is understood were all purchased on the day before the Sale . . . at a Sum considerably less than they were knockd for at the Sale.’ The unidentified scribe, remarked Fredericksen, has marked seven paintings as having been purchased by the Prince of Wales, all of them corresponding to those marked with an ‘X’ by Christie, . . . . If his statement is correct, it would indicate that Yarmouth, Christie and Lafontaine engaged in a deception that, although ultimately done on behalf of the Prince of Wales, was most probably illegal.19

George’s determination to mark his Regency with magnificent artistic splendour at Carlton House, including the celebrated Rembrandt The Shipbuilder and his Wife (Plate 12), seems to have led to some market trickery. As the final lot of the Lafontaine sale in 1811, this double portrait was hammered down for a triumphant 5,000 guineas, creating saleroom drama, spectacle and the sense of a buoyant market at the top end. Both James Christie (Junior) and George would have benefitted from this – the latter financially by negotiating in advance, and the former by the creation of a robust market for Dutch pictures, and the ‘performance’ of a strong sale with the Prince Regent leading taste. The parallels between the races or gaming tables, and the art market are once again in evidence – high stakes, hustling and the thrill of the chase for all concerned. This chapter has given a brief sense of how the mechanics and mutual benefits of the relationship between George and Yarmouth might be examined to underline a moment of change, where an aristocratic advisor also acted as a professional agent. The relationship foregrounds the idea of art as an investment as well as for pleasure or status and adds a further case study in understanding the mechanics of the saleroom and the creation of a market for Dutch pictures in the early nineteenth century. George would

 Playing the Market 165 subsequently move away from using Yarmouth as an agent, but his last decade as king saw his continued use of the aristocratic collector-advisor in the guise of Charles Long, first Lord Farnborough, alongside his preferred artist, Sir Thomas Lawrence. It remains a moot point whether royal agents can ever be a benchmark for agents operating in wider society. Royal collectors enjoy many benefits, often being allowed first refusal or bending the rules. However, like George, his courtier-agents’ freedom to travel might also be limited and their access to those beyond the court restricted. In this respect, Yarmouth’s combination of social status (birth), business acumen, knowledge of the wider world and the art market (acquired) made him the perfect player in the earlynineteenth-century art world.

Notes 1 In fact, Yarmouth’s initial relationship with George had begun earlier, through connections with the Hertfords, and George had been a visitor to his family home at Ragley Hall in Warwickshire as early as 1796, according to John Ingamells, The 3rd Marquess of Hertford (1777-1842) as a Collector (The Trustees of the Wallace Collection, London, 1983), 12. 2 Ingamells, The 3rd Marquess of Hertford, 14. The Palamedes is now attributed to Pot, Wallace Collection P192 and the Rembrandt to Gerrit Dou, Wallace Collection P177. 3 Yarmouth is recorded as purchasing four bronzes at the Earl of Bessborough sale at Christie’s on 5–7 February 1801, and sale records on the Getty Provenance Index note Yarmouth buying at Christie’s sales on 7 February and 29 April 1801. First day, lot 19 Three Cupid in a sitting Posture; and a pair of Horses from the Antique, Lot 20 Two the Flagellatori of Algardi and Third day, lot 21 A Pair from Gladiators in the Villa Borghese and lot 22 A Faun with a Kid. Catalogue of the Well Known Valuable and Truly Capital Collection of Pictures . . . formed by the late Earl of Besborough (sic), Deceased (Christie, Manson and Woods, London, 5–7 February 1801). Lugt 6190. 4 Ingamells, The 3rd Marquess of Hertford, 14 note 12 cites William Thomas Whitley, Art in England, I, 1800–1820, 1928, 32. 5 Aspinall, A. and E. A Smith, English Historical Documents, 1783–1832, vol. 4 (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1959), 333–5, letter 1692, PoW to Lord Hertford, Brighton 2 December 1802. 6 These are referenced in Ingamells, The 3rd Marquess of Hertford, 41 note 14; there are several more from 1804 to 1811 in addition to those noted by Ingamells. 7 More details of Yarmouth’s time in Paris can be found in the Paris Archives, noted by John Goldsworth Alger, Napoleon’s British Visitors and Captives 1801–1815 (London: Archibald Constable, 1904), 218. 8 London, Wallace Collection Archives, Collection of M van Leyden d’Amsterdam (A. Paillet et H. Delaroche, Paris 1804), Lugt 6852. The printed copy says 23 Fructidor an 12, that is 10 September 1804, but is later scored out and 14 Brumaire an 13 is noted (on the Wallace Collection website the sale dates are noted as 5–7 November 1804).

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9 Delaroche and Paillet were dealers operating in Paris at this period. For an example of some of their joint sales in the first years of the century, note the bibliography in Darius A. Spieth, Revolutionary Paris and the Market for Netherlandish Art (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 441. 10 Aspinall, English Historical Documents, 1783–1832, 369 Letter 2167A: Prince of Wales to Marchioness of Hertford Carlton House, 16 April 1806. The letter refers to Yarmouth being granted permission to leave France. 11 For more information about the French in London, the reader is directed to Kirsty Carpenter, Refugees of the French Revolution: émigrés in London 1789–1802 (Basingstoke: Palgrave 1999) and Philip Mansel, ‘Courts in Exile: Bourbons, Bonapartes and Orléans in London, from George III to Edward VII’, in A History of the French in London: Liberty, Equality, Opportunity, ed. Debra Kelly and Martyn Cornick (London: Institute of Historical Research), 2013. 12 For example, the portrait of the French Controller General of Finance, CharlesAlexandre de Calonne by Elizabeth Louise Vigée-Lebrun RCIN 406988 was acquired by George in the early 1800s. 13 My thanks to Dr. Kate Heard for confirming the date of acquisition of prints from the Palais Royal in the Royal Collection. 14 Christie’s Archive, annotated sale catalogue, Catalogue of a Truly Valuable Assemblage of Italian, French Flemish and Dutch Pictures . . . Consigned from abroad (Christie, Manson and Woods, London 19–20 February 1807), Lugt 7189. 15 Windsor, Royal Archives (hereafter WRA), A 41346-7, Ld Yarmouth to HRH: 31 March 1810. The picture by Rubens of The Loves of the Centaurs is now in the Musée Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon. Inv 394. 16 Morgan Library Collection Literary and Historical Manuscripts Bound, MA 428.63 Vol. 1, Letter dated 31 March 1810, from George to an unidentified recipient, but it is to Yarmouth, as noted in the text itself. 17 WRA 26918 and 26919 Yarmouth to PR 10 April ?1812 annotated in pencil in the Royal Archive (although the Humble sale was actually 11 April). 18 See for example Christopher White, Dutch Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 2015 and Ingamells, The 3rd Marquess of Hertford. 19 Catalogue of one of the Most Distinguished and Choice Assemblages of Capital Italian, French, Flemish and Dutch Pictures Ever Brought into this Country . . . . The Flower of the very Precious Cabinet of Mr, Schmidt of Amsterdam (Christie, Manson and Woods, London, 12 June 1811) Lugt 8021. Accessed at http:​/​/pip​​rod​.g​​etty.​​edu​/s​​tarwe​​ b​/pi/​​servl​​e​t​.st​​arweb​.

Part III

The agent in the modern European art market, 1820–1950

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III

Introduction The art market in Europe, 1820–1950 Anne Helmreich

By the close of the nineteenth century, the modern art market in major metropolitan centres in western Europe and North America consolidated in ways that allowed it to be identified as a system and, indeed, discussed as such.1 That system included artistrun spaces and groups, such as the studio, academies, associations and societies, as well as auction houses, commercial art dealers and galleries and museums. Public display emerged as a key strategy within this market, whether as a point-of-sale opportunity, as at the rotating exhibitions organized by dealers and the annual exhibitions of many academies, or as an occasion to educate and to promote, as typified by the World’s Fairs, Expositions Universelles and other similar venues, such as the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition (1857). Print culture described, critiqued and helped to sustain these sites for the production and consumption of art and the agents responsible for them. The increasing density of spaces devoted to the presentation and sale of art indelibly shaped cities such as Paris, where dealers over time clustered along the Rue Lafitte, around the auction house Hôtel Drouot and in the fashionable neighbourhood of the Opéra, and London, where Old and New Bond Street in the wealthy Mayfair district, adjacent to the home of the Royal Academy of Art, became the heart of the commercial art trade. To frame the case studies gathered in this section, this introduction will briefly outline this system, before turning to the key concept of expertise that helped to fuel it. The proliferation of venues for displaying and selling art was sustained and made visible, in part, by the rise and expansion of print culture, the press and the strategies of modern print advertising. The daily press and weekly and monthly serials dedicated ever more column space to the activities of the art world, including the trade, helping to render both artists and artworks into celebrities. This discourse was intensified by the rise of specialist art journals such as the Art Journal, launched in 1839, and the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, founded in 1859, which offered platforms for more scholarly and expert opinions and reporting than the popular press, as well as expanded advertising opportunities. Technological innovations spurred the intensification and spread of networks of communication – the first international telegram, between Queen Victoria and

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President James Buchanan, took place in 1858 – as well as transportation and finance that allowed both trade networks and print culture to handle a higher volume and greater density of exchange, as well as a broader geographical reach than in previous centuries. Formal and informal empires facilitated and reinforced global networks of exchange. News, just like commodities, could now be circulated and disseminated well beyond points of origin in a relatively short period of time; by the early 1880s, for example, an American edition of the Art Journal was being issued in New York. Print became a key means by which expertise in the art market could be established and burnished as exemplified by the career of Johann David Passavant, who eventually became director of the Städel Institute, as discussed by Corina Meyer in Chapter 12, as well as that of Théophile Thoré, aka W. Bürger, a political journalist and art critic responsible for establishing the modern reputation of the Dutch painters Johannes Vermeer and Frans Hals, and who, as Frances Jowell demonstrates in Chapter 13, also acted as an agent for both buyers and sellers. Print also lay behind the processes by which new kinds of goods entered the market. For example, C. J. Chen has established how the highly influential and successful dealers of Japanese curiosities Bunkio Matsuki and Sadajiro Yamanaka ‘used the auction catalogues that they distributed to potential buyers to define themselves as arbiters of taste and to dictate meanings for the Orient and its aesthetics’.2 The intensification of networks of exchange and communication, however, should not blind us to the fact that successful circuits required navigating and negotiating multiple complex regulatory environments created by tariff and other legal and economic frameworks associated with metropolitan, regional and national markets. Within the art trade, this context encouraged the development of a new strategy: the corporatization of art dealing, akin to other industries. The Goupil firm, founded as print publishers and sellers in early-nineteenth-century Paris, exemplifies this trend. By mid-century, the firm began to expand internationally, opening branches in such locales as New York and London, and also expanded into selling paintings.3 Many leading dealers of the day were, at one time, affiliated with the firm, including H. G. Gutekunst, Michael Knoedler, William Marchant, Alexander Reid and Elbert Jan van Wisselingh. Other firms that became transnational entities around the turn of the last century include Thomas Agnew and Sons, Arthur Tooth & Sons, the Duveen Brothers and E. J. van Wisselingh & Co. The pressure and opportunities to internationalize were even felt by individual dealers, such as the Austrian Charles Sedelmeyer, who, although based in Paris, experimented with sales in other urban centres. This networked system of commercial art dealers not only fostered the ongoing internationalization of the art world but also helped to buoy artist’s careers. Highly successful artists such as Claude Monet or James McNeill Whistler could play dealers off one another to achieve more favourable conditions. In the mid-1880s, for example, Monet turned to Theo van Gogh, who worked for Boussod & Valadon (the new owners of the Goupil firm) and Georges Petit to sell his work in response to disagreements with Paul Durand-Ruel. Over the course of the nineteenth century, a new player began to more decisively shape the market – the museum. Developed through multiple pathways – the

 Introduction 171 conversion of former royal holdings in the case of the Louvre, Paris, for example, or the result of the activism of wealthy citizen collectors, as in the case of the National Gallery, London, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York – the museum was both a participant in the market and the site at which the market ceased (assuming that a work of art that enters a museum is removed from the circulatory networks of the market, although, in reality, deaccessioning is a common practice). While in some cases the acquisition process could be fairly straightforward, as in instances mentioned in this section when agents for the South Kensington Museum were provided with funds to travel and acquire objects from designated regions, they could also be convoluted and complicated as indicated by Corina Meyer’s discussion of Passavant’s activities on behalf of the Städel Institute and Elena Greer’s history of Frederic Burton’s tenure as director of the National Gallery of London in Chapter 15. Burton’s acquisitions, Greer reveals, were enabled not just by the contacts and expertise of such figures as Charles Fairfax Murray and Giovanni Morelli but also by the interventions of Henry Layard, a museum trustee; thus, she brings to light the significance of such new institutional roles. The formation of the museum unfolded in tandem with the development of art history as a discipline and many key figures in the art market participated in the materialization of both the museum and art history. At the heart of these activities were questions of expertise, that is, what would constitute knowledge and how would knowledge be valued – like art itself – in the marketplace of exchange? Furthermore, these agents fuelled a dialectic between new bodies of knowledge and the entry of new artworks, and even new types and forms of art, into the marketplace and the museum. The concept of expertise, as discussed in the case studies assembled here, emerges as complex and multifaceted. It includes the ability to identify and attribute works of art, including verification of authenticity, as well as to describe and analyse art historical and aesthetic significance. Such knowledge, which today we might label as scholarly, was often paired with proficiency in assigning fiscal value by, for example, appraising objects or bidding appropriately at auction. Legal experience, meaning not just recognizing the law, but understanding how it might be skirted or leveraged, was also highly valued. Expertise extended into other spheres that we might consider more social than strictly academic or monetary, including the talent to persuade and to negotiate, as well as to build and to establish one’s reputation. This was necessarily coupled with an aptitude in developing connections to sources of supply and demand as well as the mechanics of the art trade, such as restoration, framing, importing and exporting, insurance, transportation and so on. This point is explicitly made in Camille Mestdagh’s study (Chapter 14) of Alfred Beurdeley, a curiosity dealer specializing in such luxury goods as antique furniture, who relied not only on an association of fellow dealers, with whom he entered into joint purchases, but also on decorators. These case studies make clear that possession of this expertise did not correlate to any one specifically designated profession; indeed, we are probably misrepresenting the historical record if we attempt to strictly define roles and responsibilities and assign them a cohesive label. On the one hand, signs of a collective assignment or self-recognition of professional roles in the art trade can be detected in, for example,

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the establishment in 1852 of the Parisian auction system located at Hôtel Drouot and the regulations governing the system of commissaires-priseurs (auctioneers), the formation of the Printsellers Association in London in 1847 and the Dealers in the Fine Arts Benevolent Institution (also referred to as the Provident Institution) launched in London in 1842: ‘for the assistance of members, their widows and children. Consisting of masters and assistance in the above trade; the former who shall have kept shop, showroom, or gallery, principally for the sale of works of art, for three years, the latter six years.’4 On the other hand, while this charitable organization emphasizes the keeping of a physical retail space as the key signifier of a dealer, many individuals who self-identified as dealers in the nineteenth century did not necessarily maintain such premises and, moreover, as Robert Skwirblies notes in Chapter 11 on the transnational network of dealers in which Edward Solly and Felice Cartoni participated, at least a few dealers referred to their shops as museums. In addition, there was no mechanism to certify, license or otherwise authorize and regulate roles within the art trade and, as the studies gathered here attest, the knowledge necessary to successfully navigate the systems of the art market could be coupled with other means of securing one’s living. Indeed, as in the case of the key players in the art trade in China discussed by Nick Pearce in Chapter 16, their ability to participate was the result of their knowledge of Chinese language, society and material culture acquired through other activities and institutions, such as medicine, mining, railway development and the fur trade as well as Empire and Church. In other words, while western European and North American middle-class and upper-middle-class societies became increasingly professionalized by the close of the nineteenth century, one must avoid the temptation to impose this framework overly rigorously on the art trade given the fluidity of roles. Thus, in the case of Skwirblies’s study of the buying and exporting of art in middle and northern Italy in the early decades of the nineteenth century, we see actors at play who, in addition to taking up roles in the art trade, were also known as artists, clerics, gallery keepers, jewellers, merchants, professors and writers. This diversity of roles has a dialectical relationship to the modes of collecting at play in the period under discussion. The concept of national schools remained a dominant paradigm guiding acquisitions, particularly for museums, but within this framework particular exemplars or even stars could be established, as in Frederic Burton’s pursuit of the earlier Italian school, Passavant’s revival of the reputation of Alessandro Bonvicino, known as Moretto da Brescia, and the ascendance of Vermeer and Hals fostered by Bürger. Such targeted collecting required specialized knowledge, access to specific sources and the willingness to risk resources, as exemplified by Passavant’s successful bid at the Fesch auction. This approach is, in many ways, continued in the study of the Surrealists’ early art market conducted by Alice Ensabella (Chapter 17), who reveals the ways in which Andre Breton and Paul Éluard stimulated and sustained a market for the art of their Surrealist colleagues through their strategies of acquisition, advice and auction sales. By contrast, Stephen Bushell, when acting in China as an agent for Heber Reginald Bishop, set himself the task of assembling ‘specimens’ to be added to Bishop’s collection, suggesting a quasi-scientific approach informed by normative taxonomic categories (as opposed to a desire for the exceptional or the avant-garde). That these

 Introduction 173 two approaches to collecting could exist concomitantly in the early twentieth century is a warning against adopting a Whiggish or teleological approach to the study of the art market, assuming notions of progress towards an integrated international market in which goods freely flow. Instead, as these chapters demonstrate, studies of the art market should be grounded in the specifics of historical circumstances and an understanding of how material conditions enabled, or not, the exchange of art objects through complexly mediated means and processes that required specific forms of knowledge and expertise to navigate.

Notes 1 For an overview of this argument, see Pamela Fletcher and Anne Helmreich, ‘Reframing the “International Art Market”’, in Art Crossing Borders, The Internationalisation of the Art Market in the Age of Nation States, 1750–1914, ed. Jan Dirk Baetens and Dries Lyna (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 327–41. 2 Constance J. S. Chen, ‘Merchants of Asianness: Japanese Art Dealers in the United States in the Early Twentieth Century’, Journal of American Studies 44, no. 1 (February 2010): 22. 3 For further discussion of this history, see Anne Helmreich, ‘The Goupil Gallery at the intersection between London, Continent and Empire’, The Rise of the Modern Art Market in London, 1850–1939, ed. Pamela Fletcher and Anne Helmreich (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), 65–84. 4 [Sampson Low, comp.], The Metropolitan Charities: Being an Account of the Charitable, Benevolent, and Religious Societies; Hospitals, Dispensaries, Penitentiaries, Annuity Funds, Asylums, Almshouses, Colleges and Schools; In London and its immediate Vicinity (London: Sampson Low, 1844), 81.

11

Edward Solly, Felice Cartoni and their purchases of paintings A ‘milord’ and his ‘commissioner’ anticipating a transnational network of dealers c. 1820 Robert Skwirblies

The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the relationship between two protagonists of the early-nineteenth-century art market in Europe: the English-Baltic merchant Edward Solly (1776–1844) and the Roman painter and art dealer, Felice Cartoni (1782-after 1829).1 They collaborated between 1815 and 1820, when Solly assembled his first collection of paintings in Berlin which was sold to the Prussian state in 1821, establishing the groundwork that led to the foundation of the Royal Berlin Picture Gallery in 1830. While the sale and the impact of Solly’s collection have been the subject of several studies,2 it is a challenge to get a clear idea of the creation of the collection and the networks behind it. As early as 1822, Prussian officials complained about an almost complete absence of documentation in relation to Solly’s purchases, including their provenances.3 The collaboration of Solly and Cartoni, therefore, gives a meaningful example of the way in which the network of art traders in Europe developed during this period. Concentrating on evidence and original documents from the archives in Berlin and Italy, these observations help to broaden the view of the art market of that period. It was more than just a rush of gold diggers: in fact, the interaction between private collectors or merchants and public collectors or functionaries reached a new, modern-style quality, which becomes apparent in the activities of Solly and Cartoni. After Napoleon’s defeat, the end of wars and trade blockades, the European art market sprang back to life:4 a huge number of artworks were transferred throughout the continent, including a great many objects previously smuggled or traded during the post-revolutionary years. Soon, a smooth collaboration was established among state officials, collectors and dealers. Sometimes one person fulfilled all three roles, but the dealer became a noticeably more independent agent. Finally, the growing knowledge about and demand for Old Master paintings became intertwined with the rise of new public museum collections.

 Edward Solly, Felice Cartoni and Their Purchases of Paintings 175 By 1820, Edward Solly was as much an art collector as a wholesale dealer. Although commonly known as a collector of early Italian Renaissance paintings, Solly did not limit himself to that. Due to the substantial profits he made trading wood and corn, Solly could afford to buy large stocks of paintings, including very precious individual pieces, with the intention of reselling a number of them immediately, especially in England, where they would be ‘assessed like jewels’, as he wrote during the negotiations in Berlin.5 In the course of about five years, he thus bought (and presumably resold) a huge number of works.6 His position was a crucial one, oscillating between the roles of agent and dealer; his best personal relations were both with some of Prussia’s highest public officials and with leading artists and connoisseurs in Berlin.7 At the time of the sale of his collection in November 1821, his house contained 3,012 paintings. Most of them were Italian, but dating from the seventeenth to eighteenth century and of lower quality.8 Many of these works remained in Berlin because of the economic difficulties Solly faced during the long negotiations with the Prussian state, and due to his absence from Berlin at that time.9 Renaissance and Mannerist altarpieces from Tuscany and northern Italy formed the principal part of Solly’s collection.10 Many of them had formerly been in the collections of the art academies in Venice, Florence, Bologna and Milan. So how did they come to be in the house of a Baltic merchant in Berlin? Solly interacted with Italian ‘commissioners’ to purchase artworks in Italy.11 But what does that mean in practice? One could think of some form of illegal trade, sparsely documented and tied-in with the chaotic political situation during the revolutionary Napoleonic period. However, we can try to find evidence in the few sources that have been preserved, through the traders buying and exporting artworks across northern and central Italy, who often were not only art dealers but also artists and clerics (or of unknown profession). For instance, in 1818 the freemason writer Marziale Reghellini (1766–1853) from Schio near Venice brought more than thirty altarpieces from northern Italy to Berlin – an acquisition from the heir of a local count whose own collection had benefitted from the sales of secularized monastery goods in the Napoleonic years.12 Reghellini boasted that the Venetian Academy would have ‘wept over’ the loss of the paintings he had brought out of the country shortly before a protection law came into effect.13 In fact, this was the moment when new laws were promulgated all over Italy, or older restrictions were revised to allow the sale of artwork from public institutions to private collectors and/ or abroad.14 Special arrangements were necessary – or particularly good contacts with those responsible in the academies, among the authorities and in the customs offices. At least one example of arrangements like these is clearly documented: the case of Felice Cartoni.15 Like him, there were other traders with long lists of requests and exportation licences, which are sometimes traceable, at least with their names and more or less detailed export lists of works.16 Some of them came to Berlin in person, as did Marziale Reghellini or Antonio Fusi (life dates unknown) from Milan, presenting himself as ‘court jeweller’.17 Both sold paintings to Solly as well. We do not know if Felice Cartoni ever left Italy. As a commissioner, he travelled throughout the peninsula to acquire the requested works from Italian art academies, galleries and monasteries.

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Initially, Cartoni had been a painter in Rome:18 in 1810, a landscape by him was exhibited on the Capitoline Hill, together with his portrait, painted by a colleague.19 He probably also painted more substantial works, such as The Fall of Saul, or Conversion of Saint Paul: a Prussian official, collaborator and friend of Solly’s had a print of this painting in his collection.20 Some years later, Cartoni became an excavator of antiquities: in 1824, the brothers Pietro and Felice Cartoni obtained permission for excavations in Ostia Antica, where it appears they were active until at least 1829.21 The permission was given by the Cardinal Secretary of State, Giulio Cavazzi della Somaglia (1744–1830), the same person who was also responsible for granting the extraordinary licence to export a famous Raphael painting to Prussia.22 In 1823, Cartoni obtained a concession for twelve years to produce lead white pigment, together with another companion who was also involved in the excavations.23 Perhaps it was even the identical Cartoni who produced and traded in carnival masks in via Giulia.24 In any case, Cartoni turned out to have been an attentive and enterprising businessman. It was, however, only during a short period from about 1817 to 1823, that he bought and sold Old Masters. Cartoni succeeded in his transactions due to his cultivation of direct and targeted contacts with professors in various Italian academies – possibly aided by recommendations from various artist and academy circles in Rome.25 In Bologna and Florence, they worked together and chose paintings which he then bought officially. Correspondence from the Bolognese Academy with the papal authorities in 1818 states that Cartoni passed by ‘again’26 – so we can assume that there must have been at least one prior attempt by Cartoni to acquire artworks from the Academy. For example, the impressive Madonna in Glory by Francesco Francia (c. 1447–1517) does not appear in the 1818 lists, but it was purchased and sent to Berlin before 1819 – presumably by Cartoni.27 In the documented case of the 1818 sale at the Academy in Bologna,28 Cartoni paid 6,000 scudi for thirty paintings that were collected from secularized monasteries, oratories and churches all over the region. They were then stored at the Academy, considered by the professors to be weak replicas and/or in poor condition.29 Most of these paintings have by now been identified. Not all of them arrived in Berlin and probably not all of them were sold to Solly. One work was attributed to Francesco Francia, but nonetheless the Academy sold it, probably because the picture had been trimmed.30 Among the altarpieces, we know of one attributed to Biagio Pupini delle Lame (d. after 1575), today believed to be by Cola dell’Amatrice (1489–1555),31 a member of the Francia school, highly valued but ‘pale and ruined’,32 as well as a huge canvas, consumato, that is with the surface ruined, at the time attributed to Lorenzo Costa (1460–1535),33 an altarpiece with a model of Bologna believed to be painted by Innocenzo da Imola (c. 1485–1546),34 and another one, still attributed to Lorenzo Sabattini (c. 1530–76)35 and so on. There was even a devotional piece, including a stucco frame, by Prospero Fontana (1512–97) (Figure 11.1).36 Cartoni resold one of the best and most expensive works acquired in Bologna to the Florentine Academy: Francesco Francia’s altarpiece formerly in the Oratorio della Stretta, now in the Uffizi.37 The painting was estimated at 600 scudi in Bologna, and

 Edward Solly, Felice Cartoni and Their Purchases of Paintings 177

Figure 11.1  Prospero Fontana, Lamentation, second half of the sixteenth century, including a Pietà attributed to Michele di Matteo, mid-fifteenth century. Oil and tempera on panel, 219 × 140 cm. Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. ©Staatliche Museen Preußischer Kulturbesitz. 500 zecchini in Florence. It is extremely difficult to evaluate the monetary standards in Italy of that time: in 1801 a scudo must have been worth half a zecchino, while it seems to have been the exact opposite in 1828 and 1830.38 If we believe the latter sources, which even coincide, we may assume that Cartoni got a good bargain – nevertheless, the deal involved a substantial amount of money, amounting to hundreds of gold coins. He also offered another Emilian and a Venetian painting, a ‘Greek Venus’ and finally an additional 1,230 Zecchini to the Florentine Academy, in exchange for twelve Tuscan altarpieces.39 As in Bologna, we see significant and particular pieces that Solly either had ordered or would have appreciated for his and the future museum’s collection: a Christ on the Cross by Filippino Lippi (1457–1504),40 a rich Bible scene believed to be a work of the painting nun Plautilla Nelli (before 1524–88),41 a majestic Madonna in Glory by Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449–94),42 a Last Judgement by the much soughtafter master Fra Angelico (c. 1395–1455)43 and among other works, a triptych (Plate 13) by Agnolo Gaddi (c. 1350–96).44 The first draft of the contract had listed the latter with the note ‘forse del Orcagna’. This note was then cancelled before the final contract was made, where it is mentioned without reference to any master. In Berlin, however,

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the painting appeared in the Solly collection with the attribution to Andrea Orcagna (1320–68). As there were no signatures, and as the art historian Gustav Friedrich Waagen (1794–1868), who collaborated from 1823 in preparing the picture gallery of the Royal Museum in Berlin and was to become its first director, rejected the attribution already in 1829,45 there must have been some information given by Cartoni to Solly above and beyond the sale contract from the Florentine Academy. Cartoni was officially allowed to export these works on 1 September 1818.46 In 1819, obviously on another tour, he tried to buy a Nativity in Bologna, again by Francesco Francia, this time a single one for 2,000 scudi, and may have succeeded, as the painting was in Scotland by 1854.47 This is an example of Cartoni’s assumed sales to other collectors who remain unidentified at present. In April and November of the same year, Cartoni requested and received permission in Florence to export several paintings by mostly scuola antica painters.48 Another year later, his name seems to appear for the last time on a Florentine export licence.49 After Solly had sold his collection in 1821, Cartoni tried to continue his trade. He succeeded with an altarpiece bought in Faenza, at that time attributed to Giovanni Santi (c. 1440–94), Raphael’s father.50 In this case, we know that it was the archaeologist and co-founder of the Königliches Museum (Royal Museum), Aloys Hirt (1759– 1837), who advised Solly to have this painting bought by Cartoni, with the objective of completing the ‘magnificent circle of masters, and scholars of Raphael’.51 Cartoni negotiated, but when he finally obtained the painting, Solly was no longer involved in the museum project and Cartoni sold it, not to him, but to the Prussians directly.52 He was paid 200 louis d’or, or 880 scudi.53 Due to the particular interest in this artist in Prussia, Cartoni also acquired some panels attributed to Fra Angelico, and offered them in Berlin via the local, Italianborn art dealer Gasparo Weiß (d. 1851) – for a noticeably large sum.54 Cartoni sold at least one other painting to the Polish–Prussian count Raczyński, a work by Ludovico Mazzolino (c. 1480–1529), similar to one that went to Solly.55 Together with two partners, Cartoni sold antiquities to the Prussian king, Frederick William III (1770– 1840): we know of an Egyptian vase from a Florentine collection, and a mosaic from Ostia.56 As mentioned earlier, Cartoni obtained the licence in 1824, and the name of one of his partners appears among the sellers in Prussia. At the other end of the connection, the licence for the ‘Giovanni Santi’ and an unidentified Deposition from the Cross, which appears to have been a work from northern Italy dating around 1500, has survived in the Roman archives.57 Similar documents dating from May 1821 and April 1822 concerned two Roman busts.58 However, in 1822 Papal officials foiled another transaction,59 and again in 1824. Perhaps this was the moment of Cartoni’s retirement from the paintings trade. This last one was once again a Nativity from the early Renaissance, first thought to be by Pietro Perugino (c. 1453–1523), but then recognized as a work by Giovanni di Pietro, called Lo Spagna (c. 1476–1528).60 As with the previous example, it came from a provincial monastery and had recently been returned after the Napoleonic wars; the painting had been taken to Paris as one of the spoils of war. Ironically, the restitution made it possible to resell the work at a profit, because it had been exhibited in the Louvre in

 Edward Solly, Felice Cartoni and Their Purchases of Paintings 179 the meantime. Consequently, the preference was to display it in similarly prestigious surroundings, this time in the Berlin museum. That is what the official report to the cardinal responsible assumed: Cartoni would have offered 400 louis d’or, or any sum requested, and supplied a copy, in order to receive the painting, which was desired for the Berlin museum.61 We cannot verify this, but we already know Cartoni’s negotiating strategy for the Giovanni Santi altarpiece, and he most probably did the same here as well. The interesting point is that it was not the monks who were keen to sell it, but a functionary of the Papal collections, who was responsible for the Capitoline Galleries. This gallery inspector, Agostino Tofanelli (1770–1834), collaborated with Cartoni to receive, store and pass the painting on to the Prussian diplomats.62 In fact, the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781–1841), a member of the commission to construct and arrange the Berlin Royal Museum, visited the atelier of another middleman, the painter Martin Verstappen (1773–1853), where the painting was – secretly? – shown to him.63 Due to the intervention of Vincenzo Camuccini (1771–1844), the head of the Vatican Galleries, court painter and valuer for officially exported artworks, the sale was prevented.64 In other cases, the same Camuccini had collaborated with Cartoni to buy and sell Old Master paintings, as a contract proves, and Solly’s acquisitions from Cartoni were probably also connected to Camuccini’s trading activities.65 Lo Spagna’s Nativity, however, became the property of the Papal State: Camuccini had it brought to the Vatican, restored and exhibited soon after.66 This is, incidentally, one of the most prominent examples of the way in which special interest in northern Europe for early modern artworks sharpened such an interest within Italy itself. A note in Cartoni’s hand kept among the papers of Christian Daniel Rauch (1777– 1857), sculptor and also employee of the Berlin museum commission, proves the intimate contact Cartoni had with Solly and the connoisseurs of Berlin. It discusses individual works of art and some names of middlemen in Italy to which we can refer.67 The note is dated 1817. Traces of the merchants’ network show that Cartoni was far more than a simple commissioner who brought in paintings for an English gentleman. And Solly was not a ‘milord’,68 as he was named in the sources, nor a ‘baron’, as he is sometimes referred to,69 but a tradesman himself, co-organizing the wholesale transfer of goods that had, up until that time, been immobile, or not considered ‘goods’ at all. Of course, we can draw comparisons with the eighteenth-century agent system, collector-traders, dispensations from the authorities and art-selling monks – a particularly prominent example being Raphael’s famous Sistine Madonna.70 However, the dimensions of the trade changed dramatically in the early nineteenth century. Cartoni and his colleagues or competitors transferred hundreds of paintings every year, at least initially. In addition, the market focus was increasingly on the oldest artworks. Finally, export laws, licences and documentation of acquisitions and sales regulated the interaction of merchants and officials. In this way, both Solly and Cartoni anticipated the nineteenth-century system of locally based but internationally functioning art dealers, building a network of relationships with officials in public institutions and with private collectors and foreign associates. An example of this development is the Sanquirico family from Milan. Alessandro Sanquirico (1777–1849) was a theatre painter of European-wide fame.71 His sons,

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Carlo and Antonio (life dates unknown), were initially picture dealers, like the above-mentioned Antonio Fusi, who was traversing Europe with stocks of paintings on offer.72 In the early 1820s, they also arrived in Berlin and offered pictures to the king and the future museum. About ten years later, they established a shop in Venice, which functioned as a kind of private museum and sales room. By the middle of the century, it had become a real institution and tourist attraction.73 In 1816 we can already see Gasparo Weiß, Solly’s and Cartoni’s intermediary, trying to establish his shop as a ‘museum’ in Berlin.74 This institutionalization lead to the existence of famous art galleries and shops in the following decades. Soon after the Napoleonic era, a new framework for art politics and the art market came into being, involving both heritage protection and the creation of public museums, that would have lasting influence until today.

Notes 1 This research is part of my MA and PhD theses, published in: Robert Skwirblies, ‘“Ein Nationalgut, auf das jeder Einwohner stolz sein könnte”. Die Sammlung Solly als Grundlage der Berliner Gemäldegalerie’, Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen, N. F., 51 (2009): 69–99; Skwirblies, Altitalienische Malerei als preußisches Kulturgut. Gemäldesammlungen, Kunsthandel und Museumspolitik 1797–1830 (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2017). I thank most sincerely Ms Susanne Meyer-Abich for her assistance in translating this text. 2 Skwirblies, Altitalienische Malerei and ‘Ein Nationalgut [. . .]’, with extended bibliography; Frank Herrmann, The English as Collectors: A Documentary Sourcebook, 2nd rev. edn. (London: John Murray 1999), 202–8; Christoph Martin Vogtherr, ‘Das königliche Museum zu Berlin. Planungen und Konzeption des ersten Berliner Kunstmuseums’, Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen N.F., 39 (1997): Beiheft, 86–92, 194–7; Cécile Lowenthal-Hensel, ‘Die Erwerbung der Sammlung Solly durch den preußischen Staat’, Neue Forschungen zur Brandenburg-Preußischen Geschichte 1 (1979): 109–59. An exhibition is planned at the Gemäldegalerie Berlin in 2021, accompanied by a publication. 3 Berlin, Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz (hereafter GStA PK), I. HA Rep. 76 Ve Sekt. 15, Abt. 1, Nr. 4, Bd. 1, fol. 95v and 109v, Aloys Hirt’s and Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s reports to the minister Altenstein, 7 and 15 April 1822. 4 On the art market of this period, see Roberta Panzanelli and Monica Preti-Hamard, eds, The Circulation of Works of Art in the Revolutionary Era, 1789–1848 (Rennes and Los Angeles: Presses Universitaires de Rennes and Getty Research Institute, 2007); and Skwirblies, ‘The Widening of the Market for Italian Old Master Paintings in the Bourbon Restoration Period (1815–1830)’, in Old Masters Worldwide: Markets, Movements and Museums, 1789–1939 ed. Susanna Avery-Quash and Barbara Pezzini (London: Bloomsbury, 2020). 5 Skwirblies, Altitalienische Malerei, 101; GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 76 Ve Sekt. 15, Abt. 8, Nr. 13, fol. 18–19, Solly to Altenstein, 7 September 1819, authors’ translation. Although Solly emphasized his genuine interest in the quality of works he collected, as well as his non-commercial intentions and his ‘patriotism’ in leaving

 Edward Solly, Felice Cartoni and Their Purchases of Paintings 181 his collection in Berlin (Ibid., fol. 1–2: Solly to Altenstein, 8 June 1819), the sale options in England to which Solly repeatedly refers during the negotiations confirm his position as a speculator and trader. See Lowenthal-Hensel, ‘Die Erwerbung’; Skwirblies, Altitalienische Malerei, 287–97. 6 Skwirblies, ‘Ein Nationalgut [. . .]’, 76. Missing numbers from the inventory of 1818 make it probable that there were early re-sales from Solly’s first collection in Berlin before it was taken in deposit by the Prussian state in late 1819 and officially purchased in late 1821. 7 Skwirblies, Altitalienische Malerei, 287–97. 8 Skwirblies, ‘Ein Nationalgut [. . .]’, 98–9. 9 Lowenthal-Hensel, ‘Die Erwerbung’; Skwirblies, Altitalienische Malerei, 294–7. 10 Those were at least 400 pieces (author’s database), cfr. Skwirblies, Altitalienische Malerei, 297–302; Skwirblies, ‘Ein Nationalgut [. . .]’, 81–90. 11 GStA PK, as quoted above (‘Commissionar’ resp. ‘Commissär’ from whom Solly had bought most of his pictures), see Skwirblies, Altitalienische Malerei, 405–15. 12 Ibid., 52–6, 393–40, 581–8 (documentation). 13 Ibid., 582, Reghellini to the minister Altenstein, 8 May 1818. On Reghellini’s art trading see also: Mauro Sartori, ‘Il Raffaello scomparso è stato a Schio’, Il Giornale di Vicenza, 27 February 2016. 14 Andrea Emiliani, Leggi, bandi e provvedimenti per la tutela dei beni artistici e culturali negli antichi stati italiani, 1571–1860, 3rd edn. (Florence: Polistampa, 2015), XXI–XXVII, 26–30, 64–95, 107–39, 161–8. 15 Skwirblies, Altitalienische Malerei, 405–7, 567–79 (documentation), see also below n. 28. 16 Ibid., 68–75, 386–418. Export licences are kept in the Academy archives in Milan (Archivio di Brera, Fondo Carpi, E VI) and Florence (Archivio Storico delle Gallerie Fiorentine, Prima sezione, vols 41ff.,1817ff.), and in the State Archive in Rome (Archivio di Stato, Camerlengato I, tit. IV, no. 37, fasc. 19). 17 Ibid., 5–6, 392–5, 545–61. 18 On the Cartoni family see Rosella Carloni, ‘Maestranze specializzate nella Roma del Settecento: I Cartoni, storia di una famiglia di scalpellini’, Bollettino dei Musei Comunali di Roma, N. S. 21 (2007): 5–48. 19 Melchior Missirini, ed., Memorie per servire alla storia della Romana Accademia di S. Lucia fino alla morte di Antonio Canova (Rome: de Romanis, 1823), 354. 20 GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 76 Ve Sekt. 17, Abt. VII, Nr. 10, Beiheft A, fol. 4v–5r, inventory, 1837. 21 Filippo Marini Recchia, Daniela Pacciani and Francesca Panico, ‘Scavi ad Ostia nell’Ottocento’, in Ostia e Portus nelle loro relazioni con Roma, ed. Christer Bruun and Anna Gallina Zevi (Rome: Acta Instituti Romani Finlandiae, 2002), 249. A report on a sarcophagus found by the Cartoni brothers in Ostia is dated 1826. See Kunstblatt 59 (24 July 1826): 233. 22 The Madonna Colonna-Lante: Skwirblies, Altitalienische Malerei, 649–50, no. 8.40. 23 Bullarii Romani continuatio [. . .], vol. 7. 2, Pii VII. continens pontificatum ab anno XVI usque ad finem, Prati: Alberghetti, Aldina, 1852, 2308–10, no. 1079. 24 Renzo De Felice, Aspetti e momenti della vita economica di Roma e del Lazio nei secoli XVIII e XIX (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1965), 270. 25 Roberta Lapucci, ‘Dai conventi soppressi ai Musei di Berlino’, Paragone 41 (1990): 78, presumed to be Pietro Benvenuti, who was also the estimator who signed Cartoni’s

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export list in Florence: Florence, Archivio Storico delle Gallerie Fiorentine [hereafter ASGF], 1818, fasc. 60, 1 September 1818. For Cartoni’s contacts with Roman artists and those responsible for public collections, Agostino Tofanelli and Vincenzo Camuccini, see below. 26 Venice, Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Segr. Stato, 1818, rubr. 42, fasc. 1, fol. 45, the Academy of Fine Arts of Bologna to Cardinal Alessandro Lante, 11 February 1818. 27 Skwirblies, Altitalienische Malerei, 8–9. 28 Ibid., 576–9, see also Gian Piero Cammarota, Le origini della Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna (Bologna: Minerva, 1997), vol. 1, 626–58 and vol. 2 (2004), 26–7, 172–9; Lapucci, Dai conventi soppressi ai Musei di Berlino; Andrea Ugolini, ‘Su alcune pale del Quattrocento e Cinquecento rimosse da Bologna’, Paragone 37 (1986): 49–56. Andrea Ugolini’s latest study sums up the transaction adding some recently discovered whereabouts and attributions: ‘Rivedendo la vendita Cartoni del 1818’, Strenna storica Bolognese 67 (2017): 289–99 (my sincere thanks to Mr Ugolini). 29 Cammarota, Le origini della Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna, vol. 2, 26, 33. 30 Marco Palmezzano, Madonna and Child with St Petronius and a Dominican Saint (Berlin: Gemäldegalerie SPK, Kat.-Nr. 137): Skwirblies, Altitalienische Malerei, 567, no. 6.2.1, and 617, no. 7.III.72. The attributions refer to Rainald Grosshans et al., Gemäldegalerie Berlin. Gesamtverzeichnis (Berlin: Nicolai, 1996). 31 Madonna and Child, with Infant St John, and Saints Roch, Paul, John and Petronius (Berlin: Gemäldegalerie SPK, Kat.-Nr. 1280): Skwirblies, Altitalienische Malerei, 568, no. 6.2.5. 32 Giacomo and Giulio Francia, Madonna and Child with Infant St John (Berlin: Gemäldegalerie SPK, Kat.-Nr. 281); Ibid., no. 6.2.6. 33 Master of the Ambrogio Saraceni, St Sebastian with Saints John and Roch (Berlin: Gemäldegalerie SPK, Kat.-Nr. 1610); Ibid., no. 6.2.7. 34 Bartolomeo Ramenghi, called Bagnacavallo, Madonna and Child, with Saints Eligius and Petronius (Berlin: Gemäldegalerie SPK, Kat.-Nr. 280); Ibid., 569, no. 6.2.8. 35 Madonna and Child with Saints (Berlin: Gemäldegalerie, Kat.-Nr. 335); Ibid., no. 6.2.10. 36 In the contract with Cartoni attributed to Tiburzio Passerotti, as an altarpiece with many saints, ‘guasto’, referring to a Composition of many Saints who adore the Virgin in the Bolognese gallery inventory: it included a Pietà in a stucco frame, which Aloys Hirt attributed to ‘Symone’ = Simone Martini (Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, Kat.-Nr. 1516); Ibid., 572, no. 6.2.23. 37 Claudio Pescio, I mai visti. Capolavori dai depositi degli Uffizi (Florence: Giunti, Firenze Musei, 2001), 68f., Ugolini, ‘Su alcune pale [. . .]’: 50, 54; Lapucci, ‘Dai conventi soppressi’, 77, 82. 38 See Heinrich August Ottokar Reichard, Der Passagier auf der Reise in Deutschland und einigen angränzenden Ländern [. . .] (Weimar: Gädicke, 1801), 246, where 1 Scudo equals 5 fl. and 1 Zecchino equals 2-2.4 fl.; cfr. Friedrich Albrecht Niemann [= Johann Friedrich Krüger], Vollständiges Handbuch der Münzen, Maße und Gewichte aller Länder der Erde (Quedlinburg and Leipzig: Basse, 1830), 308, where 1 Scudo in Bologna equals 5 Lire or 10 Paoli while in Florence it equals 7 Lire; Ibid., 376: where 1 Zecchino in Florence = 13 1/3 Lire or 20 Paoli; cfr. G[iuseppe] V[allardi], Itinerario Italiano o sia Descrizione dei viaggi per le strade più frequentate alle principali città d’Italia [. . .] (Milan: Vallardi, 1828), XLIII, where 1 Scudo [romano] equals 10 Paoli and 1 Zecchino of Florence equals 21 Paoli.

 Edward Solly, Felice Cartoni and Their Purchases of Paintings 183 39 ASGF, 1818, fasc. 46. 40 Skwirblies, Altitalienische Malerei, 575, no. 6.2.34 and 619, no. 7.III.83 (lost work, Kat.-Nr. 96 of the Berlin Museum collections). 41 Antonio del Ceraiolo, Christ in the House of Martha (Berlin: Gemäldegalerie SPK, Kat.-Nr. 250); Skwirblies, Altitalienische Malerei, 575, no. 6.2.33 and 627, no. 7.IV.20. 42 Ibid., 576, no. 6.2.39, and 631, no. 7.IV.45 (lost work, Kat.-Nr. 88 of the Berlin Museum collections). 43 Ibid., 578, no. 6.2.44 and 607, no.7.III.5 (lost work, Kat.-Nr. 57 of the Berlin Museum collections). On Fra Angelico’s fame in Berlin, see Ibid., 81–2, 140–58 and 454–61. 44 Ibid., 577, no. 6.2.42, and 603, no. 7.II.74 (Berlin: Gemäldegalerie SPK, Kat.-Nr. 1039). 45 Ibid., for Waagen’s revisions of attribution, see Ibid., 589, and Vogtherr, ‘Das königliche Museum zu Berlin’,152–3. 46 ASGF, 1818, fasc. 60. 47 Cammarota, Le origini della Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna, vol. 2, 183–6; Ugolini, ‘Su alcune pale [. . .]’: 50, Peter Humfrey, Glasgow Museums: The Italian Paintings (London: Unicorn, 2012), 68–71 (inv. 146): from the collection of Archibald McLellan. 48 ASGF, 1819, fasc. 55, 6 April/22 November 1819. 49 ASGF, 1820, fasc. 61, 5 January 1820. 50 Giovanni Battista Bertucci, Madonna with Saints (Berlin Gemäldegalerie SPK, Kat.-Nr. 120); Skwirblies, Altitalienische Malerei, 641–2, n° 8.17. 51 GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 76 I Sekt. 30 Nr. 47 Bd. 2, fol. 98, Schinkel and Hirt to Altenstein, 19.8.1823. 52 Ibid. 53 GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 76 Ve Sekt. 15 Abt. I Nr. 3 Bd. 4, fol. 63, note by Ingenheim (copy), 16.9.1823, fol. 64, note by Friedländer & Co (copy), after 20.12.1823. 54 GStA PK, I.HA Rep. 76 I Sekt. 30 Nr. 47 Bd. 2, fol. 99, Schinkel and Hirt to Altenstein, 19.8.1823 (250 Zechines). 55 Jan Białystocki and Michał Walicki, Europäische Malerei in polnischen Sammlungen (Warzaw: PIW, 1957), 481; Vittoria Romani, ‘La pittura a Ferrara negli anni del ducato di Alfonso I.’, in Dosso Dossi. La pittura a Ferrara negli anni del ducato di Alfonso I., ed. Alessandro Ballarin (Cittadella: Bertoncello artigrafiche, 1995), vol. 1, 252–4 (Christ Teaching in the Temple, to Solly, The Tribute Money, to Raczyński). 56 GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 89 Geheimes Zivilkabinett Nr. 20453, fol. 141, inventory of purchased artworks, 1829–30. 57 Rome, Archivio di Stato di Roma [hereafter ASR], Camerlengato I tit. IV, b. 37, fasc. 19, fol. 70 (21 May 1821). 58 Ibid., fol. 40 (22, 28–9 April 1822). 59 Valter Curzi, ‘Tutela e storiografia artistica’, in Giuseppe Vernazza e la fortuna dei primitivi, ed. Giovanni Romano (Alba: Fondazione Ferrero, 2007), 153. 60 Ibid. 61 ASR, Camerlengato II, tit. IV, b. 158, fasc. 288, promemoria to Cardinal Pacca, s. d. (May 1824). Cfr. Valter Curzi, Bene culturale e pubblica utilità (Rome: Minerva, 2004), 143–6. 62 Skwirblies, Altitalienische Malerei, 345–9; see also Ilaria Sgarbozza, Le spalle al Settecento. Forma, modelli e organizzazione dei musei nella Roma napoleonica (Rome: Musei Vaticani, 2013), 217–29.

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63 Ibid., 242. 64 Ibid., 650, no. 8.41. 65 Federica Giacomini, Vincenzo Camuccini e il restauro dei dipinti a Roma nella prima metà dell’Ottocento (Rome: Quasar, 2007), 109; Pier Ludovico Puddu, ‘I disegni Lanciani di Pietro Camuccini’, Studi sul Settecento Romano 31 (2015): 284, n. 62. My sincere thanks to Mr Puddu, whose research on the Camuccini brothers and their activities on the art market is forthcoming. 66 Curzi, Tutela e storiografia artistica; Giacomini, Vincenzo Camuccini, 178, 199. 67 Berlin, Staatliche Museen SPK, Zentralarchiv, Nachlaß Rauch, VII.1.b, fol. 29. 68 Cammarota, Le origini della Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna, vol. 2, 26 quotes the negotiation documents, the academy officials to papal authorities, 1818. 69 Lapucci, Dai conventi soppressi, 77. 70 Claudia Brink, ‘Der Ankauf der Sixtinischen Madonna–“un sì prezioso tesoro”’, in Die Sixtinische Madonna. Raffaels Kultbild wird 500, ed. Andreas Henning (Munich, London, New York: Prestel, 2012), 68–73. 71 Vittoria Crespi Morbio, Alessandro Sanquirico: teatro, feste, trionfi, 1777–1849 (Turin: Allemandi, 2013). 72 Skwirblies, Altitalienische Malerei, 400–404 and 516, with further references. 73 Marilyn Perry, ‘Antonio Sanquirico, Art Merchant of Venice’, Labyrinthos 1–2 (1982): 67–111. 74 Gasparo Weiß, Beschreibendes Verzeichniß der Gemälde des Museums (Berlin: Weiß, 1816); Skwirblies, Altitalienische Malerei, 141–2, 378–9, 383–4; and Skwirblies, ‘Gasparo Weiß’ “Museum” in Berlin, 1816: A New Century’s Art Shop’, Journal of Art Market Studies (forthcoming).

12

‘To see once again the glorious picture by Moretto before it is forever lost for Rome’1 How an artist’s position in the canon of taste was enhanced in the nineteenth century Corina Meyer

In 1846, Charles Eastlake (1793–1865), the Keeper of the National Gallery in London, wrote to his director colleague in Frankfurt, Johann David Passavant (1787–1861): ‘I heard of the acquisition of the Fesch Moretto for the Städel Institute[;] a commission was sent for it from this country. but not enough.’2 Eastlake is referring here to the painting Madonna with Child and the Four Latin Church Fathers (Plate 14)3 by Alessandro Bonvicino, known as Moretto da Brescia (1498–1554), painted in the 1540s, which belonged to Cardinal Fesch (1763–1839) in Rome and went under the hammer at the auction of his collection in 1845. This painting was widely seen as a real treasure by the European collectors who travelled to Italy in order to bid for this ‘capital work of Rome’4 and bring home the ‘trophy’; among these were the kings of Denmark and Bavaria, a negotiator for the Vatican collection, a British delegation and Passavant from Frankfurt. Thanks to Passavant and his skills, the large pala has adorned the Städel Museum in Frankfurt (as can be seen in a 3D reconstruction of the 1878 hang when it was displayed in the centre of the west wall of ‘Kleiner Oberlichtsall’).5 (Figure 12.1). Today, Moretto’s picture might not immediately thrill us and we may wonder at the ardent passion for this artist in 1845.6 This chapter will scrutinize Passavant’s agency with the aim of understanding the reasons and motives that led him, the director of a smaller civic gallery, to bid successfully for a work by this admired artist against the financially better-situated galleries in Europe. Therefore, it will examine how Passavant developed his expertise and scholarship in order to carry out his initial role as an agent. Ultimately focusing on the Moretto acquisition at the Fesch auction, the chapter will trace the artist’s reception and show how Passavant and his colleagues helped to boost Moretto’s position in the canon of taste.

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Figure 12.1  Display at the Städel Museum, Frankfurt 22 February, 2018, with the Fesch Moretto painting of the Madonna with Child and the Four Latin Church Fathers.

Passavant as agent Passavant had been working with the Städel Art Institute for almost three decades by 1845; from 1817 on as external consultant and agent and from 1840 as director of the institute.7 He came from a Frankfurt family of merchants and had been trained as a painter at Jacques-Louis David’s atelier in Paris before he arrived in Italy in 1817, where he became part of the Nazarene artists’ circle. With his German–Roman fellows, including the Nazarenes, the scholar Carl Friedrich von Rumohr (1785–1843) and the art dealer Giovanni Battista Metzger (1771–1844), Passavant discussed numerous works of art while visiting many collections. At the same time, the Städel Art Institute was founded in Frankfurt.8 Endowed by the private banker Johann Friedrich Städel (1728–1816) in his will, it was led by a management board, the so-called Administration, which had just opened the institute: they had only taken the oath in March 1817, then organized the original holdings of art of the donor, started buying new artworks and were able to open the Institute in June 1817 with a new display of this reworked collection. The citizens of Frankfurt followed the proceedings keenly and commented on every step critically. Passavant, at that time residing in Rome, was kept informed through letters from friends and family. Since he cherished a sort of patriotism, he decided to increase the reputation of the gallery in his hometown by gathering excellent works of art – in much the same way as his colleagues in Berlin and Munich – aiming to enable it to compete with the greater galleries. In his first letter in 1817, Passavant offered to procure works directly from the Italian art market for the new institution in Frankfurt.9 The Administration agreed

 ‘The Glorious Picture by Moretto’ 187 and provided a budget of 400 ducats.10 This acceptance might seem remarkable today, as they were accepting an offer from a man who had no previous experience as an art agent. The Administration commissioned Passavant in their letter of acceptance to examine all those works that had already been approved as ‘classical’ by local art experts.11 The Administration had previously bought paintings or entire collections from friends of the Institute,12 exchanged paintings for new purchases with art dealers13 or bought from dealers abroad, such as Gruyter in Amsterdam or Grossi in Rome. Now, with Passavant, they gained an agent with a different focus: whereas dealers were interested in making money, Passavant was mainly interested in improving the gallery’s holdings from a professional point of view. Between 1817 and 1824, the lists of paintings Passavant recommended to the Städel Art Institute, apart from northern painters, consisted mainly of Italian pictures from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries. Passavant’s 1817 letter listed Sienese and Florentine works from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries from the holdings of the well-known art dealer Giovanni Battista Metzger in Florence.14 Further letters referred to works in renowned collections which came onto the market in Italy, such as Lucien Bonaparte’s ‘smaller but most exquisite collection’ with paintings mainly by Italian masters from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, among them Raphael’s Madonna of the Candelabra and Poussin’s Massacre of the Innocents.15 Passavant mentioned their splendid provenance, such as the Medici, Borghese and Orléans collections; some were even mentioned by Vasari.16 Further vendors were recommended, such as the art dealer Cadet, brother of the painter (Vincenzo) Camuccini (1771–1844), or Joseph Fesch, who by the 1820s had already attempted to negotiate an annuity for life with Prussia.17 Passavant’s early career as an agent for the Städel was unfortunate. Following his initial letter in 1817, only three paintings were shipped in 1818, which caused a conflict with the Administration of the Städel Art Institute that lasted for many years.18 He had chosen to recommend works by Filippino Lippi, Sodoma, and Domenico Bartoli (today Girolamo di Benvenuto) from Metzger’s holdings without having seen them himself, relying instead on his colleague Rumohr’s opinion and approval.19 Since Passavant thought highly of the latter’s expertise, he trusted him implicitly. Therefore, Passavant expected that his choices would be appreciated in Frankfurt, instead of which they turned out to be partly incompatible with the taste of the Frankfurt board. Whereas artists in Italy were discovering and appreciating Trecento and Quattrocento painting, the board in Frankfurt was interested in works by masters such as Domenico Fetti, Carlo Dolci and Pompeo Girolamo Batoni.20 Consequently, they returned the Lippi and Sodoma (both probably went to Berlin later).21 Since Passavant conveyed his views on the differences between the expertise in Rome and that of the Administration in his letters, it is hardly surprising that the Administration did not appreciate his behaviour towards them and spurned him.22 Passavant, however, soon considered that he alone was eligible to conceptualize the new museum collection and, in the long term, he expected to be offered a substantial position at the institute. With this in mind, Passavant tried to establish his reputation and to become indispensable by presenting his achievements to the Institute. He kept

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sending recommendations from the art market to them and started adding comments on the quality and the state of the art works, even writing treatises.23 Tension between the two parties, fuelled by the conflict over the first shipment, might explain why the Administration declined every offer for years (besides enforced savings due to a pending lawsuit)24 and why Passavant’s recommendations also decreased. The Bartoli/Benvenuto was the only picture from the first shipment that the Administration kept and, more significantly, the only work Passavant would successfully procure until 1832. Therefore, Passavant’s direct influence in those early years on the concrete development of the holdings was very slight.

Passavant’s studies and travels In order to understand how Passavant was eventually able to enhance Moretto’s reputation, this section will show how Passavant built up his expertise. He would finally become visible through acquisitions and professional exchanges with other leading figures in the European art world, in addition to his publications. Upon his return to Frankfurt in 1824, Passavant realized that he would not get the position at the Städel that he wanted (and for which he had to wait nearly another two decades until 1840). In consequence, he shifted his own professional focus and decided in the late 1820s to study Raphael (which ultimately led to his book in 1839). In order to conduct research into Raphael’s artworks and into archival documents on him, Passavant travelled and studied throughout Europe.25 While travelling, he conducted research not only on Raphael as originally intended but also in other fields. He quickly turned this newly acquired knowledge about art into publications, such as his writing on the works of Michelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael in England which appeared in the Kunstblatt in 1832;26 he also wrote a report on art in British collections and a description of English artists of his time in his book Kunstreise durch England und Belgien in 1833.27 His further research on earlier Netherlandish art and that from Cologne was disseminated in the Kunstblatt in 1833, as well as in his Kunstreise and he continued publishing on this topic in the same journal.28 In this way, while mainly conducting research on Raphael, he produced ‘side results’ that were ‘favourably noticed’ all over Europe.29 He gained a broad overview and a deep understanding of the different regions of European art history, on which he could draw in later years when asked for advice by colleagues or when improving the stock of art as director of the Städel.30 With his particular interest in Raphael’s works in Lombardy, Passavant went back to Italy from 1834 to 1836. As a sideline, he studied the early Lombard school and was to become its promoter. Largely neglected, Passavant restored interest in it, claiming that Lombard art of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was the second-most important school after Tuscan art, evolving from Giotto and Leonardo da Vinci and leading to artists of the first rank, such as Giovanni Battista Moroni, Lorenzo Lotto, Girolamo Romanino and Moretto, who were, according to Passavant, all vom Geist

 ‘The Glorious Picture by Moretto’ 189 der Venetianer angeweht (touched by the Venetian spirit).31 His writings, published in the Kunstblatt, led directly and indirectly to the development of the appreciation and market for Lombard art, in which Moretto was a key figure.32 His studies of Lombard art also led to recommendations of paintings to Frankfurt and a significant purchase.33 The collection of Count Teodoro Lechi in Brescia contained works by Lombard artists and other northern Italians, which Passavant recommended to the Städel in 1835. Although in this instance the Administration did not purchase anything (some works, such as those by Moretto later went to Berlin, acquired by Gustav Waagen),34 Passavant soon made a fortunate discovery: a painting by Moretto, which only two years before, had been prominently mentioned in Ticozzi’s Dictionary of Artists.35 This he offered to the Städel: a Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints Anthony Abbot and Sebastian (Figure 12.2), today attributed to Moretto’s circle,36 and the purchase was approved.37 With this acquisition of a work of art by one of the ‘first rank’ masters of Lombard art, Passavant gained a painting for Frankfurt, which art historian Franz Kugler later appraised in his Handbuch der Geschichte der Malerei as ‘incomparably more relevant than [those Morettos in London, St.  Petersburg, Dresden]’.38

Figure 12.2  Circle of Alessandro Bonvicino, known as Moretto da Brescia, Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints Anthony Abbot and Sebastian, c. 1540. Oil on canvas, 18.4 × 252.7 cm. Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main. © Städel Museum Frankfurt.

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The reception of Moretto’s paintings Moretto’s reputation had declined somewhat since Vasari had stated in the second half of the sixteenth century that no artist was able to handle vestments and textiles better than Moretto, praised his ‘lifelike heads’ and compared him to Raphael.39 His rediscovery by Passavant in the 1830s coincided with attention being paid to him by some of the key figures in the art and museum world at that time, such as Carl Friedrich von Rumohr, Gustav Friedrich Waagen, Franz Kugler and, later, AlexisFrançois Rio, Otto Mündler, Jacob Burckhardt, Joseph A. Crowe, Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle and Giovanni Morelli.40 It will be argued here that these men, together with Passavant, through their critical writing gave Moretto a place in art history, boosting his reputation and desirability among museum directors. Their publications prove that they sang from the same hymnal. The first and most often quoted moment is in a letter by the young artist Franz Pforr (1788–1812), who told his friend Passavant, as early as 1806, about his great admiration for Moretto’s Santa Giustina (then attributed to Pordenone) in Vienna.41 In fact, it must have been one of the few works by Moretto that could be seen in any public collection at that time, as his religious works were and are still found to a great extent in Brescia and its surroundings.42 When Passavant helped to bring Moretto back to public attention again by the purchase for Frankfurt in 1835, he seemed to be one of the first. The scholars mentioned earlier must have all been exchanging ideas in the 1830s as their simultaneous interest demonstrates: purchases were commented on in publications. For instance, Waagen must have had Passavant in mind when he wrote in 1838 that Moretto had only recently been rediscovered.43 Three years later, in 1841, Waagen himself bought two Moretto pictures from the above-mentioned Lechi collection for Berlin.44 This was followed by the cleaning of four Moretto pictures in San Clemente, in Brescia and soon, as Passamani wrote, more Moretto paintings left the country.45 A vogue had started. What these men principally appreciated in Moretto’s work was his ‘unique’ ability to incorporate the Roman ‘sense for disegno, greatness of characters, simplification of forms’, combined with Venetian harmony of colour and light to form his individual style.46 Today, Moretto’s works are perceived as characterized by a certain Lombard realism, Venetian light and silvery colour, particularly those from the 1530s.47 Moretto’s paintings also reflect influences from central Italian painters. This illustrates what Mina Gregori has discussed, that Brescian artists were also conscious of artistic movements in Tuscany and Rome at the beginning of the sixteenth century.48 Through publication and purchase, Passavant helped to ensure that, from the 1830s, Moretto was characterized as ‘a master of the first rank,’ as Waagen put it.49 Mündler even exceeded this and claimed that Moretto was ‘one of the greatest geniuses [plus beaux génies] and most pure and greatest artists of the 16th century’.50 The passion of Passavant and his contemporaries for Moretto can be traced back to the Catholic Nazarene taste.51 It was Passamani who connected the appreciation of Moretto’s art to their own artistic purposes and the desire to create a new aesthetic in their religious

 ‘The Glorious Picture by Moretto’ 191 art, with their harmonious and often static compositions.52 This permitted Moretto’s paintings to be seen in a new light. As a religious painter, Moretto had focused on compositions easily recognizable from a distance and rather static, without narrative accessories, in harmony with Counter-Reformation taste.53 It was said that Moretto painted his Madonnas while fasting and praying.54 Passamani argued that the Nazarenes had a spiritual affinity with Moretto as they thought certain artists were able to create religious works of high quality because of their religious attitude. This was perfectly applicable to early Renaissance painting and to Moretto, as well as ultimately to themselves.55 In fact, Passavant and his contemporaries facilitated a change in art history, as Passamani put it, and opened up a new area to the art market.56 After their revival of Moretto, many works left Italy. After Passavant’s early acquisition of the Moretto in 1835, he was finally able to reap the rewards of his labours. All his studies on the history of art from different regions and periods, which he had been discussing with his fellow scholars and network of colleagues, had sharpened his knowledge and expertise; moreover, his publications had garnered him renown in Europe.57 He published his intense study on Raphael (Rafael Von Urbino und Sein Vater Giovanni Santi) in 1839, which was internationally well received and still has a good reputation.58 The following year, he was finally appointed director of the Städel Art Institute. After two decades of disappointments, Passavant had been acknowledged at last through his new position (which had an important effect on his negotiations) and he was endowed with purchasing power.59

Passavant’s hunt for the Moretto at the Fesch auction As director, Passavant would soon achieve a major coup. And here, we get back to the Fesch Moretto, which opened this chapter. Passavant went back to Italy in 1845 to buy another Moretto for the Städel Art Institute. His journey took place on the occasion of the above-mentioned Fesch auction, for which he remained in Rome over several weeks. Cardinal Joseph Fesch (1763–1839) was a half-uncle of Napoléon Bonaparte, who had gathered a renowned art collection and intended to sell it for the aforementioned annuity for life around 1820 (when Passavant offered it to the Städel), but he eventually kept his art.60 After Fesch’s death in 1839, his collection came onto the market bit by bit. The sale attracted the major players of the European art world. Thus, wanting ‘a Moretto’ at the Fesch auction was to compete with them and their institutions. Fesch’s Moretto, the Madonna with Child and the Four Latin Church Fathers (see Plate 14), had adorned the altar of S. Carlo al Corso, the church of the Lombard congregation in Rome, from 1672 to 1796 and was attributed to Pordenone (c. 1483–1539), or partly to Titian.61 It later passed into Cardinal Fesch’s possession, as a Pordenone, and was re-attributed to Moretto by Ransonnet only shortly before the auction. This pala was then considered as ‘one of the most famous works by Moretto’, and ‘second to none’.62 Considering the artist’s reputation at that time, this was a trophy. Its ‘great dignity and solemnity’63 were still celebrated at the turn of the century and later.

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The significance of Passavant’s successful acquisition of this work becomes clear when considering who else was interested in the painting. This included the clergy of the Church San Carlo al Corso itself, who Passavant feared might consider their previous sale a mistake and wish to gain it back;64 his Nazarene colleague, Johann Friedrich Overbeck (1789–1869), who was still living in Rome and was well connected with the Minister of Finance, and who argued for the painting entering the Vatican collection, a proposal supported by the Academy of S. Luke;65 and foreign buyers, among them a British delegation and the kings of Denmark and Bavaria, all of whom longed to possess that work. Despite his relatively small budget,66 Passavant outbid his rivals. Thus, Passavant could finally call this Moretto his own for 13,450 scudi.67 Before leaving for Frankfurt, he exhibited it at Colombo in Rome: ‘Young and old people from every nation come in crowds to see once again the glorious picture by Moretto before it is forever lost for Rome’, he wrote, adding: Everybody agrees that the four Fathers of the Church have never been depicted as more dignified and complete than here by Moretto. Even the rich city of Rome no longer possesses any painting that unifies such qualities of colour, drawing, arrangement and noble expression while being conserved nearly perfectly, as our Moretto does. [. . .] And then we own a work that, apart from Dresden, no other city in Germany can boast of having equal value.68

However, the painting was not considered flawless: Passavant emphasized the handling of the four Church Fathers, in contrast to Mary’s head and the child’s posture which ‘bothered’.69 He also published in his 1855 catalogue that the quality of the Madonna in the first purchase (see Figure 12.2) exceeded this one; that in the former picture, Moretto had expressed the divine character of the Blessed Virgin in a truly noble manner while this one was ‘not of the master’s best’.70 The flaws of the Madonna and Child continued to trouble several commentators.71 The later director of the Institute, Heinrich Weizsäcker, picked up on this complaint in his 1899 volume Meisterwerke der Gemälde-Galerie des Städelschen Kunstinstituts, stating that if viewers considered the Madonna less accomplished ‘one cannot argue with them’.72 As though wishing to maintain the reputation of the painting for the next century, Weizsäcker emphasized that a picture of this great artistic concept should not be defined by details. Today’s catalogue supports the authors’ opinions and states that the Madonna seemed to have challenged the artist.73 However, this blemish did not harm the overall perception of the painting and it was considered, according to Passavant in 1855, ‘one of the most beautiful among so many outstanding paintings in Fesch’s gallery in Rome, which was so rich of art works’.74 It seemed to be difficult for it to become anything but ‘the greatest adornment of the Städel Institute’.75 After the sale, Passavant reported to the Administrator Heinrich Anton Cornill d’Orville (1790–1875) in Frankfurt: ‘If there was just half of the interest and sympathy for my purchases in Frankfurt as there is here in Rome, I would be received in triumph.’76 Indeed, Passavant had gained a great reputation in other regions and even

 ‘The Glorious Picture by Moretto’ 193 more so abroad for his expertise, built up over decades. He was asked for advice by his international colleagues, including the British,77 a position of esteem that people in Frankfurt painfully denied him at home.78 In his letter, Passavant expressed his hopes for the appreciation of his prize,79 which had been so well received among his European colleagues. Indeed, he must have believed that artists in Frankfurt would celebrate the arrival of the Fesch pictures, as they eventually did.80 Clearly the acquisition of this highly contested painting added to Passavant’s personal prestige and importance. Various considerations must have influenced Passavant’s choice of this painting, among them his previous studies in Lombardy, as well as the desire for Moretto at this time, its distinguished provenance and, finally, competition clearly fuelled his fervour for this acquisition. When Passavant received Eastlake’s letter in 1846 regarding the unsuccessful British attempt to acquire the Moretto, quoted at the beginning, Passavant informed Eastlake that The king of Denmark had 9,000 Scudi offered, the one of Bavaria [Ludwig I, 1786– 1868] 13,400; luckily, I could offer 50 Scudi more and acquire it for us, however, difficulties were created in getting it out of Rome, although authorization was assured to Cardinal Fesch. When the King of Bavaria came to the Städel Institute last fall [1845] in order to see the Moretto again, he said to me, you bought this Moretto away from me, which I had desired to own for such a long time. Now the defeated comes to the victor!81

This is a remarkable statement, which needs to be considered in a political and sociological setting. The city of Frankfurt did not belong to a principality in the German-speaking countries, such as Prussia or Bavaria; instead, its governance was administered directly under the Kaiser as an independent and free imperial city. Citizens organized themselves and deliberated politics in bourgeois councils. Therefore, if the king of Bavaria said to a citizen of Frankfurt ‘Now the defeated comes to the victor!’, the meaning of the sentence goes beyond Moretto’s picture because this was a question of societal status, in the context of political developments in the first half of the nineteenth century. This event probably comforted Passavant even more, confirming his work and competence. He clearly saw this as a vindication of Frankfurt’s position in Germany when he later published the aforementioned quotes that this ‘capital work of Rome’ was the ‘greatest adornment’ of the Institute. It must have been a great loss for Ludwig I, who made an offer to Passavant to take the picture if people in Frankfurt did not want it.82 Passavant concluded in his letter to Eastlake that the king had spoken to numerous people about this loss: ‘After remarking to many other people he still cannot let it go that this work of art escaped him’, Passavant wrote. ‘So ardent is his passion!’83 Presumably, we may conclude, as passionate as Passavant, who so greatly wished to acquire it that he waited for weeks and then, despite his smaller budget, offered a higher amount than even the kings of Denmark and Bavaria in order to gain this masterpiece. In conclusion, as a member of the European art and museum worlds, Passavant developed his expertise and scholarship by extensively viewing and studying works

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of all different kinds of European art history, conducting research on his travels throughout Europe, sharing intense exchanges with his colleagues and compiling his research results in publications. Through these developments, he was able to carry out his role as an agent, which was to be crucial to his becoming the director of the Städel Art Institute later. Passavant’s writings helped to boost Moretto’s reputation, culminating in the Fesch auction, where his acquisition of the Moretto finally brought him glory.

Notes 1 ‘Noch einmal das herrliche Bild von Moretto [. . .] sehen, ehe es für im[m]er für Rom verloren geht’: Passavant to Cornill d’Orville, 20 May 1845, Frankfurt am Main, University library UB (hereafter UB Ffm), Ms. Ff J. D. Passavant A I b No. 33, f 52r. This essay, focusing on Passavant’s role, is based on a paper delivered to the conference ‘The Art Market, Collectors and Agents: Then and Now’, in Paris on 20, October 2016. 2 UB Ffm, Ms. Ff J.D. Passavant A II e No. 164, f. 247v: Eastlake to Passavant, 6 May 1846. They sent William Woodburn to bid for it, see Nicholas Penny, The Sixteenth Century Italian Paintings, vol. 1: Paintings from Bergamo, Brescia and Cremona (National Gallery Catalogues, London: National Gallery), 145–50, esp. 147. 3 Inv. No. 916, Alessandro Bonvicino called Moretto da Brescia (Brescia c. 1498– Brescia 1554), Madonna with Child and the Four Latin Church Fathers, c. 1540–50, canvas, 290.4 × 195.8 cm, Frankfurt am Main: Städel Museum. On the painting see especially Jochen Sander, Italienische Gemälde im Städel 1300–1550. Oberitalien, die Marken und Rom (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 2004), 352–61; Pier Virgilio Begni Redona, Alessandro Bonvicino il Moretto da Brescia (Brescia: La Scuola, 1988), 400–2; and references below. 4 ‘ein Hauptbild Roms’, Johann David Passavant, Einige Worte über die Sammlungen des Städel’schen Kunst-Instituts (Frankfurt am Main: August Osterrieth, 1849), 8. 5 http:​/​/zei​​treis​​e​.sta​​edelm​​useum​​.de​/s​​chaum​​ainka​​i​-rae​​ume​/k​​leine​​r​-obe​​rlich​​t​saal​​-west​/​ #klo​​w-1. 6 Martin Sonnabend, ‘Raffael, Passavant und das Städelsche Kunstinstitut’, in Raffael. Zeichnungen, ed. Joachim Jacoby and Martin Sonnabend exh cat. (Munich: Hirmer 2012), 68; Sander, Italienische Gemälde, 357. 7 On Passavant see Susanna Avery-Quash and Corina Meyer, ‘“Substituting an Approach to Historical Evidence for the Vagueness of Speculation”: Charles Lock Eastlake and Johann David Passavant’s Contribution to the Professionalization of Art-Historical Study through Source-Based Research’, Journal of Art Historiography 18 (June 2018): 4, footnote 5. 8 Recent works on the founding history of the Städel Museum are the Festschrift to the bicentennial, Städel Museum (ed.). . . . zum Besten hiesiger Stadt und Bürgerschaft. 200 Jahre Städel. Eine Festschrift (München: Prestel, 2015); Meyer, Die Geburt des bürgerlichen Kunstmuseums; see also http://zeitreise​.staedelmuseum​.de. 9 See Meyer, ‘“(. . .) denn gute Gemälde hatte ich versprochen, gute habe ich geliefert, aber, aber (. . .)”. Ein folgenreicher Streit um die Erwerbung eines Filippino Lippi im

 ‘The Glorious Picture by Moretto’ 195 Städelschen Kunstinstitut um 1820’, RIHA Journal 57 (October 2012); see also Meyer, ‘Working on “Depth of Thought” and “Serious Gravity”: Johann David Passavant and Early Italian Paintings’, in The ‘Discovery’ of the Trecento in the Long Nineteenth Century, ed. Louise Bourdua et al., Predella. Journal of Visual Arts 41–42 (2019): 45–60, XX–XXIII. 10 Frankfurt am Main, Archive of the Städel Museum (henceforth StäA Ffm), Minutes of the Administration, (henceforth Minutes) vol. 1, 31 January 1818, § 80, Passavant’s answer and complaint about the small amount which would not enable him to buy more pictures: StäA Ffm, box P.1, fascicle P.17a, Passavant to the Administration, 5 May 1818. The letters do not convey on what terms he procured a painting, nor whether and to which extent he was paid for his achievements. In 1824, he sent a calculation of the travel expenses which he had incurred for that purchase, ibid., fascicle P.17a. He later exchanged the Lippi for a Penni and, due to the pending lawsuit, this was not resolved until 1830 (he had advanced the amount for the art dealer over a period of years). On 11 May 1830, the Administration finally determined that they would pay his expenses, in Minutes, vol. 1, 11 May 1830; they refer to his last letter on this topic from 9 May 1830, No. 370, in box P.1, fascicle P.17b. He sent several calculations of his and Metzger’s expenses in his letters (in box P.1, fascicle P.17a and P.17b), but they do not explicitly say anything about his commission. Furthermore, they used different currencies (ducats, scudi, guilder, louis d’or, zecchini, etc.) and calculated back and forth. 11 Ibid., Minutes, vol. 1, 31 January 1818, § 80. Passavant would complain that he was not permitted to act on his own assessments. 12 The collections of Frankfurt citizens: Sophia Franziska de Neufville-Gontard and the Administrator Johann Georg Grambs, see Meyer, Die Geburt des bürgerlichen Kunstmuseums, 184–9. Also from artists who were already commissioned by the institute, see Meyer, Die Geburt des bürgerlichen Kunstmuseums, 189–90. 13 The art dealer Arbeiter from Mainz, for instance, delivered a Domenico Fetti and received, besides an amount of money, eighteen paintings from the original Städel holdings in exchange, see Ibid., 190. 14 StäA Ffm, box P.1, fascicle P.17b, no 39, Passavant to the Administration with a list of paintings attached, 29 November 1817; see also Meyer, denn gute Gemälde; and Meyer, Working on ‘Depth of Thought’. 15 Ibid., fascicle P.17a, no 39, Passavant to the Administration, 5 May 1818, author’s translation. 16 Ibid., fascicle P.17b, no 39, Passavant to the Administration, 29 November 1817, 16 February 1823, 12 June 1835. 17 Ibid., fascicle P.17a, no 39, Passavant to the Administration, 5 May 1818, with a list of paintings. 18 A Madonna and Child by Filippino Lippi (lost today), an Ecce Homo by Sodoma (lost today), and a predella with the Carrying of the Cross, Crucifixion and Lamentation by Domenico Bartoli (today attributed to Girolamo di Benvenuto, still at the Städel Museum); Ibid., fascicle P.17b, No. 39, Passavant to the Administration, with a list of paintings, 29 November 1817. See also Meyer, denn gute Gemälde. 19 Ibid., fascicle P.17a., Passavant to the Administration, 7 November 1818. 20 Ibid., fascicle P.17b, No. 39, Passavant to the Administration, with a list of paintings, 29 November 1817; Ibid., fascicle P.17a, Passavant to the Administration, with a list

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of paintings, 5 May 1818; Meyer, Die Geburt des bürgerlichen Kunstmuseums 269 and 290, footnote 1898. 21 This procedure took several years; see Meyer, denn gute Gemälde. 22 See Ibid., box P.1, fascicle P.17a, ‘Passavant to the Administration’, 5 May 1818. 23 Ibid. Further comments in among others: Ibid., fascicle P.17b, No. 39, Passavant to the Administration, 29 November 1817; Treatise in ibid., fascicle P.17b, Passavant to the Administration, 11 August 1834; Sander, Um für eine der ausgezeichnetesten Sammlungen, 18–19. 24 They were not legally permitted to invest between 1821 and 1828, see Meyer, Die Geburt des bürgerlichen Kunstmuseums, 163–4. 25 Passavant travelled from Berlin and Dresden via England and the Netherlands to the Lower Rhine, later back to Italy. His journey home from England took him to Bruges, Ghent, Brussels, as well as to the northern centres of the Netherlands, such as Amsterdam, continuing to Düsseldorf, Cologne, Aachen. 26 Passavant, Kunstreise durch England und Belgien, nebst einem Bericht über den Bau des Domturms zu Frankfurt am Main (Frankfurt am Main: Siegmund Schmerber, 1833), vii. Passavant, ‘Nachrichten über einige in England befindliche Werke von Leonardo da Vinci, Michel Angelo Buonaroti und Raphael Sanzio’, in Kunstblatt, nos. 66–74 (1832). 27 Passavant, Kunstreise durch England und Belgien. On Passavant’s interest in British art of his time, see Adolph Cornill, Johann David Passavant, Ein Lebensbild, 2v. (Frankfurt am Main: Selbstverl. des Vereins, 1864–5), 42–3. Passavant asked Eastlake in 1846 about the progress of British art: London, Victoria & Albert Museum, National Art Library (henceforth NAL): MSL/1922/416/19-26. 28 Passavant, ‘Nachrichten über die alt-niederländische Malerschule’, in Kunstblatt nos. 81–90 (1833). His name is not mentioned, but in Kunstblatt no. 54, 6.7.1843, 225, he wrote that he had previously published on the same topic in Kunstblatt 1833; Passavant, ‘Nachrichten über die alte Kölner Malerschule’, in Kunstblatt 10–13 (1833); Passavant, ‘Beiträge zur Kenntniß der alt-niederländischen Malerschulen des 15ten und 16ten Jahrhunderts’, in Kunstblatt, 3 (12 January, 1841): 9ff.; Passavant, ‘Beiträge zur Kenntniß der alten Malerschulen in Deutschland vom 13ten bis in das 16te Jahrhundert’, in Kunstblatt, (2 November, 1848): 361ff.; Passavant, ‘Beiträge zur Kenntniß der alt-niederländischen Malerschulen bis zur Mitte des sechszehnten Jahrhunderts’, in Kunstblatt, 54, (6 July, 1843) 225ff. Passavant, Kunstreise durch England und Belgien. 29 The Kunstreise as a ‘veritable mine of information’ was ‘favourably noticed’ in Belgium, England and Germany, followed by reviews in Kunstblatt and The Athenaeum; Waagen also referred to Passavant’s book in his Works of Art and Artists in England later, see Colin Bailey’s introduction to M. Passavant, Tour of a German Artist in England (1836; Wakefield: EP Publishing, 1978), vol. I, v–xx; its positive reception in England is also mentioned by Cornill, Passavant, 56. 30 Not only later as director of the Institute but also in exchanges with colleagues, such as Eastlake, who asked his advice about the invention of oil painting in 1846: see Meyer and Avery-Quash, ‘“Connecting links in a chain of evidence” – Charles Eastlakes and J. D. Passavants quellenbasierter Forschungsansatz’, in Kulturelle Transfers zwischen Großbritannien und dem Kontinent zwischen 1680-1968, ed. Christina Strunck (Petersberg: Michael Imhof, 2019), 82–97.

 ‘The Glorious Picture by Moretto’ 197 31 Passavant, ‘Beiträge zur Geschichte der alten Malerschulen in der Lombardei’, in Kunstblatt, No 66 (16 August 1838), 261. 32 Cornill, Passavant, 58 and 50. 33 Passavant, ‘Beiträge zur Geschichte der alten Malerschulen in der Lombardei’, in Kunstblatt, 66–72, 74–5 (1838). Alfonso Litta, ed., Johann David Passavant. Contributi alla storia delle antiche scuole di pittura in Lombardia (1838), Fonti e strumenti per la storia e l’arte di Bergamo, 3 (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2014). 34 The collection of Count Teodoro Lechi in Brescia. Among them a Moretto painting, Virgin and Child with Saint Anna and the Baptist, which Passavant offered as no. 39. This painting was sold to Gustav Waagen in 1841 for Berlin (inv. no. 197, destroyed in 1945), see Fausto Lechi, ed., I quadri delle collezioni Lechi in Brescia storia e documenti (Firenze: Olschki, 1968), 181, no. 89. In the same letter, Passavant also recommended paintings from the collection of Count von Ingenheim, see StäA Ffm, box P.1, fascicle P.17b, ‘Passavant to the Administration’, appendices of his letter of 12 June 1835. 35 Stefano Ticozzi, Dizionario degli architetti, scultori, pittori, intagliatori in rame ed in pietra, coniatori di medaglie, musaicisti, niellatori, intarsiatori d’ogni età e d’ogni nazione (Milan: Schiepatti, 1830–1833), vol. 4, 140–1. 36 Inv. no. 869, circle of Alessandro Bonvicino called Moretto da Brescia, (Brescia c. 1498 – Brescia 1554), Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints Anthony Abbot and Sebastian, c. 1540, canvas, 183.4 × 252.7 cm, Frankfurt am Main: Städel Museum. Del Ponte dismissed the attribution to Moretto in 1898, Paolo del Ponte, L’Opera del Moretto (Brescia: Canossi, 1898), 94; Sander, Italienische Gemälde, 362–9, esp. 365 on the attribution. 37 He must initially have sent it as a suggestion, then the Administration kept it and wrote to him on 6 April about their delight. He paid fl. 6,600 for the purchase on 18 May 1835 and responded to their letter on 12 June: StäA Ffm, box P.1, fascicle P.17b, ‘Passavant to the Administration’, 12 June 1835. See also http:​/​/zei​​treis​​e​.sta​​ edelm​​useum​​.de​/k​​unstw​​​erk​/8​​69/ and Sander, Italienische Gemälde, vi, xvi, 364–5; Cornill, Passavant, 57–8. It was already included in the Städel catalogue from 1835: Verzeichniss der öffentlich ausgestellten Kunstgegenstände des Städelschen KunstInstitutes (Frankfurt am Main: Naumann, 1835), 67–8. They added there that the Dizionario degli Architetti, Scultori Pittori by Stefano Ticozzi (see note 43) had called it an excellently lovely (‘vorzüglich schön’) work of art by Moretto. The same entry appears in the 1844 catalogue revised by Passavant (Frankfurt am Main: Koenitzer, 1844), 54. 38 Kugler mentioned some paintings by Moretto in London, St Petersburg, Dresden, ‘[u]ngleich bedeutender als die letztgenannten Werke ist das grosse Altarblatt, welches sich jetzt im Städel’schen Institut zu Frankfurt a.M. befindet’, in Franz Kugler, Handbuch der Geschichte der Malerei seit Constantin dem Grossen: Italienische Schulen (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1847), vol. 2, 54. Crowe & Cavalcaselle also mention it but found it surpassed by the second acquisition: Joseph A. Crowe, Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, A History of Painting in North Italy: Venice, Padua, Vicenza, Verona, Ferrara, Milan, Friuli, Brescia, from the Fourteenth to the Sixteenth Century, vol. 2 (London: John Murray, 1871), 407, fn. 3. We can see how it was hung on the walls at the Städel in June 1835 in Mary Ellen Best’s watercolours of the Städel’s rooms, the ‘Saloon of the Italian school, in Städel’s Institute, Frankfurt/M.’, with Moretto’s Madonna and Child Enthroned with

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Saints Anthony Abbot and Sebastian (Figure 12.2) in the middle of the wall. The watercolour is reproduced in Important 19th Century European Paintings, Drawings and Watercolors (Sotheby’s, New York, 19 October 1984), fig. 33. A later display of Italian pictures including this Moretto at the Städel in 1878 can be seen on: http:​/​/zei​​ treis​​e​.sta​​edelm​​useum​​.de​/s​​chaum​​ainka​​i​-rae​​ume​/k​​leine​​r​-obe​​rlich​​t​saal​​-west​/​#klo​​w-3. It was hung on the east wall of ‘Kleiner Oberlichtsaal’, with Moretto’s Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints Anthony Abbot and Sebastian (Figure 12.2) to the right of the door. 39 Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori scultori ed architettori, ed. Gaetano Milanesi (Firenze: G.C. Sansoni, 1878–85), vol. 6, 1881, 506. See also Passavant, Galerie Leuchtenberg: Gemälde-Sammlung seiner K.H. des Herzogs von Leuchtenberg in München: in Umrissen gestochen von J.N. Muxel (Frankfurt am Main: Joseph Baer, 1851), 5. 40 A full account of scholarship on Moretto cannot be given here; for the most relevant publications on the reception see Begni Redona, Alessandro Bonvicino; Gian Alberto Dell’Acqua, La ‘Scuola Bresciana’ e il Moretto, in Alessandro Bonvicino "Il Moretto", ed. Gian Alberto Dell’Acqua, exh. cat. (Brescia, Bologna: Nuova Alfa Editoriale, 1988), 11–15; Bruno Passamani, ‘Il “Raffaello bresciano”: Formazione ed affermazione di un mito’, in Dell’Acqua, Alessandro Bonvicino, 16–28; Gian Alberto Dell’Acqua, Alessandro Bonvicino; Penny, The Sixteenth Century, 145–50. 41 Passamani, Il ‘Raffaello bresciano’, 18–19; Penny, The Sixteenth Century, 147. 42 There are ‘a few’ in collections outside Italy now, Penny, The Sixteenth Century, 145. 43 Waagen, Kunstwerke und Künstler, vol. 2, 1838, 6. Whereas Penny suggested that Waagen influenced Passavant (The Sixteenth Century, 147) I suggest here that Passavant was one of the first, and that they all influenced each other through discussion. 44 See note 34 here; Lechi, I quadri delle collezioni, 181, no. 89; and Penny, The Sixteenth Century, 146. 45 Penny, The Sixteenth Century, 146; Passamani, Il ‘Raffaello bresciano’, 23. 46 Waagen, Kunstwerke und Künstler, vol. 2, 1838, 6; author’s translation; see also Passavant, Leuchtenberg, 5. 47 Sander, Italienische Gemälde, 351; Andrea Bayer, ‘North of the Apennines. SixteenthCentury Italian Painting in Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna’, in The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, 60, no. 4 (Spring 2003): 4–64, here 27; Passamani, Il ‘Raffaello bresciano’; Mina Gregori, ‘Sulla tracce delle storiografia ottocentesca: qualche osservazione aggiuntive sulla pittura sacra del Moretto’, in Dell’Acqua, Alessandro Bonvicino, 29–32. 48 Gregori, Sulle tracce delle storiografia ottocentesca, 32. 49 Waagen, Kunstwerke und Künstler, 2, 6. 50 Mündler, Essai d'une analyse, 44–5. 51 Sander, Italienische Gemälde, 357; Sonnabend, Raffael, 68; Penny, The Sixteenth Century, 146, 147; Passamani, Il Raffaello bresciano, 17–19. 52 Ibid., 18. 53 Especially in the 1540s, Sander, Italienische Gemälde, 351; ‘grown stiff ’ (erstarrt), Gombosi, Moretto, 17. Bayer, North of the Apennines, 30. 54 Passamani, Il Raffaello bresciano, 22–3. 55 Ibid., 26–8.

 ‘The Glorious Picture by Moretto’ 199 56 ‘preparando con ciò le condizioni per una profonda svolta nella storia dell’arte’, ibid., 20, 23. 57 Bauereisen and Stuffmann, Von Kunst und Kennerschaft; Osterkamp, RaffaelForschung; Schröter, Raffael-Kult; Sander, Um für eine der ausgezeichnetesten Sammlungen, 17–25; Meyer and Avery-Quash, Connecting Links in a Chain; AveryQuash and Meyer, Substituting an Approach. 58 Passavant, Rafael Von Urbino und Sein Vater Giovanni Santi: In Zwei Theilen mit vierzehn Abbildungen (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1839–58); on the reception of the study today: Osterkamp, Raffael-Forschung, 403–26. 59 Although the Administration still had the final say on the budget and acquisitions, his position for internal negotiations had clearly changed. 60 Olivier Bonfait et al., eds, Le goût pour la peinture italienne autour de 1800, prédécesseurs, modèles et concurrents du cardinal Fesch: Actes du colloque 1-4 March 2005 (Ajaccio: Musée Fesch, 2006); Dominique Thiébaut, Ajaccio, musée Fesch. Les Primitifs italiens: Inventaire des collections publiques françaises 32, (Paris: Ed. de Réunion des musées nationaux, 1987), 5–42; Philippe Costamagna, La collection de peintures du cardinal Joseph Fesch, in Chefs-d’oeuvre du musée Fesch, ed. Alain Luporsi (Ajaccio: Musée Fesch, 2005), 10–21. 61 Titi described the painting there in 1675, attributed to Pordenone or Titian then: Filippo Titi, Studio di pittura, scoltura e architettura, nelle chiese di Roma (Roma: Giuseppe Piccini, 1675), 227. On the provenance and attributions see Sander, Italienische Gemälde, 354–6, and http:​/​/zei​​treis​​e​.sta​​edelm​​useum​​.de​/k​​unstw​​​erk​/9​​16/ 62 ‘I più celebri fra i suoi quadri sono [three in Brescia, one in Berlin and the Städel Madonna]’, Vasari/Milanesi, Vite, vol. 6, 505, fn 1; Rio, Léonard, 310; ‘Etwas den wichtigsten Bildern in Berlin und Frankfurt gleich zu Schätzendes möchte Italien indess (Brescia ausgenommen) kaum mehr besitzen’. Burckhardt, Cicerone, 979. 63 del Ponte, L’Opera del Moretto, 95; see also Venturi 1929 quoted in Begni Redona, Alessandro Bonvicino, 400–2. 64 The clergy of San Carlo al Corso in Rome wanted to take this altarpiece back, which had been sold fifty years previously, saying the sale had not been legal: UB Ffm, Ms. Ff J.D. Passavant A I b No. 32, f 50r: Passavant to Cornill d’Orville, 4 April 1845. 65 Ibid. 66 Passavant mentioned in his letter to Cornill that others (deliberately) forced up the prices and he had to retain his funds for the Moretto, Ibid. See also on a smaller budget at the Willem II sale in The Hague in 1850: Jochen Sander, ‘The Acquisition of Paintings and Drawings at the Willem II Auction by the Städel Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt’, Simiolus 19 (1989): 123–35, esp. 124. 67 For the prices see below. Ibid., 52v–53r, Passavant to d’Orville, 20 May 1845. He also bought two portraits by Ferdinand Bol and van Dyck; the latter is now attributed to Lucas Franchoys II: Inv. no. 917, Lucas Franchoys II, Portrait of a man, c. 1640–50, oil on canvas, 81.6 × 66.2 cm, Frankfurt am Main: Städel Museum; Agnes Tieze, Flämische Gemälde im Städel Museum 1550–1800, part 1: Künstler von A-R (Petersberg: Michael Imhof, 2009), 206–14; and zeitr​​eise.​​staed​​elmus​​eum​.d​​e​/kun​​stwe​r​​k​/917; no. 918, Ferdinand Bol (1616–80), Portrait of a Young Man, 1644, oil on canvas, 95.7 × 79.4 cm, Frankfurt am Main: Städel Museum; León Krempel, Holländische Gemälde im Städel 1550–1800, vol. 2: Künstler geboren 1615 bis 1630 (Petersberg: Michael Imhof, 2005), 37–43; and http:​/​/zei​​treis​​e​.sta​​edelm​​useum​​.de​/k​​unstw​​​erk​/9​​18/

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68 UB Ffm, Ms. Ff J.D. Passavant A I b No. 33, 52r–52v: ‘Passavant to d’Orville’, 20 May 1845, author’s translation. 69 Ibid., 52v. 70 Passavant, Wanderung, 8. 71 Crowe/Cavalcaselle, History of Painting, vol. 2, 407, fn. 3; del Ponte, L’Opera del Moretto, 95; Rio, Léonard, 310; see also Sander, Italienische Gemälde, 356. 72 Heinrich Weizsaecker, Die Meisterwerke der Gemälde-Galerie des Städelschen Kunstinstituts in Frankfurt a. Main: 60 Lichtdrucke mit erläuterndem Text (München: F. Bruckmann, 1899), 7. 73 Sander, Italienische Gemälde, 357. 74 Passavant, Wanderung, 7; author’s translation. 75 Ibid., 7. 76 UB Ffm, Ms. Ff J.D. Passavant A I b No. 33, 52r: ‘Passavant to d’Orville’, 20 May 1845; author’s translation. 77 See Avery-Quash/Meyer, Substituting an Approach. 78 His biographer Adolph Cornill wrote that Passavant had gained a great reputation everywhere (he mentions Germany, England, Belgium), but not in Frankfurt. There he was regarded as neither an artist nor a scholar, Cornill, Passavant, 56. Meyer, denn gute Gemälde. 79 ‘In this way I believe I have successfully concluded my mission and confidently look forward to the Administrator’s receiving of me and my acquisitions soon, but more confidently to all contemporary artists’ approval of my purchases.’ (author’s translation): UB Ffm, Ms. Ff J.D. Passavant A I b No. 33, 53r: Passavant to Orville, 20 May 1845. 80 Passavant, Einige Worte, 8 81 NAL, MSL/1922/416/22, n.p, ‘Passavant to Eastlake’, 15 May 1846; author’s translation. 82 Ibid. Passavant already knew of the king’s passion in 1835, and his biographer Cornill noted that he could easily have sold the first Moretto painting (Figure 12.2) to Ludwig who longed for a Moretto but added that Passavant chose Frankfurt in order to help the gallery; Cornill, Passavant, 57. 83 NAL, MSL/1922/416/22, n.p, ‘Passavant to Eastlake’, 15 May 1846. Passavant even published that in 1849, Passavant, Einige Worte, 8–9.

13

‘It is not my fault if in all the private collections, the Dutch paintings surpass all.’1 Thoré-Bürger’s promotion of Dutch art in the Parisian art market of the 1860s Frances Suzman Jowell

Paris in 1867 teemed with visitors drawn to the city by the Exposition Universelle and with Parisians eager to view the huge exhibition. ‘Paris is truly a little panic-stricken,’ exclaimed W. Bürger (Figure 13.1) in his review of the Universal Exhibition: ‘We have too much to see, and too much to do.’2 He reminded his readers of several other current art exhibitions: the annual Salon; exhibitions devoted to Marie-Antoinette and to Empress Josephine; independent exhibitions by contemporary artists – Auguste Clésinger, Théodore Rousseau, Gustave Courbet and Edouard Manet; saleroom displays of collections such as the galerie Salamanca and the regular auctions at the Hôtel Drouot; and finally, the great public museums permanently open to the public. Bürger added further to this embarras de richesses by contributing an enthusiastic chapter ‘Les Collections Particulières’ for a new two-volume Paris-Guide in which he reviewed the plethora of distinguished private collections in the city.3 He was especially well qualified for this task: as a prominent art critic, respected art historian, collector and active agent in the art market. ‘W. Bürger’ was the pseudonym of Théophile Thoré, the political journalist and art critic (1807–69) whose earlier career in the Parisian art world had been drastically interrupted by the 1848 Revolution when his radical political activism resulted in a fugitive ten-year exile from France. However, from the mid-1850s le citoyen Thoré re-invented himself as the assiduous art historian ‘W. Bürger’, so that his otherwise proscribed writings on art could be published in France. By the time he returned to Paris, shortly after the amnesty of 1859, he was recognized as a leading authority on the Old Masters, most notably on the seventeenth-century Dutch school. Retaining his new name, he resumed his career as an art critic, continued with his art historical researches and scholarly connoisseurship,4and also played various authoritative roles in the art market; as agent, consultant, collector, exhibition organizer and publicist.5 Before discussing W. Bürger’s influence in the Parisian art market of the 1860s, it should be noted that this was not his first foray into commerce, for the younger Thoré had earlier

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Figure 13.1 Flameng, Portrait of W Bürger, Etching. Frontispiece of  Salons de W.Bürger 1861 à 1868, vol.1, 1870. Courtesy of the author. enjoyed an enthusiastic stint as agent, consultant and art-dealer during the 1840s. In June 1842, together with Paul Lacroix, he had founded and directed the Alliance des Arts: ‘a central Agency for the expertise, the sale, the purchase and the exchange of libraries, painting galleries, art collections’. Its ambitious prospectus described its intention to facilitate and improve ‘commercial transactions relating to books and pictures’.6 Thoré had embarked on this project shortly after his release from a year’s imprisonment in Sainte-Pélagie for subversive republican journalism.7 Regretfully conceding that his political vocation was too hazardous for the time being, although somewhat ambivalent about relying on commerce for his livelihood, he threw himself energetically into his new occupation, determined to make a success of the enterprise. (For one thing, he hoped to repay his mother for the fine she had paid on his behalf.) During the next few years, Thoré organized several major sales, purchased and sold collections, travelled in Europe in search of works, advised collectors generally and published several articles on collections and on the market in the Bulletin of the Alliance, despite the organization running into debt and facing constant administrative difficulties. However, he had not completely given up journalism: political articles were cautiously published under a pseudonym or abroad, while his controversial art criticism appeared in various journals or newspapers, especially in Le Constitutionnel, where he was appointed official art critic from 1844. His major Salon reviews8 and many other articles revealed his knowledge of private and public collections – all of which would stand him in good stead when as ‘W. Bürger’, he returned to writing about art during his exile and then on his return to France in 1860.

Paris-Guide, 1867 Many of his earlier views about the art of the past were to inform his later judgements about Parisian collections, as can be seen in his chapter: ‘Les

 ‘It Is Not My Fault If in All the Private Collections . . .’ 203 Collections particulières’ in the 1867 Paris-Guide. Here, Bürger celebrated the city as the centre of the European art market and also for its hundreds of superb private collections. He encouraged his readers – visitors and Parisians alike – to explore these collections of Old Masters and contemporary art, despite all obstacles: ‘It must be said that access to many of these galleries is quite difficult, or, at least, requires letters of introduction, “references” as the English say, complicated procedures, and almost diplomatic intrigues: personal connections, indirect recommendations, determination . . . and much time.’9 Bürger’s account began with the most famous of all, Lord Hertford’s gallery, followed by other eminent collectors such as Baron James de Rothschild, Emile and Isaac Pereire, comte Duchatel, Baron Seillières, M. Schneider, Francois Delessert, the duc de Galiera and M. La Caze. He mentioned a few well-known collections ‘by name, if not by sight’, and listed names of others with which he was evidently familiar, such as Oudry, Mnizchez, Double, Perier, Odier – not forgetting M. Bürger as the proud owner of mostly Dutch works, which, he adds archly, he naturally finds the most beautiful in the world.10 Besides the seventeenth-century Dutch school, he also celebrated the currently popular eighteenth-century French school, headed by Watteau. His partiality is not surprising, for he had over the years contributed to the rising critical fortunes of both these national schools. During the 1840s, the young Théophile Thoré had campaigned for the art historical and critical appreciation of Watteau and eighteenth-century French art in the face of official ignorance and neglect. Bürger now welcomed its current prominence, reminding his readers that whereas ‘thirty years ago the 18th-century French school languished on the pavement stalls, at the entrance of bric-a-brac shops, it nowadays constitutes the foundation of many distinguished collections’.11 As for seventeenth-century Dutch art, his appreciation of the petits maitres had been a major theme in his art criticism during the 1840s. It was even more relevant that W. Bürger was now respected as the leading scholar and connoisseur of the seventeenth-century Dutch school, which he championed as if it were his new cause. His pioneering researches and re-appraisals first appeared in catalogue-reviews of Old Master exhibitions and private collections, but it was especially his two volumes on the Dutch museums of 1858–60 that inaugurated a new era in the historiography of the school.12 He had also shone new light on several individual artists such as Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Carel Fabritius and, most famously, on Vermeer with whose name he is ‘indissolubly linked’.13 It is not surprising that the two illustrations for his chapter in the Paris-Guide are Watteau’s Gilles (Paris, Louvre) from the La Caze Collection and Vermeer’s Officer and Laughing Girl (Frick Collection, New York), then owned by his client Léopold Double. Bürger was gratified that his art historical and critical judgements were now vindicated in the art market, as shown by the record prices recently paid for seventeenth-century Dutch paintings at celebrated public sales. He cited, for example, the Pourtales sale of 1865 where Hals’s Portrait of a Man (The Laughing Cavalier), Wallace Collection, London) was bid up to a sensational 51,000 francs by Lord Hertford, and

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the van Brienen sale a few months later where Hals’s ‘fier petit Gentilhomme’, the small informal portrait of Heythuysen, (private collection) was acquired by James de Rothschild (the disappointed underbidder for the Laughing Cavalier) for 25,000 francs and at which Hertford bought Hobbema’s Wooded Landscape for 90,000 francs and de Hooch’s Boy Bringing Bread for 50,000 francs.14 Among other (more discreetly purchased) collections that were renowned for their seventeenth-century Dutch paintings, Bürger listed the Pereire Collection, which boasted about a dozen Dutch paintings by prominent artists such as Rembrandt, Hals, Ter Borch, Aelbert Cuyp, van der Neer, Hobbema, Barend van der Meer, Ruisdael and Van de Velde. Bürger’s ironic disclaimer that he should not be blamed if the Dutch paintings in private collections ‘surpass all others’ is obviously tongue-incheek, especially as it is made with reference to the collection owned by the brothers, Emile and Isaac Pereire, with whom he was directly involved as agent, consultant and publicist. Several unpublished letters to a close family friend, Baptistin Guilhiermoz, who was in charge of the Pereire gallery, reveal Bürger actively sourcing paintings to boost the collection of Old Masters.15 An important discovery, for example, was Frans Hals’s Portrait of a Woman (private collection) (Figure 13.2): I have found a masterpiece, a portrait by Frans Hals, almost as beautiful as a Rembrandt and as beautiful as the Woman by Cuyp that you can hang next to it. . . . I have arranged for the picture to be sent to the rue Faubourg S. Honoré. It will be one of the paintings most admired by artists. I don’t know a more beautiful Frans Hals!

He adds that he is sure to be able to find at least another dozen paintings for the gallery.16 He publicized, praised and reproduced the portrait in his lengthy review of the Pereire gallery in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts.17 He especially noted Hals’s rendering of hands: ‘The two clasped hands are marvellous. . . . One can hardly see how it is done, with just a few bold brush strokes that exactly convey the form and movement.’18 Bürger’s advice that contemporary artists should go to study the hands of this superb portrait19 brings to mind Degas’s facetious quip that Manet ‘did not paint fingernails because Frans Hals did not depict them’.20 Since the late 1850s Bürger had recommended Hals’s bravura brushwork and animated portraiture as a model for contemporary artists, and he had ensured that Hals’s Portrait of a Woman was displayed in 1866 in Paris at the Exposition Retrospective. His researches on Hals were to culminate in two articles in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts in 1868, in which he documented Hals’s current popularity, especially in Paris where several of the finest of Hals’s paintings had recently surfaced on the art market.21 Bürger decisively established Hals’s crucial relevance to the seventeenth-century Dutch school as the leading artist of the young Dutch republic, as a precursor to Rembrandt, whom he then almost equalled. Only ten years earlier, Charles Blanc, in his mammoth series Histoire des peintres de toutes les écoles, had placed him in the

 ‘It Is Not My Fault If in All the Private Collections . . .’ 205

Figure 13.2  W. Unger, after Frans Hals, Portrait of a Woman in the Pereire Collection. Etching, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, vol. XXI, 1866. Courtesy of the author. Flemish school.22 By 1867 Bürger could note with confidence: ‘May one of the most spirited portraitists in the world, may Frans Hals, regain his legitimate status.’ Bürger contributed to the widespread reappraisal of Frans Hals’s historical role and artistic value, but in the case of Vermeer Bürger had the pleasure of restoring ‘an unjustly eclipsed personality’,23 as he reminded Isaac Pereire when urging him to purchase Vermeer’s Geographer (Städel Museum, Frankfurt) (Figure 13.3). Bürger explained to Isaac Pereire that it was owned by ‘an art lover from Cambrai who had paid 2500 francs at a time when my imprudent fanaticism had not yet prompted the rise in value of this master’. He informed Pereire that he had persuaded the owner to sell (‘cede’) this masterpiece and outlines the current financial negotiations: the initial price of 4,000 francs now reduced to 3,500, with the possibility of obtaining it for 3,000. He added: That is not expensive, because I myself have in vain offered 3,000 to M Grevedon for his Femme à la Toilette, (Young Woman with Pearl Necklace, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin) to hang next to my Pianiste by van der Meer. . . . These extremely rare paintings give so much interest to a gallery, and this one would be greatly admired by artists. You should purchase it.24

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Figure 13.3  After Vermeer, Geographer, from the Pereire Collection. Drawing by M. Bocourt, engraved by M. Chapon. Gazette de Beaux Arts, 1866, p.561. Engraving. Courtesy of the author. A scrawled note in Pereire’s hand confirms his agreement. In this case, Bürger, by acting as an intermediary, was agent for both the seller and the purchaser, persuading the one to sell and the other to buy and negotiating the price. (It is not known what his terms were or whether he received a commission.) And in a sense, he was also promoting his own rediscovery of Vermeer. In a more unusual transaction, the impecunious Bürger borrowed 4,000 francs from his client collector, Léopold Double, in order to secure the elusive Young Woman with a Pearl Necklace (Figure 13.4) from Henry Grevedon: ‘I am buying the painting either for myself or for you. We’ll see afterwards. I therefore need 4000 francs by Friday . . . If the painting is for you, the account will be settled. If I keep the painting for myself, I will repay you within a few weeks. . . . I am overjoyed by this conquest.’25 Bürger retained this painting, but soon provided Double with a ‘superb’ Vermeer which had recently surfaced on the market: Officer and Laughing Girl. Double’s appreciative letters warmly acknowledged the contribution of Bürger’s enlightened taste in helping to create the ‘Burger-Double gallery’ or ‘our gallery’ and for teaching him how to love their cherished Dutch paintings. Thanking Bürger for finding him a portrait attributed to Frans Hals,26 he wrote ‘Thanks to you, the Burger-

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Figure 13.4  After Vermeer, Jeune Femme qui se pare (Woman with Pearls) from the Bürger collection. Drawing by M. Bocourt, engraved by M. Sotain. Gazette de Beaux Arts, 1866, p.325. Engraving. Courtesy of the author. Double gallery will become the meeting place for the pearls of the Dutch school.’27 And his letter of delight at the arrival of his second Vermeer, the Astronomer (Musée du Louvre, Paris), opens profusely: ‘My dear friend, you are my master, my guide and my friend.’28 It seems that friendship prevailed when Bürger negotiated a painting he was tempted to keep for himself. As he wrote, in anguished regret, to another friend and collector, Suermondt: ‘Ah, what a Rembrandt I’ve just bought for M. Double!! What stupidity not to have taken it for myself! . . . Rembrandt’s portrait at 60 years [WallrafRichartz Museum, Cologne] . . . What a masterpiece! It could be his last painting of 1669. And it’s certainly his last portrait! And how he laughs, the old lion’.29 It should be added that Double did not passively accept all of Bürger’s suggestions. In one case he politely, but firmly, rejected a Spanish painting, reminding Bürger of his motto ‘less and better’, and his determination to concentrate on seventeenth-century Dutch and eighteenth-century French paintings.30 These are a few instances of Bürger promoting particular Old Masters, working discreetly as consultant, intermediary and agent, while demonstrating his formative influence on the choices made by major collectors in Paris. He was involved with other

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collectors, such as Bartholdt Suermondt,31 and he built up an impressive network of contacts, both in France and across Europe – museum directors, private collectors, dealers, artists, critics, restorers, framers, art historians, archivists, writers and publishers. His roles were various: while frequently agent or consultant for particular collectors, he also acted as agent for particular Old Masters he promoted. At the Exposition Retrospective, for example, while showcasing several private collections, he took the opportunity to introduce his recent discovery, Vermeer, to the Parisian public. Determined to ‘establish his reputation’ he included eleven works attributed to the little-known artist, of which four are now accepted: Pereire’s Geographer, Double’s Officer with Laughing Girl and Bürger’s own Pianist and Young Woman with a Pearl Necklace. The enthralled critics and public were unconcerned by issues of attribution and Bürger declared confidently that Vermeer was ‘a wild success’.32 Bürger thus promoted Vermeer as if he were the artist’s ambitious agent: he located his scattered and misattributed works, emphasized their aesthetic excellence and art historical significance, acquired them or ‘placed’ them – always in the hope of increasing their commercial value and of ensuring their future status in museums. Bürger’s efforts on behalf of Vermeer did not immediately bear fruit. In 1864, for example, he was singularly unsuccessful in fulfilling Charles Eastlake’s search for a ‘perfect’ Vermeer for the National Gallery. Although Eastlake considered him to be the authority on Vermeer, he rejected all of Bürger’s suggestions: the Mistress and Maid (Frick Collection, New York, then in Marseilles) was too large for such a ‘familiar unimportant scene’, its background too dark and its price (7,200 francs) too high. The Young Woman with a Pearl Necklace (at that stage still owned by Grevedon) was unacceptable due to the diagonal division of the painting into dark and light masses, and the woman’s insubstantial profile. Bürger’s own Pianist (recently purchased from the dealer-agent, Otto Mündler for 600 francs) was deemed ‘not quite eligible’.33 As for the market values, although his ‘rediscovery’ of Vermeer was well known to a small circle of collectors and critics by 1866, the commercial value of Vermeer’s paintings lagged way behind the high prices paid for other petits maitres. As he wrote glumly to Barthold Suermondt: ‘But we cannot change the current market for paintings. The market value of Vermeer is not yet as high as that for Wouwermans.’34 Prices for Vermeer during the 1860s ranged between 500 and 8,000 francs. Despite Vermeer’s critical success at the Exposition Retrospective in 1866, the following year Bürger was able to purchase Vermeer’s A Young Woman Seated at a Virginal (National Gallery, London) for a mere 2,000 francs at the Schönborn sale, whereas at the same sale Gabriel Metsu’s The Letter Writer Surprised (Wallace Collection, London) fetched 45,500 francs, and two years later at the Delessert sale, de Hooch’s The Visit (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) sold for 156,000 francs. The precarious commercial fortunes of the Young Woman with a Pearl Necklace is another example: purchased by Bürger for 4,000 francs and publicly exhibited in 1866 (in Paris and Amsterdam), it was sold for 6,000 francs the following year to the agent Leon Gauchez who, after unsuccessfully offering it to the Royal Museum of Painting and Sculpture of Belgium for 10,000 francs (then 8,500 francs), sent it to public

 ‘It Is Not My Fault If in All the Private Collections . . .’ 209 auction where it was purchased by the dealer Sedelmayer. His intention to offer it to the Frankfurt museum for 6,000–7,000 francs was, as Bürger wrote to Suermondt, an important step in promoting the reputation of ‘our cherished Vermeer who will soon have to be acquired by all museums’. On hearing this news, Suermondt purchased the painting for his own collection in Aachen.35 Bürger’s authority in the art market was based on his reputation as a scholarly art historian, critic and connoisseur. While a discreet advisor to several private collectors, he was also involved with public auctions. He rummaged around salerooms at the Hôtel Drouot and elsewhere in Europe, often attended auctions on behalf of clients, or for himself as collector or sometimes as speculator. Occasionally, he catalogued and organized public auctions. In 1866 he was associated with a major transaction concerning a ‘Rembrandt’, Christ Blessing the Children, purchased by Barthold Suermondt from an old Viennese collection (Schönborn). Although probably instigated by Otto Mündler, the purchase was encouraged by Bürger. He congratulated Suermondt on his acquisition, both as a work of art and as an investment: ‘As an art conquest, it is magnificent. As an investment, it is a huge sum, it’s as you wish’36 (Plate 15). For various reasons, speculation trumped art-conquest and Suermondt decided to sell the painting. Bürger offered to approach some likely buyers in Paris and also published a eulogistic article about the painting, illustrated by a specially commissioned etching by Léopold Flameng.37 However, on hearing news of its impending sale, William Boxall (then Director of the National Gallery) promptly set off for Aachen to negotiate for the ‘great Rembrandt’ – as he wrote to his Keeper – ‘of which we have often talked and about which your friend Bürger has been so enthusiastic’. An exorbitant price (£7,000) was agreed and the painting was dispatched to London, where it was displayed and catalogued in 1867 with citations from Bürger’s article. Any doubts about Rembrandt’s authorship were dismissed by Bürger who reassured Suermondt that ‘imbeciles such as one of the Colnaghis (who know nothing about it) are disputing !!! the Rembrandt Christ! – but, from all sides, it is, on the contrary, a great success’.38 However, a few months after Bürger’s death (30 April 1869), the controversial purchase was debated in the House of Lords and soon afterwards the painting lost its attribution to Rembrandt and is now attributed to Nicolaes Maes.39 Bürger was therefore spared the indignity that neither his authority, nor its illustrious provenance, could save the painting from demotion. Towards the end of his life, however, Bürger suffered from insulting aspersions cast on his role in the art market by an old enemy, Théophile Silvestre, who published a vitriolic attack at the time of the successful Pommersfelden and Salamanca sales in 1867. Silvestre alleged that Bürger’s catalogues promoted inflated prices for daubs and second-rate paintings. He caustically branded him as a ‘cataloguer’ and commercial agent for old paintings, alleging that ‘this gentleman praises what he sells. It is quite simple.’ Bürger (and loyal colleagues, such as Philippe Burty) strongly denied this accusation, claiming probity and sincerity for his scholarship and attributions and for his dealings in the market and with collectors. These instances of disputed attribution are a reminder that any account of the art market, of the ambitions and projects of dealers and agents and collectors, then and

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now, needs to consider the treacherous tides of market-driven connoisseurship. Even though Bürger’s forays into the market were based on his assiduous scholarship and devotion to art historical accuracy, he too was subject to the hazards of uncertain attribution – of which he was acutely aware. Nevertheless, despite many later revised attributions, the combination of his art historical researches and his wide-ranging participation in the art market had a decisive and long-lasting impact on the general historiography of seventeenth-century Dutch art and its market values. This is most immediately apparent in the case of Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Carel Fabritius and several other Dutch painters, while the spectacular and enduring commercial fortunes of his cherished Vermeer would only be established several years later. In his last published article, Bürger mused on the popularity and high prices currently paid for the petits maitres, especially for the ‘peintres familiers de la Hollande’ and the high commercial value of paintings of ‘simple humanity’. He commented: ‘The luck of the market. Certainly. That is to say on the “Stock Exchange” of pictures – at the great market of Hôtel Drouot, if you like – the relative value of Dutch pictures and paintings of completely human simplicity is rising. It is a fact which can be interpreted in very diverse ways.’40 Whatever the various reasons, there is little doubt that he had himself contributed to the rising critical and commercial fortunes of Dutch artists. His phrase ‘completely human simplicity’ is reminiscent of his lifelong advocacy of what he termed ‘art for mankind’, of which seventeenth-century Dutch art was the most complete example. He insisted that the essential naturalism of the Dutch school made it the legitimate precursor of the art of his time. He certainly had to accept some responsibility, if not blame, for the fact that in so many private collections ‘the Dutch paintings surpass all’. However, as a postscript, it should be added that Bürger’s promotion of the seventeenth-century Dutch school was not inclusive of all its artists. While reappraising and promoting artists such as Hals and Vermeer, confirming Rembrandt as the great universal naturalist and praising landscape and genre subjects, he also effectively demoted other artists who did not accord with his definition of the authentic national Dutch school – the naturalistic portrayal of its own country and society. Thus Bürger excluded from his canon the Italianate painters who left their native Holland and set off to Italy, dubbing them pseudo-Italians or denaturalized Dutchmen (including such popular Italianate landscapists as Nicolaes Berchem and Jan Both); he dismissed the smoothly painted decorative mythologies and history paintings of Adriaan van der Werff and Gerard de Lairesse as decadent in subject and style and he reproved the ‘fijnschilders’ (such as Gerrit Dou or Godfried Schalken) for their contrived, over-meticulous finish and artificial light effects and for lacking the spontaneity and sincerity of true art. Increasingly relegated to the basements of museums, these works dropped in value and remained unappreciated for several decades. It was only in the mid-twentieth century that they were rescued by a more inclusive and comprehensive historical interpretation of seventeenthcentury Dutch art. But that is another story.

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Notes 1 W. Bürger, ‘Les Collections Particulières’, Paris-Guide (Paris, 1867), I, 536–51. 2 ‘Exposition Universelle de 1867’, Salons de W. Bürger 1861 à 1862 (Paris, 1870), 1, 335–454, 359–60. 3 Bürger, ‘Les Collections Particulières’. 4 For an account and bibliography of Thoré-Bürger as art historian see Frances Suzman Jowell, ‘Théophile Thoré’, in Dictionnaire critique des historiens de l’art actifs en France de la Révolution à la Première Guerre mondiale, ed. Philippe Sénéchal and Claire Barbillon (Paris, site web de INHA, 2009). http:​/​/www​​.inha​​.fr​/f​​r​/res​​sourc​​es​ /pu​​blica​​tions​​/dict​​ionna​​ire​-c​​ritiq​​ue​-de​​s​​-his​​torie​​ns​-de​​-l- art/thore​-theophile​.ht​ml. On his earlier career as art critic, see Pontus Grate, Deux Critiques d’art de l’époque romantique: Thoré-Bürger et Gustave Planche, (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1959). 5 On his critical role in the art market, see Frances Suzman Jowell, ‘Thoré-Bürger – a critical rôle in the art market,’ Burlington Magazine, 138 (1996): 115–129. 6 Bulletin de l’Alliance des Arts, no. 1, 25 Juin 1842, 1–2. 7 After failing to launch a republican newspaper called Democratie he defiantly published a brochure la Vérité sur le parti démocratique, 1840, which was promptly confiscated. Thoré was tried and sentenced to a year in prison and fined 2,000 francs. 8 Later republished as Salons de T. Thoré, 1844, 1845, 1846, 1847, 1848, avec une préface par W. Bürger (et l’introduction ‘Nouvelles tendances de l’art’ signé T.T., 1857) (Paris, 1868). 9 Bürger, ‘Les Collections Particulières’, 537. 10 On his collection, see Frances Suzman Jowell, ‘Thoré-Bürger’s art collection: “a rather unusual gallery of bric-à-brac”’, Simiolus. Netherlands quarterly for the history of art 30 (2003): 54–119. 11 Bürger, ‘Les Collections Particulières’, 544; on Thoré-Bürger’s promotion of eighteenth-century French art, see Frances Suzman Jowell, ‘“Ah! Que c’est francais!”: Thoré-Bürger and Eighteenth-century French Art’, in Delicious Decadence. The Rediscovery of French Eighteenth Century Painting in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Christoph Vogtherr, Monica Preti-Hamard and Guillaume Faroult (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2014), 71–85. 12 See Frances Suzman Jowell, ‘From Thoré to Bürger: The image of Dutch Art Before and After the Musées de la Hollande’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum: Symposium The Shifting Image of the Golden Age, 49, no.1 (2001): 45–60; Peter Hecht, ‘Rembrandt and Raphael Back to Back: The Contribution of Thoré’, Simiolus. Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 26 (1998): 213–24. 13 Francis Haskell, Rediscoveries in Art, Some Aspects of Taste, Fashion and Collecting in England and France, (London: Phaidon 1976), 86. 14 Bürger, ‘Les Collections Particulières’, 538–9; both works now in the Wallace Collection. 15 The accepted view that the collection was largely owing to Thoré-Bürger was contested by Prévost-Marcilhacy (Pauline Prevost-Marcilhacy, ‘La collection de tableaux modernes des frères Pereire’, in Études transversales. Mélanges en l’honneur de Pierre Vaisse, ed. Leila El-Wakil, Stéphanie Pallini, Lada Umstäter-Mamedova, (Lyon: Presse universitaires de Lyon, 2005), 139–57 in favour of Guilhiermoz.

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However, although this may be correct in relation to most of the modern paintings, there is no doubt that Thoré-Bürger was the guiding authority for the acquisition of Old Masters during the 1860s and that Guilhiermoz relied heavily on him for advice. 16 Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Fonds Lacroix MSS 9623, Lettres de Thoré Unpublished undated letter (datable pre 1864), 1476. 17 W. Bürger, ‘Galerie de M.M. Pereire’, Gazette des Beaux Arts, XVI, (1864): 193–213; 297–317. 18 Ibid., 299. 19 Ibid., 301. 20 Frances Suzman Jowell, ‘Impressionism and the Golden Age of Dutch Art’, in Inspiring Impressionism. The Impressionists and the Art of the Past, ed. Lynne Ambrosini, Frances Fowle, Maite van Dijk, (Denver Art Museum and Yale University Press, 2007-8) 79-109, 89, 108 n.55. 21 W. Bürger, ‘Frans Hals’, Gazette des Beaux Arts, XXIV (1868): 431–48; on the reappraisal of Hals, see Frances Suzman Jowell, ‘Thoré-Bürger and the Revival of Frans Hals’. Art Bulletin 56, 1, (1974):101–17 and ‘The Rediscovery of Frans Hals’, in exh. cat. Frans Hals, ed. Seymour Slive, (Washington, National Gallery of Art; London, Royal Academy; Haarlem, Frans Halsmuseum, 1989–90), 61–86. 22 Jowell, 1974. 23 Bürger, 1864, 315. 24 Frances Suzman Jowell, ‘Thoré-Bürger and Vermeer: Critical and Commercial Fortune’ in Shop Talk: Studies in Honor of Seymour Slive, ed. Cynthia P. Schneider, William W. Robinson and Alice I. Davies (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Art Museums, 1995), 124–7. 25 Ibid., 125. 26 See Seymour Slive, Frans Hals, (London: Phaidon, 1974), vol. 3, 146, cat. D51. 27 Paris, Fondation Custodia, Collection Frits Lugt (2012-A.168) Unpublished letter dated 2 novembre 1866. 28 Unpublished undated letter; Paris, Fondation Custodia, Collection Frits Lugt (2012A.189). 29 Jowell, 2003, 101. 30 Unpublished undated letter; Paris, Fondation Custodia, Collection Frits Lugt (2012A.190). On Double as collector, see Tom Stammers, ‘Collectors, Catholics, and the Commune: Heritage and Counterrevolution, 1860–1890’ French Historical Studies, 37, 1, (2014): 59–61. 31 See Frances Suzman Jowell, ‘Bartholdt Suermondt und W. Bürger (Théophile Thoré): Freundschaft einer geteilten ‘monomanie de tableaux’, in Gestatten Suermondt! Sammler Kenner Kunstmäzen, ed. Peter van der Brink and Wibke Vera Birth, (Aachen: Ludwig-Suermondt-Museum, 2018), 62–77. 32 Frances Suzman Jowell, ‘Vermeer and Thoré-Bürger: Recoveries of Reputation’, in Vermeer Studies, ed. Ivan Gaskell and Michel Jonker, (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1998), 35–57, 40–1. 33 Jowell, 1996, 115–16. 34 Letter dated 15 June 1866, published in Jowell 1996, 126; Jowell 2018, 67, 75 n.33; 35 Jowell, 1998, 50; Jowell, 2018, 67–8. 36 Jowell, 1996, 120–1; Jowell, 2018, 70–1.

 ‘It Is Not My Fault If in All the Private Collections . . .’ 213 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid. 39 It is now attributed to Nicolaes Maes. 40 Jowell, 1996, 124; W. Bürger, ‘Nouvelles Etudes sur la Galerie Suermondt à Aix-laChapelle’, Gazette des Beaux Arts, 2e pér., I (1869): 5, 37.

14

The Beurdeleys A dynasty of curiosity dealers and their networks1 Camille Mestdagh

Eighteenth-century Paris saw the growth of trade in luxury goods, which was dependent on the activities of the ‘marchands merciers’ who were able to provide sophisticated items to a wealthy clientele looking for new furnishings that incorporated the latest designs.2 By contrast, the nineteenth century saw the development of a market for antiques. The Parisian luxury trade was strongly affected by the French Revolution; the auction sales of the 1790s and the dispersal of several thousand objects of royal or aristocratic provenance paved the way for a new market.3 Thanks to the French merchants’ connections with British dealers and the aristocracy, fancy furniture and decorative objects from the Ancien Régime were considered valuable and collectable.4 As the market for antiques grew, there was an emphasis on issues related to authenticity and the value of objects. As the Paris market expanded, potential buyers needed guidance and expertise. The Beurdeleys took on these roles and thus contributed to the growth of this new market. The Beurdeley dynasty started with Jean (1772–1853), described in 1829 as a ‘furniture dealer’ selling second-hand furniture. His modest business was developed by his son Alfred (1808–82) who took over the firm in 1835 and became a ‘curiosity dealer’, a far more prestigious designation.5 He also moved the shop from rue SaintHonoré to the trendy boulevard des Italiens, in the well-known Pavillon de Hanovre (Figure 14.1).6 By the 1850s his international reputation was established. The market was strengthened during the Second Empire by the establishment of leading museums, the organization of the Expositions Universelles and the unprecedented trend for collecting encouraged by numerous prestigious auction sales. Alfred Beurdeley participated in most of these events and became part of a large network of brokers, dealers, collectors, agents and decorators that developed throughout the nineteenth century. The Beurdeley firm’s books and papers were burnt7 but their links to renowned figures can now be traced, thanks to accounts recorded in notarial inventories, minutes of public sales and also in bills and correspondence found in private archives. The Beurdeley firm’s activities and strategies helped to define the role of a ‘curiosity dealer’ (now referred to as an antique dealer), which went beyond simply supplying goods.

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Figure 14.1  Pavillon de Hanovre, boulevard des Italiens, Paris, c. 1900 in an undated booklet published by Christofle. The Beurdeley shop entrance was on the right side, rue Louis-le-Grand. Courtesy of the author. On many occasions Alfred Beurdeley took on intermediary and advisory roles, which might have been seen as the prerogative of agents. He and his son, Alfred Emmanuel (1847–1919), also relied on decorators and exporting agents to expand their foreign clientele, from London to as far away as the United States.

An agent of taste The 1820s could be considered ‘the golden age for collectors in London’8, as many remarkable pieces were brought from the continent. As described by Carolyn Sargentson, for British collectors, gradually ‘old and French’, became more important than ‘new and classical’.9 After he succeeded his father Jean, Alfred Beurdeley rapidly focused his trade on upmarket objects from the past. Beurdeley’s first clientele was mostly British; an invoice dated 1839 referring to the purchases of an English gentleman under the heading: ‘sell and buy gilt bronzes, chandeliers, clocks, curiosities, Boule [sic] furniture, tulipwood, old Sèvres porcelains, etc’.10 Gilt bronzes as well as ‘old Sèvres’ and ‘Boule’11 items were considered distinctively French and indeed were the must-have items in any aristocratic British interior, alongside relics

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acquired during the Grand Tour. What is significant about Beurdeley’s dual activities of selling and buying is that this advanced his role as a negotiator and his capacity to identify and appraise goods. As ‘the regenerator’12 of his trade Alfred Beurdeley contributed to raising the status of old furniture and decorative objects for which a relatively new market had opened. In his stock he mixed those objects with works of art from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance which were the more traditional type of collectables, described as ‘curiosities’, and for which the trade had spread greatly after the Napoleonic wars. For old objects to be in good condition and considered luxurious, restoration was essential, so his business activities led him to play a crucial intermediary role in repairing and reshaping many objects. This echoes the practices of the ‘marchands merciers’ of the eighteenth century. Alfred Beurdeley established an enviable network of craftsmen who carried out various types of work under his direction. Although no workshop was recorded on the premises, his activities were similar to those of Edward Holmes Baldock (1777–1845) in London.13 This leading figure in the 1830s London furniture market, operating as a ‘dealer in French goods’, visited Paris on several occasions; on one visit he was accompanied by William Lowther, the future second Earl of Lonsdale (1787–1872), whom he apparently introduced to Alfred Beurdeley. Apart from a few gilt bronzes, most of Lord Lowther’s purchases consisted of Sèvres porcelain. He notably bought seventeen pieces of the Saint Aubin service ‘en vieux Sèvres Madame du Barry’.14 On his receipt for eight plates valued at 100 francs Beurdeley added an extra 40 francs: ‘to pay a gilder and a painter to redo the gilding and the eight cipher and letters.’15 Unlike his London colleague, Baldock,16 Beurdeley did not himself provide a service in redecorating Sèvres porcelain but as demand was great he developed contacts with talented restorers, ensuring that this service was part of his business. Naturally, this raises the issue of the authenticity of the object. Alfred Beurdeley’s bills often mention ‘including repairs’, ‘restoration’ and so forth. In 1872, Richard Wallace (1818–1890) made no less than twenty purchases, including a cabinet attributed to André-Charles Boulle.17 The invoice mentions: ‘included restoration cost for me.’18 Among other pieces in the Wallace Collection that passed through Beurdeley’s hands was a Venetian-style ewer19 identified as a hybrid piece with nineteenth-century alterations.20 It was originally acquired by the comte de Nieuwerkerke and on his receipt the merchant did not date the ewer or mention any alterations.21 For this piece repairs were inevitable to bring it to a saleable condition. These repairs required expertise and show that Beurdeley and his counterparts worked with talented restorers to introduce more works of this type to the market where objects needed to look good. Auction sale catalogues of his stock also mention ‘enrichments’ of the giltbronze mounts on furniture. This inclination to add ornaments to old furniture was not uncommon. In the sale of his collection following his death in 1882, a commode described as from the time of Louis XVI contains a note that ‘parts of the bronze mounts have been added on’.22 The commode is stamped and is similar to another attributed to Guillaume Beneman (1750–1811) and dated c. 1795.23 In comparison, on the chest of drawers sold by Beurdeley several ornaments were added such as the

 The Beurdeleys 217

Figure 14.2  Commode stamped Guillaume Beneman (1750–1811) with restorations and gilt-bronze additions by Alfred Beurdeley c. 1870. Photograph. Courtesy of the author. ribbonned lock plates, the feet and the friezes of drapery to the corner shelves which seem a bit incongruous (Figure 14.2). In this manner many pieces of eighteenthcentury furniture were remodelled in the nineteenth century, with the addition of gilt-bronze mounts, Boulle marquetry panels, lacquer or porcelain plaques.24 Such pieces are regarded today as composite and their authenticity is questioned but it was a traditional practice inherited from the Ancien Régime and at the time it reinforced their value. Not only did he transform or enhance objects from the past, but he also produced new pieces, similar to what Baldock was doing in London. Beurdeley’s creative works were classified as ‘curiosities’ because they were constructed with precious materials and inspired by historical styles (Figure 14.3).25 To produce furniture and decorative items, the firm subcontracted independent workshops and craftsmen. This crucial role of intermediary for the Parisian industry drew on the practices of the ‘marchands merciers’ of the eighteenth century.26 Beurdeley’s creative input also highlights his contribution in shaping a taste where old and new are combined. From the first half of the century his position as a taste maker relied on his contacts with talented craftsmen and rich patrons. He did not allow his clientele direct access to his professional network or vice versa; he made himself indispensable and this intermediary role was at the heart of his business strategy.

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Figure 14.3  Console table in pietre dure, porphyry and gilt-bronze mounted clock and vases designed by Alfred Beurdeley, c. 1860. Photograph. Courtesy of the author.

The dealer shaping the market Beurdeley found most of his stock of old objects at auction sales. From 1852, auctions were organized daily at the Hôtel Drouot, which played a central role in the Parisian art market. His presence at many auctions meant that his clients also solicited him to bid and buy on commission. Salomon de Rothschild (1835–64) was an avid collector who, despite the shortness of his life, amassed an extensive collection of works of art. In one year, he paid over forty visits to Alfred Beurdeley’s shop.27 On one occasion he purchased a casket that Beurdeley had bought only a few days earlier at the Paris Pembroke sale.28 The provenance is mentioned on the dealer’s invoice dated 7 July 1862: ‘A casket with ancient marquetry tortoiseshell and parts mother of pearl. Pembroke Sale . . . 1200.’ The hammer price at the sale was 851 francs so this transaction left him with a comfortable commission of nearly 20 per cent (after the deduction of the auctioneer’s commission of 5 per cent). The fact that he mentions the provenance on his bill and the rapidity with which he sold this acquisition suggests that Beurdeley might have been instructed by Salomon to purchase this lot on his behalf. Indeed, it was not uncommon for buyers to be represented by a dealer at an auction to ensure

 The Beurdeleys 219 confidentiality, especially for a member of such a renowned family of collectors. It was also, of course, a great advantage to benefit from a dealer’s expertise. Indeed, in this flourishing market in which fakes started to appear, customers were anxious to buy genuine objects that would not lose value.29 Ferdinand de Rothschild later remarked, ‘Modern art (. . .) loses much of its value because of the facility with which it can be obtained. Old works of art are not, however, desirable only for their rarity or beauty, but for their associations (. . .) still, as is constantly proved in the auction mart, a collection judiciously made (. . .) generally retains its value.’30 At the sale of the estate of the banker Louis Fould in 1860, a pair of Limoges salt cellars was acquired by Beurdeley and shortly after were in the collection of Eugène Dutuit (1807–1886).31 The following year, four more Limoges enamel pieces were bought by Beurdeley at the sale of Prince Soltykoff ’s goods and entered the Dutuit collection.32 Dutuit was among the people present at this famous sale and it is likely that Beurdeley was instructed to bid by the collector who might have preferred to remain discreet. As Dutuit had already bought this type of object from Beurdeley, it is very likely that Beurdeley suggested these acquisitions, asserting his expertise and assuring himself a commission. In representing his clients at auctions, and certainly sharing his expertise on their purchases, Beurdeley acted more as an agent, helping his client develop his collection with a sensible approach, than as a dealer trying to sell his existing stock. There is evidence that Beurdeley was called upon by clients to provide advice and expertise. The comte de Nieuwerkerke, Alfred Emilien O’Hara (1811–92), Napoléon III’s Surintendant des Beaux Arts, and the Director of the Louvre Museum, was a frequent customer. Nieuwerkerke made regular purchases from Beurdeley during the period 1865–9, including arms and armour, glass, medals, ceramics and so forth. As can be seen from their correspondence, they had a cordial relationship and the comte used to ask Beurdeley to examine objects that he was hesitant to buy. In a letter Beurdeley wrote a short report about a mirror: ‘As soon as I arrived in Paris, I hastened to go to your palace [the Louvre]. I was introduced to a poor little mirror called under the Regence “à la Dauphine” – but quite unworthy to be part of your collection – or Furnishing. The design is poor as well as the execution. Value 250 to 300 francs.’33 He also acquired objects especially for his client: ‘I have put a 15th century sword aside for you, knowing that it would please you – not to be mixed up with the 16th century that is more common.’34 Motivated by collectors’ interests, knowledge of such works of art was only just emerging and belonged to a new field of research for art historians and curators. In this new market, well-established dealers such as Alfred Beurdeley were considered the best experts. The rarity at the time of their knowledge and experience explains why dealers came to dominate the market, playing both advisory and intermediary roles. Beurdeley was part of a powerful network linking several dealers between Paris and London. Accounts and public sales’ minutes show they were buying jointly and sharing profits. Beurdeley was in business with Jean-Baptiste Van Cuyck (d.1865), a dealer established in Paris with no shop, who was one of the principal suppliers to Salomon de Rothschild.35 As Beurdeley’s accounts36 show and Van Cuyck’s inventory37

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confirms, they were dealing with the same colleagues. In Paris the network relied on Beurdeley, Monbro,38 Van Cuyck, Spitzer,39 Edward Rutter40 and Ayerst,41 together with three others in London: Durlacher,42 John Webb43 and Annoot.44 They had common interests, buying and selling together; by eliminating the competition they ensured their group maintained a greater control of the market for curiosities. Rutter and Ayerst were both British and, like Van Cuyck, did not have shops but worked from their homes. They came to personify another type of dealer, closer to the traditional figure of an agent, acting as discreet representatives for their clients; however, their purchases and shares confirm that they also possessed their own stock. Edward Rutter and John Webb were not only working for rich patrons such as the 4th Marquess of Hertford but also as agents for the South Kensington Museum.45 European museums were developing and held a strong buyer position in the art market of the 1850s and 1860s, building up wide-ranging collections. As he did for individual collectors, Beurdeley also suggested objects for museums to acquire and sold several works of art directly to the Louvre and also to the South Kensington Museum. Indeed, on one of his Parisian trips in 1866, John Charles Robinson (1824–1913), the first superintendent of the Art Collections for the South Kensington Museum, purchased an Italian marble bust from him.46 The London institution was looking to expand its collection and various visits were made across European capitals to collect interesting works of art.47 Beurdeley had also developed commercial relations abroad and wrote to Nieuwerkerke, at the Louvre Museum in 1867, ‘One of my men in Italy has three magnificent low-relief terracottas – studies for the marbles of Michel-Angelo chapel (. . .) if we don’t buy them it is probable that they will be presented in London for the Kensington’.48 The dealer understood the competition between museums was strong, particularly between Paris and London. Thanks to his well-established relations with the institutions, he was acting as a middleman on behalf of his peers. Beurdeley was again in contact with the South Kensington Museum during the Paris International Exhibition of 1867, where he had a stand in the retrospective exhibition of works of art. He was present in the section devoted to Italian artefacts where he invited the Museum’s art referee, Charles Drury Edward Fortnum (1820– 99), to inspect his display of works of art and sculpture.49 Mingling with the greatest collectors and institutions provided a good opportunity for curiosity dealers to elevate their status and validate their merchandise. Although Beurdeley had a shop with stock and thus could not claim to be an independent agent, his strategic position in the Parisian trade and his expertise led him to take on various responsibilities that enabled him to act as a promoter for the new market dedicated to the collecting of antiques.

Collaborating with decorators and agents Given the nature of his merchandise (not only collectable works of art but also decorative items such as furniture, lighting and clocks), Beurdeley relied on agents to extend his clientele, the type of agents that would today be described as decorators. These agents advised their clientele, provided direct access to a network of suppliers;

 The Beurdeleys 221 they shopped and negotiated prices on their behalf and organized shipments. The remaining fragments of the accounts from the French branch of the Rothschild family record more than one million francs worth of purchases from the Beurdeleys between 1870 and 1882. Alfred Beurdeley’s link to the all-important Rothschild family relied on his connection to Eugène Lami (1800–90). Recognized today as ‘the first decorator’,50 Lami was initially a painter whose talent was watercolours depicting interiors. From 1845, Lami was buying from Beurdeley on behalf of the Duc d’Aumale (1822–97) for the furnishing of his newly extended Château de Chantilly.51 Lami oversaw the decorations and went shopping to pick up various antique clocks, objects, paintings and furniture from Parisian curiosity dealers.52 Shortly afterwards, Betty and James de Rothschild chose only Lami to design their interiors at Ferrières and then became Beurdeley’s clients. Charlotte de Rothschild’s (1819–84) correspondence demonstrates that Charlotte and her husband Lionel Nathan (1808–79), despite living in London, were in regular contact with Beurdeley.53 In 1860 Lionel had just built a lavish town house at 148 Piccadilly and the project for its decoration was given to the sculptor, François Joyau (1816–1874) possibly related to a Parisian dealer named Joyeau.54 Charlotte’s reports to her husband in September 1864 show that they also established a relationship with Alfred Beurdeley while visiting Paris: According to your wish, I went yesterday to see Mr. Beurdeley and his curiosities. He has promised to send a list of the various ornaments admired by me with the prices (. . .) the marble group is splendid and lovely – and would look admirably well in our gallery before the glass door (. . .). There are four small statues (. . .) they would look well in the drawing rooms upstairs on the chimney-pieces (. . .) the crystal chandelier is ugly – but the crystals are white and clear and fine. Joyeau (sic) advises you to buy them.55

The next day “Joyeau” had changed his mind: he thinks you had better not buy those, which Beurdeley would probably let you have for ten thousand francs, because he could obtain quite as many from the person he employs, of a better quality, he says, for eight thousand francs.56

The role of the decorator is central here in the negotiation of prices and the choice of suppliers for modern furnishings, but this letter also shows how much Charlotte herself was involved in the decoration of her new house, looking for works of art to suit each room, mixing old and new. Her involvement demonstrates the importance and the social meaning of the chosen objects. The development of an interest in historical objects and furniture led to new attitudes towards furnishing and the line between collecting and decorating became blurred. From the outset Alfred Beurdeley was involved in the manufacture of modern furniture. When his son Alfred Emmanuel joined him and took over in 1875, he developed this aspect of the business further and created his own workshop making furniture and gilt bronzes. Like his father, Alfred Emmanuel was not designing

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Figure 14.4  Alfred Emmanuel Beurdeley’s business card, c. 1893. Courtesy of the author. complete interiors and furnishings, but only stand-alone pieces and had to develop contacts to expand his clientele abroad. Thanks to the development of international transportation systems and the organization of international exhibitions, the French luxury industry came to rely on a vast network of representatives not only in most European capitals but also in cities as far away as New York and Saint Petersburg.57 Beurdeley’s son collaborated with Gilbert Cuel, an agent established in New York at 510 Fifth Avenue. Described as a ‘Depot’ on Beurdeley’s business card (Figure 14.4), Cuel is also mentioned on his stand at the Chicago Great Exhibition in 1893 as ‘Depot and sole agency’. On the other hand, the heading on Cuel’s bills reads: ‘Gilbert Cuel Artistic Furniture Works of Art/ EBENISTERIE & BRONZES de BEURDELEY’. Cuel came from Paris where he was established as a tapissier at 20 Rue des Capucines, near the Pavillon de Hanovre. He later moved to New York and was described as a decorator in Trow’s New York City Directory (1893–7). In 1892 he was contracted to oversee the interior decoration of the Metropolitan Club. This club was a symbol for the American plutocracy, founded by a group of major financial and industrial patrons: John Pierpont Morgan (1837–1913), William Kissam Vanderbilt (1849–1920) and his brother Cornelius Vanderbilt II (1843–99). For this interior project, several modern gilt bronzes were supplied by Beurdeley. Cuel was also employed by William Kissam to supervise the decoration of his yacht, The Valiant, and the Vanderbilts were important patrons for his business. In 1894, Cuel worked alongside another French decorator, Jules Allard,58 on the interiors of Cornelius II’s house on Fifth Avenue and 1 West 57th Street.59 The monumental mantelpiece of the Grand Salon was designed by Alfred Emmanuel Beurdeley’s workshop, which also supplied furniture and a pair of monumental candelabras for The Breakers, Cornelius’s house in Newport, Rhode Island (Plate 16).60 These prestigious commissions were the last examples of Beurdeley’s work as the firm closed that same year. Fifteen auction sales followed the closure of the business in 1895.61 It is interesting to see the sales devoted to antique furniture and objects were mostly attended by well-established dealers such as Charles Mannheim62 and Jacques Seligmann63 whereas for the sale of the furniture and works of art made

 The Beurdeleys 223 by the Beurdeley workshop, the clientele was more diverse and included at least one commissionaire en marchandises (agent), Lassalle & Cie. A supplier of furniture and gilt bronzes since the 1840s, Lassalle advertised his firm as ‘responsible for shipping in the foreign departments and abroad, objects of all kinds, whatever the value or importance, that we want to bring from Paris’.64 The development of a global market in the second half of the century shows that whether the objects supplied by Beurdeley were old or modern, or a combination, acquired for aristocratic or plutocratic interiors, they contributed to the shaping of an international style characterized by French furniture and old works of art.65 In the first half of the nineteenth century Alfred Beurdeley established a solid network with all sorts of professionals: craftsmen, dealers, museum curators and decorators. His portrait66 by Paul Baudry, a renowned painter who exhibited at the Salons, attests to his phenomenal rise in Parisian society. In a market devoted to old objects, well-established dealers like Beurdeley occupied a dominant role, acting as suppliers and advisors to collectors and museums. In the 1860s, the omnipresence of the dealer figure can be explained by the fact that the market was relatively new but dynamic and, as it quickly expanded, there was a shortage of experts. Museums were only just acquiring their collections. Dealers maintained their hegemony during the second half of the century, and some founded international family businesses, such as Seligmann and Duveen,67 opening shops in Paris, London and New York. At the beginning of the 1870s, as the knowledge and value of antique furniture progressed, a stricter distinction between old and new arose. Mixing eighteenth century and modern furniture in one shop was very common in the 1840s, but forty years later it had become less usual. As Alfred Emmanuel Beurdeley focused on developing his own workshop’s output, he needed to access a different network. In the market devoted to modern furnishings, the trade was benefitting from the Great Exhibitions and a wellorganized international retail system, dominated by decorators, large manufacturers and specialized exporters. Throughout the nineteenth century, in the face of a constantly evolving market, the success of the Beurdeleys’ business and its longevity relied on the variety of their stock and on their expertise. But the most critical elements were their networks and their collaboration with other dealers, decorators and export agents, who played a crucial role in enhancing their reputation abroad.

Notes 1 I would like to thank Adriana Turpin and Jeannette Murphy for their proofreading and suggestions. This research is based on my PhD (2019): ‘The Beurdeley dynasty: From boutique to workshop – an history of trade in antiques and of furniture production in 19th century Paris’, co-directed by Alain Bonnet and Natacha Coquery at UBFC and Lyon 2 Universities. 2 Carolyn Sargentson, Merchants and Luxury Markets, the Marchands Merciers of Eighteenth-Century Paris, exh. cat. (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1996); Rose-Marie Herda-Mousseaux, ed., La fabrique du luxe, les marchands merciers parisiens au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Paris musées, 2018).

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3 Rémi Gaillard, ‘Les commissaires-priseurs et les ventes révolutionnaires du mobilier royal’, in Versailles. De la résidence au musée Espaces, usages, institutions XVIIe-XXe siècle. Études et documents réunis par Fabien Oppermann (Paris: Bibliothèque de l’école des chartes, 2012), 183–207. 4 Mark Westgarth, The Emergence of the Antique and Curiosity Dealer 1815–c. 1850: The Commodification of Historical Objects (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2020). 5 Jean de La Tynna Duverneuil and Sébastien Bottin, Almanach du commerce de Paris (Paris: bureau de l’Almanach, 1837). 6 The Pavillon had been built from 1756 to 1760 by the architect Jean-Michel Chevotet (1698–1772) for the Maréchal Duc de Richelieu (1696–1788). From 1851 Christofle was established there, at the corner of the Boulevard des Italiens, a large shop ‘where one can find the most varied elements of the luxury of the modern table’. Beurdeley’s shop was contiguous at number 32 rue Louis-le-Grand. 7 According to Alfred Emmanuel Beurdeley’s last will and testament dated 18 October 1919. Private archives. 8 Clive Wainwright, ‘Collecting Abroad’, in ‘The Making of the South Kensington Museum III’, ed. Charlotte Gere, The Journal of the History of Collections 14, no. 1 (2002): 45. 9 Carolyn Sargentson, ‘New Out of Old: The Circulation and Recycling of Ancien Régime Furniture on the London Art Market, 1789–1848’, in The Circulation of Works of Art in the Revolutionary Era, 1789–1848, ed. Roberta Panzanelli and Monica Preti-Hamard (Rennes and Los Angeles: Presses universitaires de Rennes and Getty Research Institute, 2007), 185–96. 10 Private collection. 11 The term ‘Boule’ could be used to describe any furniture within the technique of Boulle marquetry (metal and tortoiseshell inlay) without distinguishing between the original production by André-Charles Boulle (1642–1732), the Boulle revival of the second half of the eighteenth century, or the modern or composite furniture made in the nineteenth century with old or new marquetry panels. 12 ‘La vente des collections de M. Beurdeley Père’, Courrier de l’art, 5 April 1883, 163: ‘his instinct for beautiful things pushed him towards the treasures of the past and he went looking for them in all countries (. . .) it would not be an exaggeration to say that he was then (. . .) the regenerator of the trade in “curiosities”, that he literally recreated and to which he brought so many developments that Paris re-established itself as the centre of this market, thanks to him.’ 13 Geoffrey de Bellaigue, ‘Edward Homes Baldock’, The Connoisseur, Part I, no. 762 (August 1975): 290–9, Part II, no.763 (September 1975): 18–25. 14 Beurdeley’s bill to Milord Lowther dated November 1836, Carlisle archives. This service was originally supplied to Madame du Barry on 29 August 1771 after a design attributed to Augustin de Saint-Aubin (1736–1807). See Rosalind Savill, ‘A Profusion of Fine Old Sèvres China: The Collection of the 2nd Earl of Lonsdale (1787–1872)’, The French Porcelain Society Journal 3 (2007): 254–66. 15 Ibid. 16 In On Spurious Works of Art (1891), John Charles Robinson reports that in the 1820s Baldock imported from Sèvres a large stock of discarded white porcelain, to be decorated at the Madeley Factory owned by Martin Thomas Randall (1786–1859) and specialized in painting in the old Sèvres manner. See Mark Westgarth, ‘A

 The Beurdeleys 225 Biographical Dictionary of 19th Century Antique & Curiosity Dealers’, The Journal of the Regional Furniture Society, no. 23 (2009). 17 Wallace Collection F16. 18 Wallace Collection archives. Receipts. 25B. 19 Wallace Collection C559. 20 Juanita Navarro and Suzanne Higgott, ‘Work in Progress: Venetian and Façon de Venise All-Glass Composites or Hybrids: Manufacture, Detection and Distribution’ (Study Days on Venetian Glass Approximately 1600s. ATTI, 172, no. 1 (Venice: Istituto veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti, 2013–14). 21 The ewer was bought from Beurdeley by Nieuwerkerke in 1865 and acquired by Richard Wallace in 1871 with the Nieuwerkerke collection. Wallace Collection archives, Receipts 28R. 22 Catalogue des Objets d’art et d’ameublement. Anciennes Porcelaines de Sèvres. Grands et beaux vases ; importants services . . . Hôtel Drouot 23–5 April 1883, lot 312. 23 The commode from the Beurdeley sale reappeared on the market in a sale: Galerie Charpentier, Paris, 3–4 Juin 1958, Maître Ader, lot 295, illustrated on Plate 79. By then, the handles had been changed. A similar example, without modifications, is illustrated in Jean-Pierre Samoyault, Mobilier français consulat et Empire (Paris: Gourcuff Gradenigo, 2009), 30 fig. 36. 24 Sargentson, ‘New Out of Old’. 25 Camille Mestdagh, ‘Ameublement et luxe au temps de l’éclectisme : le commerce et l’œuvre des Beurdeley’, in Le commerce du luxe, le luxe du commerce. Production, exposition et circulation des objets précieux du Moyen Age à nos jours, ed. Natacha Coquery and Alain Bonnet (Paris: Mare et Martin, 2015), 279–87.On modern furniture described as ‘curiosities’, see also Sylvain Cordier, Bellangé ébénistes. Une histoire du gout au XIXe siècle (Paris: Mare et Martin, 2012), 302–4. 26 Sargentson, Merchants and Luxury Markets. 27 Rothschild Archives, London. 000/1037/23. 28 Succession de M. le comte de Pembroke, catalogues des somptueux mobilier (. . .) dont la vente aura lieu dans les appartements de feu Lord Pembroke, place Vendôme n°19, du 27 juin au 10 juillet 1862. ‘Exemplaire d’Alfred Beurdeley’, lot 54.BNF, Estampes, Yd-2555(2)-4. 29 The literature on fakes only developed towards the end of the century. See John Charles Robinson, ‘On Spurious Works of Art’. Nineteenth Century Magazine. London, 1891; Paul Eudel, Le truquage : altérations, fraudes et contrefaçons dévoilées (Paris : librairie Molière), 1908. 30 Ferdinand de Rothschild, ‘Bric à brac’ (1897), ed. Michael Hall. Apollo (July 2007): 54. 31 Eugène Dutuit and his brother Auguste Jean-Baptiste (1812–1902) bequeathed their collection to the city of Paris at the beginning of the twentieth century. Heirs to a great fortune established by the cotton trade, they lived in Rouen with their sister. The collection included nearly 20,000 works, of which an important part was devoted to Flemish and Dutch painting and drawings, to engravings and also to various antiques. Twenty purchases from Beurdeley are recorded over twenty years, from 1850 to 1869. 32 Catalogue des objets d’art et de haute curiosité composant la célèbre collection du prince Soltykoff, hôtel Drouot, Paris, lundi 8 avril 1861 et jours suivants . . . Beurdeley

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bought lots 476, 477, 479 et 494. These pieces are today in the Musée du Petit Palais in Paris, respectively: an ewer illustrating the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece (ODUT 01245), the matching dish (ODUT 01247) and a second ewer (ODUT 01246), a cup The Feast of Dido and Aeneas (ODUT01267). These pieces were shown by Dutuit at the retrospective exhibition organized by the Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs in 1865 and later given to the city of Paris with his collection. 33 Archives nationales (hereafter ANP), archives des musées nationaux. Z5, Letter from A. Beurdeley to Nieuwerkerke, 27 August 1868. 34 Ibid. 35 Jean-Baptiste Van Cuyck originally came from Brussels and lived at 82 rue Taitbout. He supplied 600,000 francs of merchandise to Salomon de Rothschild between 1862 and 1864. He was dealing in paintings and works of art. See Pauline PrévostMarcilhacy, Les Rothschild, une dynastie de mécènes en France (Paris: Somogy, 2016), 12. 36 ANP, minutier central des notaires.A.N. M.C. ET/CII/946. Accounts listed in the inventory dated 8 May 1861 and the following days after the death of Mrs. Beurdeley. 37 ANP, minutier central des notaires.AN/MC VI/1200. Accounts listed in the inventory dated 9 November 1865 following the death of Mr Van Cuyck. 38 Georges Alphonse Monbro (1807–1884) was the son of Marie Paul Bonifacio Monbro (1774–1841), active on the Paris market as early as the 1830s. His shop was described as a ‘Special house for old furniture, repair workshops, clocks, bronzes, candelabra, china and Sèvres porcelain, carved furniture, gilded Louis XIV, Louis XV etc.’. In 1848, Georges expanded his business in London as a ‘Furniture and Curiosity Dealer’, where he employed an assistant. The business closed in 1868 and several auctions of the stock took place in Paris. See Anne-Sophie Brisset, ‘La maison Monbro, de marchands de curiosité à décorateurs, illustration des mutations de la profession dans la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle’ (MA diss., École du Louvre, Paris, 2013). 39 Frederic Spitzer (1815–90) was born in Vienna and set up in Paris in 1852. In 1865 he was established at 104 rue de Richelieu. See Paola Cordera, La Fabbrica del Rinascimento, Frédéric Spitzer, mercante d’arte e collezionista nell’Europa delle nuove Nazioni (Bononia: Bononia University Press), 2015. 40 Edward Rutter was an English-born merchant established at 10 rue Louis-le-Grand, a neighbour of Alfred Beurdeley and described in the Almanach of 1855: ‘objets d’art, meubles anciens, vins en gros’. 41 Ayerst appears a few times in relation to Alfred Beurdeley’s business. There are no registered merchants of this name in Paris or London. He was described in 1865 in the inventory after the death of Van Cuyck as a ‘merchant of curiosities’ and as domiciled in Paris at 10 rue Louis-le-Grand. He was certainly in partnership with Edward Rutter, domiciled at the same address. A certain Francis Ayerst (1818–88) was recorded in the Census of 1871 in England as an ‘art dealer’, domiciled in Brighton, see https://www​.thegenealogist​.co​.uk​/search. A sale of his porcelain collection organized in 1916 in London indicates that he died in 1888: Catalogue of Sèvres porcelain formerly the property of the late Mr. Francis Ayerst also old English, continental and Oriental porcelain from various sources which will be sold by auction by Messrs. Christie, Manson & Woods, London on Tuesday, August 1, 1916. 42 Henry Durlacher founded his business in the 1840s. He moved to New Bond Street from 1857, and was recorded at no.119 in 1865. Henry Durlacher appears

 The Beurdeleys 227 as a purchaser of works of art in the greatest sales of the 1850s and 1860s and he represented the Duke of Hamilton at the sale of the Ralph Bernal collection which took place in London in 1855. See Westgarth, ‘A Biographical Dictionary’, 90. 43 John Webb was an influential dealer in London where he played a leading role in the importation of Parisian furniture and the manufacture of French-style furniture in England. He is supposed to have run a workshop, described by Litchfield as ‘a luxury furniture manufacturer’. His name is also linked to the development of the South Kensington Museum. He made many acquisitions on behalf of the Museum, to which he lent and then bequeathed his collection of objects of curiosities. See Wainwright, ‘Relationships with the Trade: Webb and Bardini’ in ‘The Making of the South Kensington Museum IV’, 63–78. 44 Charles Annoot (1824–1889) was recorded in 1865 at 16 Old Bond Street. He was a supplier to the British collector Ralph Bernal (1783–1854), in paintings and antique and modern furniture, See Westgarth, ‘A Biographical Dictionary’, 63. 45 They both worked as agents for the South Kensington Museum for which they bought at auctions and negotiated acquisitions with dealers. See Wainwright, ‘Collecting Abroad’, 45–61. 46 Bust of an Emperor, Lombardy, c. 1500–50 (museum number: 189:1-1866). 47 Wainwright, ‘Collecting Abroad’, 45–61. 48 ANP, Archives des musées nationaux S5, letter dated 26 June 1867. 49 V&A archives. Correspondence abstracts and registers MA/4/4, letter dated 24 July 1867. 50 Olivier Gabet, Le décorateur et l’amateur d’art, décors intérieurs (Paris: musée d’Orsay, 2007). 51 Camille Mestdagh and Pierre Lécoules, L’ameublement d’art français (1850–1900) (Paris: L’amateur, 2010), 88–9. 52 Anne Forray-Carlier, Le mobilier du château de Chantilly (Dijon: Faton, 2010). 53 London, Rothschild Archives, Charlotte de Rothschild letters. 54 Joyau worked for Anthony de Rothschild (1810–1876) at Aston Clinton (1857–8) and for Lionel de Rothschild at Piccadilly (1861–7). For both he supervised the interior decoration, the design, manufacture, delivery and fitting of panelling, mantelpieces and other marble elements, lighting etc. See Anthony and Lionel’s receipts. Rothchild Archives, London. In December 1849 a sale was organised in Paris entitled ‘Joyeau d’objets d’art et de curiosités’. In 1864 the dealer was established in Paris 16 rue de la Grange-batelière (Almanach du commerce de Paris) as a dealer in ‘antiquités, bijouterie, curiosités’. In 1876 a posthumous sale of his collection was organised (22-24 May – Hôtel Drouot). 55 London, The Rothschild Archive, Charlotte, Baroness Lionel de Rothschild (1819– 1884), correspondence, 1845–1873, 000/84. Letters dated 20 and 21 September 1864. 56 Ibid. 57 Wilfried Zeisler, ‘De New-York à Saint-Pétersbourg, le commerce international du luxe à la Belle Epoque’, in Le commerce du luxe, le luxe du commerce. Production, exposition et circulation des objets précieux du Moyen Age à nos jours, ed. Natacha Coquery and Alain Bonnet (Paris: Mare et Martin, 2015), 81–8. 58 Jules Allard (1832–1907) established a firm as a decorator in New York from 1885. 59 ‘To sell Vanderbilt House; A Magnificent Mansion’, New York Times, 11 February 1908.

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60 Mestdagh and Lécoules, L’ameublement d’art français, 129–30. 61 The first two were the most prestigious and were held at Galerie Georges Petit : Beurdeley, 1ère vente, 6–9 mai 1895, Catalogue des objets d’art et de riche ameublement exécutés dans les ateliers et sous la direction de M.A Beurdeley. . .; Beurdeley, 2ème vente, 27 mai–1er juin 1895, Catalogue des objets d’art, de vitrine et d’ameublement des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècle et de style. 62 Charles Mannheim (1833–1910) joined his father in the antique business in the 1850s. He became known as ‘the prince of the experts’ (P. Eudel) for the sales of furniture and objets d’art during the second half of the century. He settled as ‘expert in curiosities’ in rue St. George in the 1860s. He formed an important collection of objets d’art and represented Baron Alphonse de Rothschild during the San Donato sale. He appears regularly in the accounts of the Paris branch of the family of which he was one of the main advisors and suppliers. 63 Jacques Seligmann (1858–1923) was born in Frankfurt am Main. He moved to Paris around 1875 and worked for the auctioneer Chevallier and for the dealer Charles Mannheim. Seligmann opened his own shop in rue des Mathurins in 1880 and counted Baron Edmond de Rothschild as a client. In 1900, the evolution of his business was such that he moved to Place Vendôme and in 1904 he opened a gallery in New York at 7 West 36th St, directed by his brother Arnold. 64 Revue de la mode, 1841. 65 Adriana Turpin, ‘Appropriation as a form of nationalism? Collecting French furniture in the nineteenth century’ in Art Crossing Borders: The Internationalisation of the Art Market in the Age of Nation States, 1750–1914. ed. Jan Dirk Baetens and Dries Lyna (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2019), 220–55. 66 Paul Baudry (1826–88), c. 1862, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. RF 1979 47. Legs Marcel Beurdeley, 1978. 67 Charlotte Vignon, The Duveen Brothers and the Market for Decorative Arts, 18801940. New York: The Frick Collection.

15

Collaboration and resistance The National Gallery, London and the Italian art market at the end of the nineteenth century Elena J. Greer

The directorship of Sir Frederic Burton (1816–1900), the third director of the National Gallery, London, between 1874 and 1894, was a turning point in the history of the institution. These twenty years witnessed economic, political and social changes that challenged the processes for developing the collection, established by Charles Lock Eastlake (1793–1865), the Gallery’s first director (from 1855 to 1865). Eastlake had created and crafted the post through his contribution to the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the National Gallery of 1853.1 His suggestions for streamlining the hitherto haphazard acquisitions procedure resulted in the establishment of the post of director with sole authority for buying paintings.2 The director was to focus on those for sale in Italy and would be assisted by a £10,000 annual Treasury grant and a dedicated travelling agent. The aim was to buy paintings that would illuminate the development of Italian painting in order to create a visual history of art. The man assigned as Eastlake’s travelling agent was the German connoisseur and dealer, Otto Mündler.3 However, his position was short-lived; he was dismissed in 1858 over the scandal surrounding the cost of the major Veronese from the Pisani collection in Venice (The Family of Darius Before Alexander, NG294) and subsequently the post was suspended. In 1872, following the purchase of pictures from the collection of the former prime minister, Sir Robert Peel, the grant was suspended. It remained so when Burton took office two years later. After much effort from his trustees, it was restored (albeit at half its former value) in 1879. However, the 1880s witnessed changes in the global art market that rendered Eastlake’s model unviable. The gradual shift in buying and selling patterns arguably influenced the so-called Rosebery Minute of 1894, which transferred the authority for acquisitions away from the director, reversing the 1855 Minute.4 The Europe-wide agricultural depression caused by the increased importation of cheap wheat and grain from the ‘New World’ threatened the livelihoods of British farmers and landowners.5 The knock-on effect for the art market came with the

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alterations to the laws governing entail, which enabled the sale of outlying land and ‘heirlooms’, including works of art, from settled estates.6 Despite offering the chance to make some important acquisitions, competition from foreign buyers – namely Germany and America – inflated prices to levels far beyond the Gallery’s budget. In 1882 Burton was able to persuade the government to supply £21,514 to purchase twelve works at the auction of the Hamilton Palace sale.7 In 1884, fraught and complex private negotiations resulted in the purchase of Raphael’s ‘Ansidei Madonna’ (NG1171) and Van Dyck’s Charles I on Horseback (NG1172) from Blenheim Palace for £87,500, almost nine times the annual grant.8 Although the Duke had offered the Gallery first refusal of his collection, lack of funds resulted in only these two acquisitions. The Gallery’s rival in this decade was the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin that purchased what was thought at the time to be Raphael’s Fornarina (in fact Sebastiano’s Portrait of a Young Roman Woman) and Rubens’s Andromeda.9 The rhetoric surrounding the acquisitions – campaigns in the press, from the art world and from within the Gallery – proposed that the pictures were British cultural heritage, arguably the first time the concept had been used in connection with buying paintings for the nation.10 However, rather than provoke a Treasury review of acquisitions strategy, the purchase instead resulted in a second suspension of the annual grant.11 As the concept of the Gallery’s public role was expanding, finances were again curtailed. In addition, the director’s travel grant fluctuated and was even suspended temporarily in 1877.12 Exporting pictures from Italy had become increasingly difficult since the unification of the Italian states in the 1860s and, as Federico Sacchi, the Cremonese dealer,13 pointed out: ‘Old pictures of some merit are getting so scarce nowadays that it is quite a wonder to find some in good condition and authentic.’14 Circumstances had changed and Burton’s buying patterns reflected this. Only 28 per cent of paintings Burton purchased during his tenure were from Italian sources.15 However, he remained under considerable pressure to continue the pursuit, most especially from his opinionated and forthright trustee Austen Henry Layard (1817– 94). Layard, who in his former career as an archaeologist had excavated the Assyrian city of Nineveh, never lost his zeal for making discoveries and applied his energy to seeking great finds for the Gallery as a trustee.16 As Carol Helstosky articulates in her study of forgeries on the Italian art market in the nineteenth century, the lure of Italy served the multifaceted motives of foreign actors on the market: ‘foreign customers desired to participate, as directly and intimately as possible, in the discovery of an original or authentic object. . . . For collectors, the experience might have enhanced their aesthetic passions; for agents and connoisseurs, the experience of purchase served to legitimate their authority and expertise.’17 Based in Venice from 1880, with contacts ‘on the ground’, namely critic and marchand amateur, Giovanni Morelli, it is clear from his correspondence with his fellow trustee, William H. Gregory, (1816–92) that Layard saw himself as far better placed to lead on acquisitions than Burton.18 Morelli had helped him to build up his collection of Italian paintings in the 1850s and 1860s, and Layard was well-versed, as his most dedicated acolyte, in Morellian connoisseurship. Therefore, his most effective

 Collaboration and Resistance 231 strategy for marshalling influence was to press for further acquisitions from Italian collections and dealers. However, Morelli, who had been commissioned to inventory all the works of art in northern Italy and was an ardent Italian patriot, was keen to maintain the best works of art for Italian collections.19 Both Boxall and Burton, aware of Morelli’s biases, exercised caution when assessing his suggestions, much to Layard and Morelli’s annoyance. Layard’s eagerness to pursue Morelli’s recommendations was matched by his frustration with Burton’s apparent reluctance to make purchases – especially since the 1855 Minute had endowed the director with the sole authority to do so. Layard’s complaint to Gregory that, ‘It is very unfortunate that we cannot get the Knight [as he ironically referred to Burton] to stir to examine these and other pictures . . . but he is lazy and indifferent and would rather not leave his armchair at the Athenaeum to encounter the dangers and privation of a journey in Italy’ was often repeated.20 Burton made the greatest number of purchases from Italy in 1881 and 1883. Those paintings accessioned in 1881 were seen by Burton in 1880 on a trip to Italy, documented in a rare surviving diary.21 Burton met Morelli on several occasions on that trip, but did not make any purchases. Layard discussed potential acquisitions more frequently with Morelli than with Burton; Morelli was frustrated by Burton’s circumspection and took every opportunity to furnish Layard with his – usually negative – opinion of Burton’s acquisitions. Morelli was critical of one of Burton’s best acquisitions, the Adoration of the Kings (NG1160) purchased in 1884, one of only two paintings in the collection which retains its attribution to Giorgione to this day. Morelli’s objection stemmed from Burton’s preference for the attribution put forward by Cavalcaselle, who, Morelli claimed, knew nothing of the master, adding disingenuously that he was angry ‘on behalf of our friend Burton’.22 No doubt Morelli would have been disturbed to find that Burton disagreed with him about Costa’s Saint Sebastian (then with the dealer Michelangelo Guggenheim and now in Dresden).23 Morelli had thought it to be by Tura and a desirable acquisition for the Gallery – according to Layard – while Burton told Gregory that he cared not for the attribution thinking it either way ‘a deformity’ – an opinion which corresponded with that of Crowe and Cavalcaselle.24 The legacy of Morelli’s contribution is not significant. Through his cousin, Enrico Andreossi, the Gallery acquired two Italian Renaissance paintings of the Holy Family now rarely on display (Bonifazio de Pitati (NG1202) and Cariani (NG1203)). Morelli himself attended a tribunal to secure their export.25 Morelli and Layard were delighted to have persuaded Burton to agree to the purchase of Marco d’Oggiono’s Virgin and Child (NG1049) (Figure 15.1) from the Manfrin collection. Morelli put his reluctance down to ‘over-caution’ rather than his estimation of the importance of the painting for the collection.26 The Gallery account books reveal that, in an unorthodox move, the purchase was even funded by Layard.27 Eager to strengthen his circle of influence, Layard enlisted Jean Paul Richter, Morelli’s acolyte, to act as a ‘sort of travelling agent’ for the Gallery.28 Layard had negotiated Burton’s travel expenses for the financial year 1887–8, as well as a supplementary grant of £2,000 from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but was confounded by Burton’s

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Figure 15.1  Marco d’Oggiono, Virgin and Child, c. 1520. Oil on wood, 66.7 × 53.3 cm. National Gallery, London. © National Gallery. reluctance to travel to Italy to view pictures. Ultimately, in a move that seems to have been prompted by the need to spend the grant, otherwise one might never have been offered again, the Gallery acquired several pictures from Richter’s stock that, although they pleased Burton on antiquarian grounds, were not perhaps the best pictures available.29 These included two small fragments by Gerolamo Mocetto (NG1239-40), purchased for their rarity but, as Burton admitted, not of the highest quality.30 These were criticized in Parliament as ‘the money devoted to pictures should be expended only on first-rate works of art, and not spent in acquiring possession of pictures which might gratify the particular fancies of the director of the National Gallery, but which could be of no great interest to the public.’31 One year later, Richter betrayed the Gallery by selling a portrait by Palma Vecchio to Ludwig Mond (NG3939) (who later bequeathed it to the Gallery) in the very final stages of the negotiations.32 Layard conceded to Morelli that Burton’s suspicions of Richter had ultimately turned out to be correct: ‘He had serious misgivings about him, believing him to be dishonest – unfortunately they appear to have been justified.’33 Layard, with whom Burton stayed in Venice on his 1880 trip, updated Gregory on his progress: ‘He saw several things that pleased him here – especially a portrait by Lotto – but made no purchase – wishing to see what Castellani has and what there may

 Collaboration and Resistance 233 be for sale in Rome before spending his small balance.’34 One senses from the detailed descriptions in his diary of paintings that he saw then that the visit was interesting and enjoyable for Burton, for the opportunity to study pictures in churches, museums and private collections, rather than to necessarily seek out new additions to the collection. On this trip, Burton made purchases from dealers new to selling to the Gallery. Alessandro Castellani – mentioned by Layard, who is probably less well known as a paintings dealer than for his other enthusiasms – was among these. He belonged to the Castellani dynasty of jewellers manufacturing replicas of ancient designs. Exiled from Rome in 1859, he set up a shop in London at 13 Frith Street selling jewellery and antiquities. Castellani had loaned some of his Renaissance artefacts, including manuscript illuminations, to exhibitions in Britain and he had been employed by the Duke of Marlborough to value his gems which were sold at auction in 1875.35 Burton clearly held him in high esteem for, as a scholar of antiquities himself, he had written about Castellani’s donation of Hellenistic bronzes to the British Museum in the 1870s, which may explain his desire to visit and to make purchases from him.36 He bought two panels: Christ on the Cross by Niccolò di Liberatore (NG1107) and Giovanni da Milano’s Christ and the Virgin Enthroned with Six Saints (NG1108) (Figure 15.2), which was purchased as a Sienese picture.

Figure 15.2  Giovanni da Milano, Christ and the Virgin Enthroned with Six Saints, c. 1350. Egg tempera on panel. 45.8 × 34.4 cm. National Gallery, London. © National Gallery.

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Michelangelo Guggenheim, based in Venice, was another new source. As Nicholas Penny points out, Burton would have been aware that the finest pictures that went through Guggenheim’s hands were destined for the collection of Madame André (Nélie Jacquemart), whose collection is now part of the Jacquemart-André Museum in Paris.37 Layard and Gregory also hoped to buy two small panels by Lazzaro Bastiani from Guggenheim but these too, as Layard assumed correctly, were held for Madame André.38 The ‘Lotto’ portrait of the Protonotary Giovanni Giuliano (now catalogued as simply north Italian (NG1105)), mentioned by Layard, was from Guggenheim, and Burton also bought Nazario Nazari’s full-length portrait of Andrea Tron, then given to Longhi (NG1102). The Protonotary falls into the category of northern Italian portraits with decorative accessories (carpet and clock), a less high-quality version of works by Moretto and Moroni, but the Tron portrait is an unusual addition for Burton – a portrait of an identified sitter may have appealed to his antiquarian interests. William Blundell Spence, who settled in Florence in the 1830s, had been supplying the Gallery with pictures since the 1850s, when he negotiated the Gallery’s purchase of collection of early Italian paintings formed by his friends Francesco Lombardi and Ugo Baldi.39 In 1879, he negotiated the purchase of Scipio Pulzone’s Portrait of a Cardinal (NG1048). On this trip Spence – and Layard – advised Burton to see Costa and Maineri’s altarpiece, known as the Pala Strozzi (NG1119), belonging to the Marchese Strozzi. Eastlake had treated for the Pala Strozzi in 1858.40 With Spence’s help, the Gallery finally acquired it for £300 less than they had originally been prepared to offer.41 Giuseppe Baslini also had a long-standing relationship with the Gallery – a total of twenty-four paintings came through him. The early years of Burton’s directorship were distinguished by purchases from his stock, including Andrea Solario’s portrait of A Man with a Pink (NG923) bought in 1874 and a group of portraits by Moroni and Moretto (NG1022-1025) (Plate 17) from the Casa Fenaroli in Brescia acquired in 1876. Though he is hardly mentioned in Layard and Gregory’s correspondence, Baslini was an important dealer, supplying the galleries of Milan and London, and he had also been assisting the Gallery’s rival, Wilhelm Bode, from 1873.42 Burton and Baslini corresponded frequently and the negotiations over Savoldo’s Mary Magdalene (NG1031), purchased in 1878, testify to their familiarity and cooperation.43 The 1880 visit secured two small paintings by Longhi, including the Exhibition of a Rhinoceros at Venice (NG1101) – a rare foray into Italian painting of the eighteenth century – and a Virgin and Child by the Venetian-trained Bartolommeo Montagna (NG1098), an artist favoured by Layard, who had two in his collection.44 Burton may have been interested in Montagna because he was keen to expand what he deemed to be ‘the very obscure subject of Venetian painting during the Bellinesque period’.45 None of these, however, can be considered the best, or even most representative, of Burton’s purchases. By far the finest acquisitions that he made were from British collections, even before the watershed of the Hamilton sale. For example, although Eastlake had been a great admirer of Botticelli, it was Burton who acquired the

 Collaboration and Resistance 235 Gallery’s most important examples, which came from British private collections. From the Barker sale in 1874, he bought the still-celebrated Venus and Mars (NG915) and the then more highly esteemed image of Venus reclining (An Allegory, NG916, no longer attributed to Botticelli), as well as Piero della Francesca’s starkly serene Nativity (NG908). Botticelli’s tondo of the Adoration of the Kings (NG1033) and the Mystic Nativity (NG1034) came from the Fuller Maitland collection in 1878. Burton’s friendship and working relationship with fellow painter, dealer and occasional agent, Charles Fairfax Murray, based in Florence, demonstrated that there was some value in looking to Italy for pictures in the latter decades of the century. Other than 1881, 1883 was the year in which the greatest number of acquisitions was made from Italian sources. In this year, Burton bought two panels from Duccio’s Maestà – the most important work of fourteenth-century Italy, the majority of which remains in Siena. Murray and Burton were introduced to each other in London by their mutual friend Dante Gabriel Rossetti in 1870 and met again in Siena a few years later.46 Employed as a copyist by Ruskin, with whom he travelled to Italy in 1871– 2, Murray then settled in Florence. He is the only dealer from whom we know that Burton purchased privately for his own collection.47 Murray and Burton were pioneering in developing a decent collection of Sienese painting, a school which was subsequently neglected until the 1920s. As Burton’s purchase of the so-called Sienese paintings from Castellani reflects, he was fascinated with this early Italian school. As I have shown elsewhere, his interest in developing the collection was both aesthetic and historical; he was primarily concerned to demonstrate the development of Western painting and part of this endeavour involved representing previously overlooked schools and artists. His efforts were sometimes deliberately ‘non-canonical’, including the purchase of seven second-century GraecoRoman portraits, which he claimed were useful as examples of the encaustic technique and as such ‘illustrate the unbroken succession in the art of painting’.48 In this sense, he differed from Eastlake who had considered that the Gallery’s collection of early painting was complete in 1859. In 1877, perhaps by way of cementing his relationship with the Gallery, Murray donated the fourteenth-century Sienese artist Pietro Lorenzetti’s predella panel Saint Sabinus before the Governor of Tuscany (?) (NG1113) from the altarpiece of the Birth of the Virgin, painted for Siena Cathedral.49 Burton purchased Niccolò di Buonaccorso’s Marriage of the Virgin (NG1109) (Plate 18) from Murray in 1881. The purchase of Matteo di Giovanni’s grand Sienese altarpiece of the Assumption of the Virgin (NG1155) in 1884 was a complicated affair because of foreign competition. Burton noted the rumoured high asking price ‘may not be more than the worth to the Gallery of so representative a work’.50 Representative not only of the artist but also of Sienese devotion to the Virgin Mary, it was a key acquisition for this school. Paul Tucker has pointed out that Murray was often frustrated with Burton for not considering works he thought would be ideally suited to the national collection, citing the example of his rejection of Naddo Cecarelli’s Man of Sorrows (Liechtenstein, Collection Vaduz), perhaps because he thought the subject matter too difficult.51 From Burton’s perspective, it may have been more complex. By sourcing these examples

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of an early school which Burton found both aesthetically pleasing and historically relevant to the rest of the collection, Murray presented an opportunity for Burton to fulfil his mandate to make purchases in Italy of the earlier schools, as set out in the 1855 Minute, at prices that the Gallery could afford. At the time, individual prices for Sienese panels were generally under £100. As a strategy, it both provided Burton with liberation from Morelli’s constant involvement – via Layard – as well as an outlet for discussing pictures that interested him. While Layard and Gregory discussed potential purchases and controversial attributions between themselves, Burton tested ideas and sought advice from Murray.52 In the face of the increasing price of Old Masters on the secondary market in Britain, one might even interpret Burton’s relationship with Murray as part of a strategy to circumvent the traditional art market by purchasing pictures that were little known to British buyers and which were simultaneously more economical. Contrary to Morelli’s interventions, nearly all of the works that Murray helped Burton to acquire or donate to the collection have always been on the main floor of the Gallery, testifying to their recognized and continuing importance in the collection. Left to pursue his own aims for the Gallery’s collection, Burton was able, through his collaboration with Murray, to make some significant acquisitions from Italy. They were relevant in terms of the development of the collection, envisaged as one which revealed the development of the history of art in accordance with the didactic mandate of the 1855 Minute and they remain relevant today. This contribution, however, was probably too minor – and too niche – to convince Burton’s detractors that his approach was anything other than obscure, particularly in view of some of the less successful Italian purchases such as the Mocettos. It is telling that the defining criticisms of Burton’s acquisitions were made by those who detected in them aesthetic and intellectual bias (including those promoted by Layard), rather than strategy. The debates that surrounded the issue of the Rosebery Minute that so severely curtailed the Director’s power centred upon the types of acquisitions that the Gallery ought to be making and whether an artist or a scholarly ‘expert’ would be best placed to make them. The positions were championed by artists and critics in letters, first to Gladstone and then to his successor, the Earl of Rosebery.53 Interestingly, Burton’s penchant for the early Italians was put down by some to an aesthetic bias connected to his former career as a watercolourist. This may have been partly true, but the criticism failed to recognize his scholarly approach, which was in line with (and arguably an extension of) the erudite spirit of the 1855 Minute. The early 1880s, including the Italian journey and Burton’s interaction with the dealers and agents recorded in the diary, represented a critical period when the ideals and benefits of Eastlake’s era were confronted by the realities of a lack of decent paintings on the Italian market and a lack of funding. The diary documents the last and already somewhat futile attempt by the Gallery to continue the tradition of the Grand Tour. Layard’s attachment to this model of collecting enacted through his promotion of Morelli proved essentially a hindrance to his own aims. Burton’s ‘independent’ acquisitions in this period – through Murray as well as many of those itemized in the

 Collaboration and Resistance 237 diary – are significant as they represent a compromise between the didactic mandate of the 1855 Minute and the context of the economic and market constraints. In the meantime, as Barbara Pezzini’s study of the fruition of the Gallery’s relationship with the London dealer Agnew reveals, a more pragmatic attitude was prevailing in relation to the Gallery’s purchases in Britain.54 The process, however, was organic, rather than systematic, governed by opportunity, rather than strategy. Ultimately, the crisis in the British market which threatened to rob the nation of its ‘national heritage’ became increasingly acute in the minds of lovers of art when set against Burton’s perceived personal foibles and excessive purchases of minor Italian paintings. It is arguable that it was the underlying intention of the Rosebery Minute of 1894 to solve the problem by transferring power from the director to the trustees. Layard, who died in the same year, had missed his chance.

Notes 1 Report, proceedings and minutes of Evidence of the Select Committee appointed to Inquire into the Management of the National Gallery; also to consider in what mode the Collective Monuments of Antiquity and Fine Art Possessed by the Nation may be Securely Preserved, Judiciously Augmented, and Advantageously Exhibited to the Public (London, 1853) (hereafter SCNG). Eastlake was a trustee when he gave evidence to the committee, having served as keeper from 1843 to 1847. The changes were enshrined in a Treasury minute: National Gallery, London (hereafter NGL), NG5/118/1, Treasury Minute Reconstituting the Establishment of the National Gallery, 27 March 1855. 2 SCNG 1853, Q6594. 3 Jaynie Anderson, ‘Introduction to the Travel Diary of Otto Mündler’, in The Travel Diary of Otto Mündler, ed. Charles Dowd and Burton Fredericksen, The Walpole Society 51 (1985): 16–24. 4 The Rosebery Minute was issued on 26 April 1894: NGL, NG68/16/3, Rosebery Minute. It is discussed in depth in Elena Greer, Sir Frederic William Burton and the Rosebery Minute: The Directorship of the National Gallery, London, in the Late Nineteenth Century (PhD dissertation, University of Nottingham, 2017). 5 Peter Mandler, The Fall and Rise of the Stately Home (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997), 118–19. 6 Houses were still protected, but their contents were eligible for sale under section 37 of the 1882 Act, subject to a court order. For the 1882 Settled Land Act (amended in 1884) see London, Parliamentary Archives, HL/PO/ PB/1/1880/43&44V1n63. For analysis see Eileen Spring, ‘Landowners, Lawyers and Land Reform’, American Journal of Legal History 21 (1977): 51–4. For the impact of the agricultural depression see Mandler, The Fall and Rise, 118–24. 7 These included Velázquez’s Portrait of Philip IV in Brown and Silver (NG1129) and Tintoretto’s Christ Washing the Feet of his Disciples (NG1130). 8 For the negotiations see Barbara Pezzini, ‘Collecting Raphael in Nineteenth-Century Britain: William Gladstone and the Madonna Ansidei at the National Gallery’, in Collecting Raphael, ed. Claudia LaMalfa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

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9 Its curator, Wilhelm Bode, claimed this was only because the former (inv. No. 259B) passed as a ‘ruin’, Wilhelm Bode, ‘The Berlin Renaissance Museum’, Fortnightly Review, 56 (1 October 1891): 506. The latter is inv. no. 776C. 10 See for example petition from the Royal Academicians: NGL, NG/68/8/22, 23 April 1884 and MPs: NGL, NG/68/8/22, 28 April 1884 and NGL, NG1/5, 9 June 1884, Burton to Treasury. 11 NGL, NG7/65/11, 25 August 1884, Letter from the Treasury. 12 They were increased in 1887 but reduced again: see NGL: NG1/6 5 March 1889, Board meeting in which the travelling expenses were reduced from £100 to £40. See also NGL: NG1/6, 7 March 1890, Board meeting in which a Treasury letter dated 6 January 1890 was read which recommended that the travelling expenses be included in the purchase grant. 13 Sacchi had acted in the same capacity as Mündler on behalf of Burton’s predecessor, William Boxall. 14 NGL, NG39/86, 5 February 1878, Sacchi to Burton. 15 Burton purchased over 200 paintings for the Gallery. If gifts are also included, a total of over 500 paintings came into the collection during his directorship. For statistics on Burton’s buying patterns see Barbara Pezzini, Making a Market for Art: Agnew’s and the National Gallery, 1855–1928 (PhD diss., University of Manchester, 2017), 129. 16 Layard’s first publication was Nineveh and Its Remains (London: John Murray, 1849) and subsequently a second book based on these excavations entitled Nineveh and Babylon (London: John Murray, 1853). 17 Carol Helstosky, ‘Giovanni Bastianini, Art Forgery, and the Market in NineteenthCentury Italy’, The Journal of Modern History, 81, no. 4 (December 2009): 793–823, 812. 18 Gregory was an Irish MP – a Conservative turned Liberal – and art collector. He was posted to Ceylon in 1872 and served as governor there until 1877. See Brian Jenkins, Sir William Gregory of Coole (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1986). 19 Nicholas Penny, National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Italian Schools, 2 vols, I, Bergamo, Brescia and Cremona (London: National Gallery Company, 2004), 373. For Morelli’s patriotic attitude to Italian works of art, see Anderson, ‘National Museums’: 391 and Donata Levi ‘“Let agents be sent to all the cities of Italy”: British Public Museums and the Italian Art Market in the Mid-Nineteenth Century’, in Victorian and Edwardian Responses to the Italian Renaissance, ed. John E. Law and Lene Ostermark-Johansen (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 33–54. 20 BL Add MSS 3895, 13 November 1887, Layard to Gregory. 21 Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland, Centre for Studies in Irish Art (hereafter CSIA), Bindon Burton papers, no. 100, Diary 1880. 22 Greer and Penny, ‘Giorgione and the National Gallery’, 367–8. 23 CSIA, Bindon Burton archive, no. 100, Diary, Venice, 30 October 1880, and Oxford, Bodleian Library (hereafter Bod.) William H. Gregory papers, Dep.d.976, 14 November 1887, Burton to Gregory. For the painting see Emilio Negro and Nicosetta Roio, Lorenzo Costa, 1460–1535 (Modena: Artioli, 2002), 81–2, cat. no.2. 24 Joseph Archer Crowe and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, A History of Painting in North Italy, ed. Tancred Borenius, 3 vols, 2nd edn. (London: John Murray, 1912), 251–2. 25 BL Add MSS 38965, 7 February 1886, Morelli to Layard.

 Collaboration and Resistance 239 26 BL Add MSS 38964, 4 December 1883, Morelli to Layard. 27 NGA: NG1/13/6. 28 For Layard’s high opinion of Richter see BL Add MSS 38950, 9 March 1888, Layard to Gregory. 29 Bod., Dep.d.976 9 February 1888, Burton to Gregory. 30 In his catalogue, Burton described the artist’s known works as, ‘deficient in technical qualities’, Frederic Burton, Descriptive and Historical Catalogue of the Pictures in the National Gallery: Foreign Schools (London: HM Stationery Office, 1890), 279–80. 31 George Cavendish Bentinck, Hansard, HC Deb. vol. 332, col. 1591-2, 27 February 1888. Available at https://hansard​.parliament​.ac​.uk​/Commons [accessed 7 October 2019]. 32 BL Add MSS 38950, 13 November 1887, Layard to Gregory. 33 BL Add. MSS. 38968, 27 September 1889, Layard to Morelli. 34 Bod., Dep.d. 970, W.H. Gregory papers, 2 November 1880, Layard to Gregory. 35 Mark Westgarth, ‘A Biographical Dictionary of Nineteenth Century Antique and Curiosity Dealers’, in The Regional Furniture Society, 23, ed. David Jones (Glasgow: The Regional Furniture Society, 2009), 77. Giorgia Mancini and Nicholas Penny, The Sixteenth Century Italian Paintings, vol. 3: Bologna and Ferrara, National Gallery Schools Catalogues (London: The National Gallery Company, 2016), 359–60. 36 Frederic Burton, ‘The Castellani Collection’, Portfolio: An Artistic Periodical 4 (1873): 130–4. 37 Penny, Bergamo, Brescia and Cremona, 366. 38 BL Add MSS 38950, 7 November 1888, Layard to Gregory. The paintings were narratives of the judgement and martyrdom of Saint Paul I of Constantinople (inv. no. MJAP-P 2250). 39 Eastlake had to justify the purchase of such early pictures to his trustees: Report of the director of the National Gallery (1857/8, printed in 1867) transcribed in full in Martin Davies, The Earlier Italian Schools: National Gallery Catalogues (London: National Gallery Company, 1986), 565–7. 40 Mancini and Penny, Bologna and Ferrara, 85. 41 NGL, NG6/1, Board Meeting, 8 February 1882. 42 Jaynie Anderson, ‘The Political Power of Connoisseurship in Nineteenth-Century Europe: Wilhelm von Bode versus Giovanni Morelli’, Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen, 38 (1996): 107–19, 114. 43 NGL, NG5/499/3-7, Baslini-Burton letters. 44 CSIA, Bindon Burton papers no. 100, Diary, Milan, 1 October 1880. 45 He wrote these words about the painting with a controversial attribution to Giorgione to express his ambivalence concerning the authorship and preference for the role it might play in illuminating the rest of the collection. See Greer and Penny, ‘Giorgione and the National Gallery’, 369, notes 48–9. 46 David B. Elliot, Charles Fairfax Murray: the unknown Pre-Raphaelite (Lewes: Book Guild, 2000), 72. 47 Including drawings by Hals and Signorelli. See letters from Burton to Charles Fairfax Murray, Austin, University of Texas, Harry Ransom Research Centre (hereafter HRRC), MS-2970, Charles Fairfax Murray papers, 14 October 1877, 3 December 1877, 6 December 1877, 4 January 1878 Burton to Murray. For the Signorelli, see HRRC, MS-2970, Burton to Murray, 28 October 1878. For Burton and Murray see

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Paul Tucker, ‘Trecento “Characteristic”, Trecento “Grotesque”: Frederic Burton, Charles Fairfax Murray and Early Sienese Painting in the National Gallery’, Predella Journal of Visual Arts, 41–42, (2017): 87–114. Available at: www​.predella​.it. and for the transcribed letters see Paul Tucker, ‘The Correspondence of Charles Fairfax Murray (1849–1919), Frederic Burton (1816–1900) and Wilhelm Bode (1845–1929)’ (London: Walpole Society 79, 2017). 48 Elena Greer, ‘Sir Frederic Burton and the Controversy of Art-Historical Expertise at the National Gallery, London, in the Late Nineteenth Century’, Journal of Art Historiography 18 (2018): https​:/​/ar​​thist​​oriog​​raphy​​.word​​press​​.com/​​18​-​ju​​n​-18/​. See Bod. Dep.d.976, Burton to Gregory, 6 July 1888. 49 The altarpiece is now in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Siena.  See HRRC, MS-2970, 3 December 1877, Burton to Murray regarding the gift of the Pietro Lorenzetti. 50 See Burton to Murray, 19 December 1882, Charles Fairfax Murray papers, MS-2970. 51 Tucker, ‘The Correspondence of Charles Fairfax Murray’, 7. It is interesting to note that the subjects of Burton’s other early purchases are far more accessible and he may have deemed them more amenable to the Treasury and trustees as a result. 52 See Greer, Sir Frederic William Burton and the Rosebery Minute, 31–2. 53 For the letters, see Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Rosebery papers, MS 10150. 54 Pezzini, Making a Market, 119–71.

16

‘I shall set at once about the work’ Some agents in China Nick Pearce

In recent years there has been growing interest among scholars of Chinese art and its collecting history in the specialist dealers who began to emerge from the late nineteenth century and who operated their businesses during a period of heightened activity in the first three decades of the twentieth century.1 This period between about 1900 and 1937 was seen almost as a ‘golden age’, both in terms of a better understanding of China’s past through its material culture and in providing the opportunity to collect that material institutionally and privately on an international scale. Paradoxically, this came about as China’s political system began to crumble, resulting in the fall of the last imperial dynasty, the Qing in 1911, which was followed by a weak Nationalist government and civil war. The opportunity to ‘collect’ ended only with the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937, when an international presence in China became severely limited. The collapse of the dynastic system in 1911 had the immediate effect that formerly high-ranking and powerful Manchu and Chinese families needed to liquidate their assets, including art collections, which began to come onto the market.2 The sales included objects from the imperial collections as the last emperor, Pu Yi, who was allowed to reside in the Forbidden City until he was expelled in 1924, needed money and so borrowed heavily from banks that held imperial objects as security. The loans were never redeemed and so the objects were sold on the market.3 Alongside this was the growing trade in Chinese archaeological material, the result of railway construction across China uncovering Bronze Age and later burial sites. The objects discovered (bronzes, jades, burial ceramics) were a revelation to Western and Chinese scholars and collectors alike and coincided with an intellectual shift in China from an overriding interest in historiography to field archaeology. As Bruce G. Trigger has observed, this developed ‘within the context of the reformist May 4th Movement, which, beginning in 1919, sought to replace literary scholarship with scientific knowledge from the West. There was a receptive audience for geology, palaeontology and other sciences capable of collecting empirical data from the earth.’4 Weak politically and economically and increasingly subject to foreign commercial and military intervention, China provided

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the opportunity for trading and collecting these and other artefacts on an international scale, which was uncontrolled and, in terms of source, indiscriminate. The unearthing of artefacts through railways and other building led to looting by local peasant gangs who then sold them on.5 Even as early as 1915, R. L. Hobson, then Keeper of Ceramics and Ethnography at the British Museum, remarked that this material ‘has been gathered haphazard [sic] and under the least favourable conditions for accurate classification’, noting nevertheless that ‘the Western collector has profited by the unhappy conditions which have prevailed in China since the revolution in 1912’.6 While the market for Chinese artefacts during the period under discussion and the growth in the number of dealers who serviced that market are now better understood, far less is known about the agents who fed the dealers with objects. Yet these figures were crucial in the network of supply. Most of them were Chinese working for the existing dealer market based in Shanghai and Beijing and remain simply names recorded within the stock and cash books of those dealer archives which survive.7 Many have no name. Daisy Wang notes, for example, that Chinese dealer C. T. Loo who had ‘an elaborate network in China, consisting of staff in his branch offices in Shanghai and Peking (Beijing)’, also had ‘local agents, whom he called “friends” or “buyers”’.8 Some are known, at least by name, many of which would also have been local dealers supplying the new international market represented by the likes of C. T. Loo, Yamanaka, Bluett, John Sparks, Tonying and others. The John Sparks Archive contains a list of names such as Tzu, Zee, Tong, Koo Shan Chai, Vee, Koo Chan Chai, Zie Soey Koo and Lo Tin Kee, most of which remain obscure to us today, even when they appear in other dealers’ records.9 More is sometimes known where an agent or dealer comes out from the shadows and becomes a significant player in the market. One dealer-agent for Sparks, Zie Soey Koo & Co., became its Shanghai partner in 1925, when Frederick James Abbott, Sparks’ manager and buying agent in China since 1923, entered into a business alliance. As Ching-Yi Huang writes: ‘Zie Soey Koo became the foreign agency of Sparks in China, and its company premises on Chao Tung Road was also the site of Sparks’ Shanghai Office.’10 In a sense, agents are by their nature secretive, operating as they do on the margins of the art market, and this was very much the case in China. One of the earliest figures working as an agent for individual collectors and museums was Stephen Wootton Bushell (1844–1908), as this author has revealed elsewhere.11 Trained at Guy’s Hospital, London, Bushell was medical attendant to the British Legation in Beijing from 1868 to 1899. During his time there, he concentrated on the study of the Chinese language and Chinese art and on collecting for himself and others as his expertise grew. One contemporary observer noted that Bushell was fluent in the local vernacular (Beijing dialect), testament to his ability as a speaker, as well as reader of the language.12 He made use of his position as British Legation doctor to progress his interests: ‘I have obtained access, in the exercise of the duties of my profession’ wrote Bushell, ‘to several palaces and private houses, and have in this way had many opportunities of seeing the treasures of native collectors, which usually are so rigidly closed to foreigners’.13 He would also have frequented local dealers and markets in Beijing, which was home to a thriving antiques trade. Bushell began to publish on various aspects of Chinese art as early as

 ‘I Shall Set at Once about the Work’ 243 1873 and soon gained enough of a reputation to be approached to make purchases on behalf of Augustus Wollaston Franks (1826–97), Keeper of the Department of British and Medieval Antiquities at the British Museum.14 Franks later recommended Bushell to the Director of the Victoria & Albert Museum (then the South Kensington Museum), who commissioned him to buy suitable items for the institution in China.15 Between 1882 and 1883, Bushell was advanced £500: £250 in February 1882 and a further £250 in January 1883. In all, Bushell purchased 223 objects, mostly Song, Ming and Qing period ceramics, contributing significantly to the quality and breadth of the Museum’s collection (Figure 16.1). Bushell also acted as buying agent for a number of private collectors.16 While some of this activity is only hinted at, research has uncovered a more detailed account of his collecting for the wealthy American businessman, Heber Reginald Bishop (1840– 1902). Making a fortune from sugar export, railways, iron and steel, Bishop formed

Figure 16.1  Objects bought for the V&A in Beijing by Stephen Bushell. Left to right: porcelain dish, famille rose enamel decoration, mark and reign of Qianlong (1735–95); porcelain ewer, underglaze cobalt blue decoration, mark and reign of Qianlong (1736– 95); Guan stoneware bowl with crackle glaze, Southern Song dynasty (1128–1279); porcelain cup in the form of a jue ritual bronze, white glaze, Ming dynasty, Yongle period (1403–24) © The Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

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a large collection of jade and hardstones, which he bequeathed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and which he published through the first major study on the subject, The Bishop Collection: Investigation and Studies in Jade, in 1906.17 Bushell not only contributed significantly to the book, but also bought for Bishop and assisted him in purchasing when the latter visited Beijing in the spring of 1892.18 Three years earlier Bushell had received £100 from Bishop to begin his purchases, to which the former responded with enthusiasm: ‘I shall set at once about the work and at the same time look for some of the specimens you wish to add to your collection.’19 He was thanked by Bishop profusely in the Preface to The Bishop Collection catalogue, ‘. . . for the great assistance given to me, from first to last, in this work and all my studies in Oriental Art during the past fifteen years’.20 Bushell’s association with Bishop was just one of many which he entered into during his career.21 Bushell also bought and sold on his own account. Between 1880 and 1890, Bushell sold pieces he had acquired in China at a series of sales at Christie, Manson and Wood.22 As a public servant, he undertook this activity discreetly, almost clandestinely, and even his writing and cataloguing work for collectors was carried out during his periods of leave. At no time did Bushell’s name appear as the vendor, the sales being promoted anonymously but with authority; the title ‘Oriental Porcelain Collected by a Gentleman in China’, being a typical appellation. Taking advantage of residency in China to act as an agent for clients developed steadily and as the country was opened up to international trade and businesses, so the market for Chinese goods expanded, as did the opportunities for acquiring a wider range of objects. One of the earliest London-based dealers to take advantage of this open market was S. M. Franck & Co. A wholesale importer, the company supplied major museums in Britain, Europe and North America, as well as high-street dealers such as John Sparks and private collectors.23 An agent for Franck in the first decade of the twentieth century was Irish–Canadian fur trader George Crofts (1874–1925). Crofts established his business in Tianjin in 1896 and began acquiring and exporting Chinese antiquities a decade or so later when the opportunity arose. A serendipitous encounter with Charles Trick Currelly (1876–1957), director of the recently founded Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), in London in 1918 resulted in Crofts supplying the Museum directly: ‘I feel’, wrote Crofts to Currelly, ‘. . . I can take interest in your Museum and that it should be possible to arrange business in the near future’.24 As Chen Shen has written, Crofts was systematic in his work as an agent for the ROM, documenting and photographing the objects he sent on and helping to build one of the greatest collections of Chinese art in the world. When Crofts went bankrupt in 1924 and died the following year, another agent took his place: William Charles White (1873–1960), Anglican Bishop of Henan Province. White, an Anglo-Canadian missionary appointed Bishop in 1910, had by 1924 been in China for twenty-eight years25 (Figure 16.2). He spoke fluent Chinese, was knowledgeable about China’s history and culture, the latter interest fuelled by his arrival in Henan, an ancient province, rich in archaeology and at the heart of railway construction, rife with tomb robbing. White was also friends with two other Canadian missionaries in China, John Calvin Ferguson (1866–1945), a leading sinologist and writer on Chinese art, and James M. Menzies (1885–1957), an amateur archaeologist

 ‘I Shall Set at Once about the Work’ 245

Figure 16.2 William C. White, Bishop of Henan Province, c. 1930. Unknown photographer. Royal Ontario Museum, Southeast Asia Library Collections. © https:// commons​.wikimedia​.org​/wiki/ File​:Bishop​_William​_C.​_White​​.jpg. and collector, both of whom acted as his advisors and introduced him to local dealers. By the time White offered his services to Currelly, he had, according to his biographer, ‘worked his way through religion to science’, to the extent that ‘his colleagues on the mission field claimed that White’s enthusiasm for Chinese archaeology at one time came to surpass even his interest in religion’.26 Indeed, when White returned to Toronto in 1934, he was appointed the first Keeper of the Far Eastern Department at the ROM and Chair of the School of Chinese Studies at the University of Toronto, confirming his transition from cleric to curator.27 At the time of White’s return, the ability to source and export artefacts was also being challenged by new legislation (the ‘Law of National Antiquity Protection’ and ‘Detailed Rules on the Implementation of the Legislation on the Preservation of Ancient Objects’, passed in 1930), brought in by the Nationalist Government, but not before, as Walmsley has observed, the Bishop had sent ‘some of the greatest art treasures of China to Canada’.28 White experienced stiff competition in the field during a period of intense activity in China in the mid-1920s–1930s and his activities were noted by one prolific agent, who was also a collector and dealer of sorts, Swedish engineer, Orvar Karlbeck (1879–1967).29 Karlbeck trained as an engineer at the Royal College of Engineering in

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Stockholm and after graduating joined a concrete manufacturing company in China in 1906 and two years later, the Tientsin-Pukow Railway Company which was building the line between Beijing and Shanghai. It was during his work on this railway that he first encountered Chinese burial artefacts which were being uncovered and which he began collecting and studying. He remained in China until political instability forced him to return to Sweden in 1927. However, the following year he returned to China and between 1928 and 1934, undertook three collecting expeditions, the first for the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm, and then for a consortium of museums and private collectors that eventually numbered seventeen. It was known as the Karlbeck Syndicate and included major collectors such as Oscar Raphael, Charles and Brenda Seligman, Louis Clarke and Henry Oppenheim and institutions such as the Berlin State Museum, the Museum for Asiatic Art in Amsterdam, the British Museum and the Royal Scottish Museum in Edinburgh (Figure 16.3). The Syndicate continued until China’s new property laws and its political turmoil forced Karlbeck to leave China in 1934. A detailed study of the Syndicate, its members and its influence has been

Figure 16.3 Seated earthenware figure of a Westerner. Tang dynasty (618–906). Acquired from the Karlbeck Syndicate by Charles G. Seligman and donated to the British Museum by Brenda Seligman. © The Trustees of the British Museum, London.

 ‘I Shall Set at Once about the Work’ 247 undertaken by Valerie Jurgens, but its institutional connections and systematic nature betray the significance of the agent at a time of intense collecting activity. A character who appears in the archives of a number of British dealers, most particularly John Sparks and Bluetts, is one ‘Captain’ William Frederick Collins (1882–1956). Like those agents discussed earlier, Collins’s work in servicing Sparks and Bluetts was a sideline and like Karlbeck he had trained as an engineer, this time in mining. Resident in Beijing at roughly the same time as Karlbeck – between 1906 and the mid-1930s – Collins was able to develop networks locally, aided by his probable ability to speak Chinese and his obvious interest in Chinese archaeology. Collins was born in Uzmaston, near Haverfordwest, in Pembrokeshire, Wales, and was educated at St. Olave’s, Westminster School and then the Royal School of Mines, now Imperial College, London.30 He went to China as an engineer and then as manager to the Syndicat du Yunnan, which held the concession for the Yunnan-Chengdu railway, until 1912, when he became director and manager of the Anglo-French China Corporation Ltd (1912–15). In 1915, he responded to the call for officers to lead the newly formed Chinese Labour Corp, to join the Allies in France.31 The Corp was raised to assist with trench building and the movement of supplies and as Gregory James has noted, ‘There was a need for supervisors who could speak Chinese and English speakers who had any knowledge of Chinese were eagerly sought.’32 Collins went to France in June, 1917, and in May, 1918, he was appointed Captain and Officer Commanding, 115th Company, Chinese Labour Corps, leading a company of 500 men. In January, 1919, he was Staff Captain, Salvage Control, G.H.Q. On returning to China, Collins became an agent for various companies in China, a consulting mining engineer and seems to have acted as a guide for visiting collectors to Beijing. We know that he accompanied Swedish collector and art historian Osvald Siren on a trip to Taiyuan and Datong when Siren was on one of his many visits to China in 1929.33 That same year, when British Museum Keepers Laurence Binyon and R. L. Hobson and collectors Oscar Raphael and Charles and Brenda Seligman arrived in Beijing, Collins shepherded Hobson and Raphael around the city and offered to find a Tang horse for the Seligman’s to buy, prompting Brenda Seligman to observe somewhat caustically: ‘he is really a dealer!’34 A few years earlier he had joined Roy Chapman Andrews as a fellow hunter in search of the takin or musk-ox, Budorcas bedfordi.35 Andrews was on one of his Central Asiatic Expeditions for the American Museum of Natural History in 1925, and met Collins in Beijing. Amid the adventurous hyperbole of his writing, Andrews gives a rare pencil sketch of Collins: In Peking I had been too busy for half a dozen months to think of leaving. Then, at the club [the Peking Club] one evening, I was introduced to an English officer, Captain W.F. Collins. He was a correct young man and very British, but to my intense surprise, out of the pockets of his dinner coat he produced four jack snipe. ‘shot ’em this morning in the Old Summer Palace. The colonel told me you’d be here tonight so I brought ’em along. Thought you’d like ’em’. I did like ’em and I liked Collins.36

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It is also during this period that Collins began to collect and consign objects for various dealers and museums, his first consignment to John Sparks and Bluetts being in 1925. According to the Bluett and Sparks records, Collins would either ship them to the dealer for inspection or send photographs for approval before shipment. Prices would be included and commission was usually 4 per cent.37 As Dominic Jellinek relates, ‘Collins’ consignments were sent via the Siberian Express, and he sent detailed notes of their contents with the packages’.38 They included archaeological material (e.g. Han and Tang burial wares) and later Ming (fifteenth to seventeenth century) porcelain, reflecting the dominant taste of the period (Plate 19). By 1935, Collins was reporting the changing climate for buying (as did Karlbeck): ‘You will possibly have heard that the Chinese Government has prohibited the export of all “antiquities” within the last few days. Whether this means “antiques” remains to be seen.’39 Shortly after, he left China altogether, moving to a farm in Marandellas, Southern Rhodesia, where he died on 22 February 1956.40 Like both White and Karlbeck, Collins was more than just a supplier of objects. There is clear evidence of his interest in and knowledge of Chinese art and archaeology. In 1931 he published an article on ‘The Corrosion of Early Chinese Bronzes’ and this was followed in 1934 by an article on ‘The Mirror-Black and “Quicksilver” Patinas of certain Chinese Bronzes’, both of which included objects from his own collection.41 Dominic Jellinek has also discovered that Collins was the author of Dogs of China and Japan in Nature and Art, published in 1921 under the pseudonym of V. W. F Collier, in which he displayed considerable knowledge of Chinese art.42 The reasons why Collins chose to publish under an assumed name are unknown, but it added to the clandestine nature of his enterprise in China. The activities of these men, initially those of Bushell, and subsequently of Collins, Karlbeck, Crofts and White, reveal much about the role of the agent in China during a period of opportunity for collectors and at a time of growing knowledge of China’s past through the excavation of its material culture. None of them was a trained art historian, archaeologist or curator, but developed their expertise in situ alongside their professional work. All of them were opportunists, offering their services to an expanding market catering to museums, private collectors and dealers in Europe and North America, all eager to form significant Chinese collections. Although largely overlooked and sometimes masquerading as dealers and collectors in their own right, these agents were a vital link in the chain of acquisition and should be recognized as such.

Notes 1 Major studies include Nick Pearce, Gorer v Lever: Edgar Gorer and William Hesketh Lever, http:​/​/www​​.live​​rpool​​museu​​ms​.or​​g​.uk/​​ladyl​​ever/​​colle​​ction​​s​/chi​​nese/​​gorer​​essay​​ /go​re​​r​_v​_l​​ever.​​pdf; Yupin Chung, Frank Partridge and William Hesketh Lever, http:​ /​/www​​.live​​rpool​​museu​​ms​.or​​g​.uk/​​ladyl​​ever/​​colle​​ction​​s​/chi​​nese/​​partr​​idgee​​ssa​y/​​partr​​ idge.​​pdf; Ching-Yi Huang, John Sparks, the Art Dealer and Chinese Art in England,

 ‘I Shall Set at Once about the Work’ 249 1902–1936 (PhD diss., University of London, 2012); Liz Hancock, John Sparks, Sea Captain and Dealer in Japanese and Chinese Art, https​:/​/ca​​rp​.ar​​ts​.gl​​a​.ac.​​uk​/es​​say1.​​ php​?e​​num​​=1​​37035​​8740;​ Dominic Jellinek, Bluett, https​:/​/ca​​rp​.ar​​ts​.gl​​a​.ac.​​uk​/es​​say1.​​ php​?e​​num​​=1​​12011​​9551;​ Daisy Yiyou Wang, The Loouvre from China: A Critical Study of C. T. Loo and the Framing of Chinese Art in the United States, 1915–1950 (PhD diss., Ohio University, 2007); Valerie Jurgens, The Karlbeck Syndicate, 1930–1934: Collecting and Scholarship on Chinese Art (Saarbrücken: Lap Lambert Academic Publishing, 2012). 2 The most high-profile of these early sales was that of Prince Gong (1833–98), brother to the former Xianfeng Emperor (r.1850–61), acquired by Yamanaka and sold in 1913. See Illustrated Catalogue of the Remarkable Collection of the Imperial Prince Kung of China (New York: American Art Galleries, 1913). 3 For details, see Huang, John Sparks, 181–4. 4 Bruce G. Trigger, A History of Archaeological Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 265. 5 See Orvar Karlbeck’s account in Treasure Seeker in China (London: Cresset Press, 1957). 6 R. L. Hobson, Chinese Pottery and Porcelain: An Account of the Potter’s Art in China from Primitive Times to the Present Day (London: Cassell, 1915), Introduction, xx. 7 The Bluett Archive is held in private hands. The Sparks Archive is held in Special Collections, SOAS Library, University of London. 8 Daisy Yiyou Wang, The Loouvre from China, 48. 9 Huang, John Sparks, 188. 10 Ibid., 192. For further details about Sparks’ operation in Shanghai, see Huang, 191–4 and Nick Pearce, ‘CARP-On: Further Thoughts on Chinese Art Provenance Research’, in Collectors, Collections and Collecting the Arts of China, Histories & Challenges, ed. Jason Steuber and Guolong Lai (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2012), 295–312. 11 See Nick Pearce, Photographs of Peking, China 1861–1908: Through Peking with a Camera (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2005), 43–62; ‘Collecting, Connoisseurship and Commerce: An Examination of the Life and Career of Stephen Wootton Bushell (1844–1908)’, Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society 70 (2007): 17–25. 12 Mary Crawford Fraser, A Diplomat’s Wife in Many Lands, 2 vols (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1910), vol. 2, 167. Fraser, wife of Hugh Fraser, the First Secretary in the British Legation in the 1870s, witnessed this when Bushell was dispensing medicines to the local peasants in the hills around Beijing. 13 S. W. Bushell, Oriental Ceramic Art: Illustrated by Examples from the Collection of W.T. Walters, 10 vols (text volume, Appleton & Co: New York, 1896), Introduction, 1. 14 For Bushell’s work for Franks, see Jessica Harrison-Hall, ‘Oriental Pottery and Porcelain’, in A.W. Franks: Nineteenth-Century Collecting and the British Museum, ed. Marjorie Caygill and John Cherry (London: British Museum Press, 1997), 221 and David M. Wilson, The Forgotten Collector: Augustus Wollaston Franks of the British Museum (London: Thames & Hudson, 1984). 15 The Director was Sir Philip Cunliffe Owen (1828–94). For details of Bushell’s relationship with the Museum see Nominal File relating to Dr & Mrs. S. W. Bushell, MA/1/B3676, Victoria & Albert Museum Archives, London. See also Pearce, Photographs of Peking, 49–50, and Pearce, ‘Collecting, Connoisseurship and Commerce’, 21.

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16 There is evidence that Bushell bought for Sir James Stewart Lockhart, Commissioner of the British Concession at Weihaiwei, when he was Colonial Secretary in Hong Kong, and likely that he supplied the Bristol collector, Alfred Trapnell, and Baltimore collector, William Walters, through Benjamin P. Avery, US Minister to China, brother to art dealer Samuel P. Avery (see Chapter 19), who in turn supplied Walters. 17 Heber R. Bishop, Robert Lilley and Robert Waite Douglas, The Bishop Collection: Investigations and Studies in Jade, 2 vols (New York: De Vinne Press, 1906). 18 Letters between Bishop and Bushell survive in the Heber Bishop Jade Collection Files Nos. 1–3 and Jade Correspondence Books I-III, Department of Asian Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. See Pearce, Photographs of Peking, 52–7. 19 Stephen Bushell to Heber Bishop, 19 July and 24 September 1889, Heber Bishop Jade Collection Files. 20 Bishop, The Bishop Collection, Preface, xiv. 21 Bushell wrote catalogues for the W. T. Walters Collection, noted above, the Morgan Collection of Chinese Porcelains, for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1907) and the two-volume catalogue for the V&A, Chinese Art (1904 and 1906). 22 Sales took place on 26 November 1880, 9 December 1886, 9 August 1888, 1 February 1889 and 20 February 1890. For details, see Pearce, ‘Collecting, Connoisseurship and Commerce’, 23. 23 For details of S. M. Franck’s origins and operation, see Pearce, ‘CARP-On’. 24 Quoted by Chen Shen, ‘Objectives and Challenges: Past, Present and Future of Collecting Chinese Antiquities in the Royal Ontario Museum’, in Collectors, Collections and Collecting the Arts of China, Histories & Challenges, ed. Jason Steuber and Guolong Lai, 250. 25 Bishop White’s collecting activities are detailed in Lewis C. Walmsley, Bishop in Honan: Mission and Museum in the Life of William C. White (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974), especially Ch.13, 137–60. 26 Walmsley, Bishop in Honan, 141. 27 The ROM was founded as part of the University of Toronto. For details of White’s career as curator and scholar, see Walmsley, Bishop in Honan, Chapter 15, 163–75. 28 Walmsley, Bishop in Honan, 142. For details on the China’s first cultural property laws, see David J. Murphy, Plunder and Preservation, Cultural Property Law and Practice in the Peoples’ Republic of China (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1996). The Chinese government had also introduced legislation in an attempt to restrict the exportation of antiquities as early as 1913 and 1914. See Tao Yuzhi, ‘Gu dong ju shang Lu Qinghai de fa ji shi’, Wen Wu Tian Di (Cultural Relics World) 11, 149 (2003): 52–5, 53. 29 Karlbeck, Treasure Seeker, 99. 30 The biographical details that follow are taken from Margaret Reeks, Royal School of Mines, Register of Old Students, 1851–1920 and History of the School (London: Royal School of Mines, 1920), 40 and Alex Ramsay, The Peking Who’s Who 1922 (Peking: Tientsin Press, 1922), 7. Early on in his career Collins published: Mineral Enterprise in China (London: Heinemann, 1918). 31 For details about the Chinese Labour Corp, see Gregory James, The Chinese Labour Corp (1916–1920) (Hong Kong: Bayview Educational, 2013) and Brian C. Fawcett, ‘The Chinese Labour Corp in France, 1917–1921’, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 40 (2000): 33–111.

 ‘I Shall Set at Once about the Work’ 251 32 James, The Chinese Labour Corp, 181–2. 33 Minna Törmä, Enchanted by Lohans: Osvald Siren’s Journey into Chinese Art (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013), 114–15. Siren was also guided around the Beijing curio shops by Orvar Karlbeck. 34 Brenda Seligman, ‘Journal of Japan, Korea and China’, Charles and Brenda Seligman Papers (Seligman 5/2), London School of Economics Library, entry for 2 October 1929. Laurence Binyon was then Assistant Keeper in the Department of Prints and Drawings with a specialism that included Chinese and Japanese painting; Robert Lockhart Hobson was Keeper of Ceramics and Ethnography (later Oriental Antiquities and Ethnography) and a specialist in Chinese ceramics. The trip was initiated by an invitation to Binyon from Tokyo Imperial University to lecture on British art. Binyon’s expenses were covered in part by Oscar Raphael. See John Hatcher, Laurence Binyon: Poet, Scholar of East and West (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1995), 243–58. 35 Roy Chapman Andrews, Heart of Asia, True Tales of the Far East (1951), ‘The Golden Fleece Came High’, 113–44. 36 Ibid., 114. 37 Huang, John Sparks, 176. See also Dominic Jellinek, ‘Bluett Essay’ and biographical entry on ‘Captain Collin’, both on CARP: https​:/​/ca​​rp​.ar​​ts​.gl​​a​.ac.​​uk​/im​​age​.p​​hp​?id​​ =pe​_4​​0​&t​=1​​&urlt​​p​=sea​​rch​.p​​hp​%3F​​start​​%3D0%​​26end​​%3D5%​​26wha​​t​%3D%​​26who​​ %3D10​​88777​​422​%2​​6wher​​e​%3D%​​​26whe​​n​%3D%​​26per​​iod​%3​​D​%26s​​earch​​%3D99.​ 38 Jellinek, ‘Bluett Essay’. 39 Letter from Collins to Bluett, 16 December 1935, Bluett Archive, quoted in Jellinek, ‘Bluett Essay’. 40 Zimbabwe Death Notices, 1904–1976, Salisbury, 1956, vol. 149. http://FamilySearch​ .org : 14 June 2016. Citing Registrar General. National Archives, Harare. 41 Published in The Journal of the Institute of Metals XLV, 1 (1931), 23–55 and The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 64 (January–June, 1934): 69–79, respectively. 42 Roy Davids and Dominic Jellinek, Provenance: Collectors, Dealers & Scholars in the Field of Chinese Ceramics in Britain & America (Oxford: Roy Davids, 2011), 124. The choice of Collier as a name remains a mystery, but the V as an initial in his given name may refer to his wife’s maiden name, Rhoda Elizabeth Vaughan, whom he had married in 1915.

17

Promoting themselves Agents and strategies in early Surrealism’s art market Alice Ensabella

If Surrealist ideology strongly follows anti-capitalist precepts1 (as André Breton announced in his first Manifeste du Surréalisme in 1924), some group members, through their activity as promoters, collectors, advisers, gallerists, courtiers, showed a deep consciousness of the economic value of artworks they owned. They reveal themselves to have been skilful and clever in manoeuvring and trading speculatively, using the main institutions of the art market that they would often critique. Moreover, in retracing the commercial history of Surrealist art, it is clear that even if many dealers and gallery owners collaborated with the group, there was no one figure who represented or promoted the whole movement coherently or over a long period of time.2 Proud of their position as independent and avantgarde artists, the Surrealists proved to be autonomous also in the way in which they interacted and introduced their work to the market. On the one hand, the Surrealists developed a specific promotional strategy, coming from the Dada period, based on the techniques of shock and provocation. On the other hand, from the 1920s onwards, the Surrealists introduced themselves into the official Parisian art market, cleverly taking advantage of its mode of operation and its dynamics. Examining their strategy in the art market, we can see that it focused on two main axes. The first was to act in the public and promotional sphere, organizing exhibitions and supporting emerging artists’ shows in libraries and galleries.3 The second concerned the private sphere and the creation of personal collections, which they could exploit to showcase Surrealist art and also use as important places to create a network of exchanges, purchases and sales. Frequenting galleries and the auction house, the Hôtel Drouot, the Surrealists, acting both as sellers and buyers, incentivized the circulation of Surrealist artworks on the market. In this sense, the Surrealists may be considered as primary agents for their movement, autonomously exploiting market institutions and, while using its processes, providing independent ways to promote the artists of the group.

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Promoting and shocking: The Dada–Surrealist exhibition model As is well known, during the Dadaist years (1919–21), the future Surrealists had started to put into place their strategies to promote contemporary art. From the beginning, the visual arts held a central place in the activities of the young Dadaist writers. While the collaboration with artists was primarily aimed at experimenting with new literary experiences, showing a close connection between images and words, it is also the case that young poets such as André Breton, Louis Aragon, Paul Éluard and Philippe Soupault aimed to become agents, promoters and also collectors of the artists they considered Dadaist (at the time) and Surrealist (later). The case of the German painter Max Ernst is particularly pertinent in this sense and the organization of his first solo exhibition in Paris may be taken as an example of the creation of a model that the group Littérature4 would exploit in the following years. André Breton had been in contact with Max Ernst since 1919, and from their first letters they talked about the possibility of organizing an exhibition in Paris with the painter’s recent works.5 After many incidents that impeded the realization of the project, Breton, with the help of his wife, Simone,6 Philippe Soupault and others were finally able to organize this exhibition in May 1921 at the Au Sans Pareil bookshop. The owner, René Hilsum, was the main editor of the first Dada publications, including the revue Littérature.7 As Max Ernst could not obtain a visa to come to France,8 Breton, Simone and the others decided to help him to organize the exhibition. In a letter in May 1921, Simone Breton wrote to her cousin Denise Lévy: You probably don’t know that we organised an exhibition of Max Ernst. For fifteen days, André and I, waiting for shipping and managing with our poor funds, we framed fifty paintings and drawings that are now displayed at the Sans Pareil. Do you know what it does now? That’s so strange and new. Extremely impressive.9

Breton and the others supported Max Ernst economically, not only paying the costs of the exhibition and the framing but, as we can learn from the catalogue, they also bought several works before the exhibition opening (as a gallerist would have done).10 However, the exhibition was not organised in a gallery, nor was it promoted by a professional dealer, and Max Ernst was totally unknown in France at the time. The group members needed to find a way to capture the attention of the press and an audience and thus to efficaciously publicize the event. Without any doubt it was the organization of the opening night that was the most effective. The Dadaists sent the invitations with a detailed programme to the editorial staff of the principal Parisian art magazines. Journalists were so curious about the strange programme (Figure 17.1) that one of them decided to publish the entire content in the magazine Comœdia on the opening day, Monday, 2 May 1921.11 The performative opening night (promising ‘surprises’, a ‘kangaroo’ and ‘intimate moments’) did not disappoint expectations. In the following days, several articles and critiques were published in the Parisian press. Of course, the journalists commented on

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Figure 17.1  Invitation for Paul and Gala Éluard to the opening night of Max Ernst’s exhibition at Au Sans Pareil, May 1921. Dada and Surrealist Archives, Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Centre Pompidou, Paris. the important guests and highlighted the unconventional behaviour of the Dadaists, rather than commenting on Max Ernst’s work, which was not really appreciated or understood. Anyway, their goal was achieved and after that night, the Parisian intellectual milieu knew Max Ernst’s name and his connections with Dadaism. Another important conduit for the event’s promotion was the magazine Littérature. In the May issue (n. 19),12 we find two important tactics. The first, in advertising the exhibition a Dadaist-style sentence clearly invited visitors to buy Ernst’s paintings (Figure 17.2): ‘Free entry with hands in your pockets. Easy exit with a painting under your arms.’13 A few pages earlier, we also find a reproduction of Ernst’s collage, Relief tricoté.14 This image is remarkable for two reasons: first, it was also reproduced in the catalogue of the exhibition, showing coherence in the advertising; second, this collage by Max Ernst was the first artwork ever published in Littérature, which until that moment had been primarily a literary magazine. This choice reveals the decision by the directors to consciously and cleverly use their magazine to promote emerging artists. Therefore, already by 1921, the future Surrealists had created their own original promotional system, employing modern advertising methods and media. Their actions were to support the emerging artist through economic engagement, through performative events organised around the artworks aimed at provoking and attracting the press, and through strategic marketing using their own media, such as the magazine Littérature and, from 1924, La Révolution Surréaliste.15 The same model was to be employed for other exhibitions of the Dada period16 and a few years later, also for the first official Surrealist exhibitions after the Manifesto’s

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Figure 17.2  Advertisement for Max Ernst’s exhibition in Littérature, n. 19, May 1921. Courtesy International Dada Archive, Special Collections, University of Iowa Libraries. publication in 1924, such as the Miró solo show in June 1925, and the first exhibition of Surrealist painting in November 1925. These were held at the Galerie Pierre and publicized in La Révolution Surréaliste, both with a midnight opening.17 By March 1926, when the group decided to open its own gallery, the Galerie Surréaliste, the Surrealist artists would continue to create scandal on the rive gauche. The first exhibition they organised, Man Ray et objets des Iles,18 showcased Man Ray’s paintings in dialogue with non-Western sculptures, a constant feature of Surrealist art. In the main window of the gallery, they displayed an idol from the isle of Nias belonging to the Breton collection, showing an erect penis.19

The creation of the network: Surrealist collections Parallel to their activities as promoters and exhibition organizers, the Dada–Surrealist poets and writers had an early inclination to collect art. This attitude, which was particularly developed by André Breton and Paul Éluard, arose from an overpowering need to compare their literary activity with the latest experiences in modern art. Few literary movements gave the same importance and central role to the image as Surrealism, to the point that its members consolidated deep friendships but also

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professional relationships with artists, creating a heterogeneous group, composed of writers, poets, painters, sculptors, photographers and film makers.20 Why should we consider the creation of these private collections from 1919 as an important moment, not to say the first moment, for the creation of a market developing around the movement, even before the official foundation of the group in 1924? If collecting was firstly justified by a literary and personal need, subsequently Breton and Éluard’s private collections would rapidly become objects of speculation by their owners. Awareness of the value – not only cultural and symbolic but also commercial – of every single painting, drawing, sculpture and object they owned, led these young collectionneurs to consider their collections as an economic resource, most of all during their recurrent financial problems.21 Exchanges or sales achieved for practical reasons meant that Surrealist artworks prematurely circulated in the Parisian artistic milieu, entering the houses of some of the most important collectors of the time (such as Jacques Doucet or Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles).22 For Breton and Éluard, being the first collectors of artworks by Max Ernst, Francis Picabia, Man Ray, Giorgio de Chirico, and, later, André Masson, Joan Miró, Yves Tanguy, Hans Arp was surely initially not a commercial but an instinctive move. However, it disguised their promotional intentions and their financial support of these artists. In this sense, the case of the Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico provides a key example. Thrilled by discovering his metaphysical paintings after the First World War, Breton got in contact with de Chirico in late 1921 and helped him organize his great retrospective of March 1922 at the Galerie Paul Guillaume.23 Breton wrote the introduction to the catalogue and started buying, as Éluard also did, several paintings by the artist. Following Breton’s example and suggestions, Jacques Doucet bought Le Revenant in the same weeks. Three years later, when Éluard sold part of his collection at auction, eight of de Chirico’s paintings were sold and the press commented that this was the first appearance of the artist in the secondary market. This ‘exploitation’ of art collections, and the system of publications, loans, sales and various initiatives rising around them, made the Surrealists’ private collections the cornerstone of the network of exchanges and relationships that developed around the Dada–Surrealist group. Moreover, within a few years Breton and Éluard’s collections would gain a strong symbolic power, beyond their commercial value,24 their homes becoming in the late 1920s a sort of symbol of Surrealism itself. The anachronistic displays, the sort of reigning horror vacui, the objects’ eccentricity and variety would make both houses curious and uncommon places of attraction. The most famous example is, without any doubt, André Breton’s atelier at the 42 rue Fontaine, where Breton lived from 1921 until his death in 1966 (with the exception of the American ‘exile’ during the Second World War).25 The French poet’s studio became so famous that it was given a permanent installation at the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou in Paris.26 However, Paul Éluard’s house in Eaubonne, that Jean-Charles Gateau described as a sort of ‘caverne d’Ali Baba’,27 was also well known at the time, most of all because of the frescoes Max Ernst created in the interior of the house.

 Promoting Themselves 257 So, how could Breton and Éluard influence the art market through their collections? As it is impossible to narrate here the whole history of the collections’ creation, mutations and dispersal during the 1920s,28 we will focus on two particular examples that clarify the importance that Breton and Éluard’s actions had in permitting the first, and as yet unknown, Surrealist artists to enter the networks of the primary and secondary Parisian art markets. André Breton’s economic approach to artworks, the issue of their commercial value, with artists’ quotations, and his commercial attitude to negotiation and transaction were a consequence of his work as literary and art advisor for the great couturier and collector Jacques Doucet (from January 1920 to December 1924). From the beginning of his relationship with Doucet in January 1920, the future chef of Surrealism was able to benefit from his influential position in the modern Parisian art milieu. Acting as courtier to the rich collector, Breton had almost unlimited funds with which to create Doucet’s impressive modern art collection. As is well known, it is thanks to Breton that Jacques Doucet purchased many modern art masterpieces, among which the most important were the Charmeuses des serpents by Douanier Rousseau, purchased in 1922, and Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon, purchased at the end of November 1924.29 Thanks to his position as Doucet’s advisor, Breton was able to make contacts with the great art dealers of the Parisian rive droite, in particular with Daniel-Henri Kahnweiler, Léonce and Paul Rosenberg, the Bernheim brothers, Wilhelm Uhde and Paul Guillaume.30 His investigations meant that for the first time he took part in public auctions at the Hôtel Drouot. With Aragon (who also started working for Doucet) and his other friends, Breton rapidly learned Drouot’s mode of operation, the sales system and met the most influent and important experts and commissaires-priseurs who were organizing modern art sales, such as Alphonse Bellier, and their specializations and strategies. This network of relationships in the milieu of the art market helped Breton to build his own collection, achieving good prices and finding interesting opportunities at auction, as well as being given artworks by some of the artists who sold paintings to Doucet through his mediation. During the two years that Breton spent in Doucet’s service, he became a well-known figure in artistic circles, not only as writer and poet but also as a modern and prolific collector. As well as his contacts with dealers, Breton began to be in touch with other collectors, such as the de Noailles. He met and collaborated with several artists, not necessarily belonging to the Dadaist/Surrealist circle, such as Pascin, Picasso and Braque. However, Breton’s employment by Doucet was also important in its effect on the circulation of Dada and Surrealist artworks, bringing Doucet into contact with artists whose works he collected. As we learn from his letters to Doucet,31 the French writer suggested that the couturier not only buy works by some of the principal names on the artistic scene for his collection but he also introduced Doucet to the work of artists close to the revue Littérature: It also seemed that Breton did not struggle (had no difficulty) in convincing Doucet to meet the artists, whose works were presented to him: Chirico, Masson, Picabia, with whom he built particularly trusting relationships.32

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Between the spring and summer of 1922, Breton took Doucet to the ateliers of Picasso, Picabia and André Derain.33 He bought three photographs and a painting by Man Ray in July of the same year.34 In February 1923, Breton persuaded Doucet to buy a Max Ernst masterpiece, À l’intérieur de la vue,35 and in September of the same year a glass by Marcel Duchamp (the Glisière contenant un moulin à eau (en métaux voisins)).36 In the autumn of 1924, Breton took Doucet several times to Masson and Duchamp’s ateliers and, on 18 November of the same year, he introduced Giorgio de Chirico to the couturier, who had already bought his Le Revenant (1918) in 1921. Breton’s advice came certainly from a deep appreciation of these artists, but at the same time, it is hard not to see a strategic aim in these introductions. The fact that these almost unknown artists, which Ernst, Masson, de Chirico and Man Ray were at the time, could enter one of the most well-known collections of modern art of the period, gave these artists a status and greater visibility than any other initiative of the group, and Breton knew it. Then, if through the Dada–Surrealist group activities, the publications, exhibitions and unusual openings, Breton was at the forefront of an autonomous and avant-gardist promotional strategy, he also ensured that, through his role as Doucet’s advisor, his artists were placed in the traditional and high-level strata of the art market. Another important example of how the Surrealists could act as agents of the group’s new aesthetic was the sale of the Éluard collection that took place at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris on 3 July 1924.37 Because of personal problems,38 Paul Éluard left Paris for Asia in March 1924, giving the impression that he would never come back. After several weeks, his first wife Gala, having finally had some news from him, decided to join her husband in Saigon. To pay for her trip, with Éluard’s approval, she decided to organize a public sale of a part of their private collection.39 Looking at the sale catalogue – (Figure 17.3a and b),40 among the fifty-seven artworks on sale (ninety, if we also consider the non-Western) – can be found the most important names in modern art of the time: Braque, Picasso, Derain, Modigliani, Vlaminck and Marie Laurencin. Éluard, who had greater economic resources than Breton, in only a few years had purchased an impressive group of artworks, in number and in quality. The most interesting element of this sale, however, is that among these established artists were artworks by the group of artists who only a few weeks later were to be called the Surrealists. Max Ernst was the most strongly represented, with five works on paper (Femme nue, cat. n. 5, La petite fistule lacrymale. cat. n. 7, Etamines et Marseillaises, cat. n. 9, Le rossignol chinois, cat. n. 6, L’assassin de Lady Beltham, cat. n. 8) and four paintings (Paysage, L’intérieur de la vue, Foret avec lézard et La Savoie, cat. n. 35–8). The second was Giorgio de Chirico, with eight oils on canvas (Les citrons, La douceur du foyer, L’intérieur métaphysique, Ulysse, La douleur de la séparation, L’arc des échelles noires, Le rêve de Tobie, La maladie du général, cat. n. 26–33). André Masson was represented in Éluard’s collection by two paintings (both titled Les joueurs, cat. n. 44–5). There were also two oils by Francis Picabia (Espagnole, cat. n. 13, and Le lierre unique eunuque, cat. n. 46), a watercolour by Paul Klee, Le bourgeon du sourire (cat. n. 10) and two works by Man Ray, a photograph and a watercolour (Café au lait, cat. n. 21–2).41 The presence of these works by Surrealist artists is even more relevant if we consider that for Max Ernst, Man Ray, Paul Klee and André Masson, the Éluard sale represented

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Figure 17.3a and b  Paul Éluard collection sale catalogue. Courtesy Archives Alphonse Bellier, Archives de Paris, D149E3 3, Paris. their very first appearance in a public auction, which means that for the first time they were given a visible price on the secondary market. It was not the first time that works by Picabia and de Chirico had appeared in Drouot’s rooms,42 but the sale represented a key moment for them as well; Picabia figured for the first time at auction with paintings from his Dada period (only his Impressionist and Spanish periods were usually sold at Drouot) and de Chirico had never appeared at Drouot with such an important number of oils.43 The sale of the Éluard collection was significant from several different points of view. For the first time a group of Surrealist artworks was shown during the sale’s preview, representing a sort of Surrealist show ante litteram, preceding the first official exhibition of Surrealist paintings at the Galerie Pierre in November 1925 by more than one year.44 Furthermore, the sale represented the opportunity to create a market price for artists who were still unknown at the time, even if most of the pieces were purchased by the Surrealists themselves (André Breton bought sixteen works, including paintings, drawings and non-Western sculptures).45 Finally, it is important to note that some key figures of Surrealist history were present at the auction. The de Noailles appeared in the sale’s register as buyers of the La Savoie by Ernst (their first known purchase of a work by Ernst).46 Pierre Loeb was within the audience47 and even if he did not buy any Surrealist works, for the first time he saw the artists whose work he would exhibit in his gallery one year later.

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It is obvious that Breton and Éluard, through their activity as collectors, were major players in this emerging art market, fostering the rise of interest in Surrealist art. Both collections, rich in Surrealist masterpieces, were exploited as principal stock for the exhibitions organised by the group, or to be reproduced in its revues.48 Gallerists and art dealers also demanded loans of their artworks. An essential aspect of their activities as collectors and agents was the creation of important networks in both the primary and secondary art markets, thus creating the opportunity for Surrealist artworks to circulate, to be more known and appreciated. This network was basically composed of other collectors (Jean Paulhan, Joë Bousquet, Georges and Denise Lévy, René Gaffé, Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles, Alphonse Kahn, Jacques Doucet), as well as art dealers (Daniel-Henri Kahnweiler, Paul Guillaume, Léonce Rosenberg, Pierre Loeb, René Keller, Charles Ratton, Max Berger and Jeanne Bucher in Paris, and Schwarzenberg, Flechtheim, Nierderdof, Gurlitt and Oldeman abroad). If Breton is the Parisian catalyst who organised meetings and events in his salon and welcomed different personalities to the rich collection contained in his atelier, Éluard, thanks to his economic power and his inclination for business, buying and selling frequently, ensured that Surrealist artworks circulated outside the strictly Surrealist milieu, not only in Paris but also reaching (as early as the 1920s) Germany, Belgium and the UK. The complementary activities initiated by Breton and Éluard during the early years of the Surrealist adventure show them to have been fundamental to the creation and foundation of the earliest commercial activity around the Surrealist artists. They were buyers and sellers creating a living network between artists, collectors and the main dealers of the time. Their client was not a collector, but the movement itself, the group of artists referred to as Surrealists, who they promoted and pushed into the art market system.

Notes 1 See F. Alquié, Filosofia del surrealismo (Florence: Hopefulmonster, 1986), or A. Schwarz, Il surrealismo. Ieri e oggi: storia, filosofia, politica (Milan: Skira, 2014). 2 Great artistic movements could count on the support of a powerful dealer. Just to give two of the most famous examples, the Impressionists had Paul Durand-Ruel, while the Cubists had Daniel-Henri Kahnweiler. These dealers represented these movements in their galleries, organised solo and collective exhibitions, provided publications and created a network of collectors around them. 3 Librairie Au Sans Pareil, Librairie Jacques Povolosky/Galerie La Cible, Librairie Six. 4 Between the rupture with Dada in 1921 and the official foundation of Surrealism in October 1924, we cannot yet call André Breton and his friends Surrealists, and the epithet ‘group Littérature’ better defines the group of poets, writers and artists coming together around the revue. 5 Paris, Bibliothèque littéraire Jacques Doucet, (herafter BLJD) Fonds Breton, Correspondance reçue, BRT. C. 709.

 Promoting Themselves 261 6 S. Breton, Lettres à Denise Lévy (1924–1975), ed. G. Colvile (Paris: Editions Joelle Losfeld, 2005), 79. 7 On Librairie Au Sans Pareil, see P. Fouché, Au Sans Pareil (Paris: Gallimard, 1983). 8 On April 1920 the scandalous opening of the Dada exhibition organised in the Brasserie Winter’s court in Cologne was interrupted by the police and Max Ernst was arrested. See M. Sanouillet, Dada à Paris (Paris: CNRS Editions, 2005), 29–30. 9 ‘Tu ne sais pas non plus, à moins que ce ne soit par lui, que nous avons fait une exposition de Max Ernst. Pendant quinze jours, André et moi nous avons, au fur et à mesure de ses envois et de nos ressources tiraillées, encadré cinquante tableaux et dessins qui sont maintenant accrochés au ‘Sans Pareil’. Connais-tu ce qu’il fait maintenant? C’est très étrange et nouveau. Extrêmement impressionnant.’ Breton, Lettres à Denise Lévy, 79. 10 Exposition Dada de Max Ernst (Paris: Au Sans Pareil, 1921). The initials of the owners are next to nine of the fifty-six works listed in the catalogue: Tristan Tzara, André Breton, Simone Kahn, Jacques Rigaut, Louis Aragon, Gabrielle Buffet, Philippe Soupault. 11 Paris, BLJD, Fonds Tristan Tzara, ‘Coupures de presse’, TZR VI 398, A. D’Esparbès, ‘La saison Dada est ouverte’ (1921), Comœdia. 12 Littérature (May 1921), 19. 13 Ibid., 19. 14 Ibid. inserted between 6 and 7. 15 In La Révolution surréaliste images and artwork reproductions were much more numerous than in Littérature. 16 The Francis Picabia exhibition on 16–20 April 1920 at the Au Sans Pareil, or Man Ray’s first solo show in Paris, at the Librairie Six, 3–31 December 1922. 17 Exposition Joan Miro à la Galerie Pierre, 12–27 June 1925. La peinture surréaliste. Exposition à la Galerie Pierre, 14–25 November 1925. 18 Paris, Centre Pompidou, Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Réserve RLPF 8014 bis, or, Tableaux de Man Ray et objets des Iles : ouverture de la Galerie Surréaliste. Paris, exposition du 26 mars au 10 avril 1926. 19 See André Breton, la beauté convulsive (Paris: Editions du Centre Pompidou, 1991), 183. 20 This indissoluble relationship between text and image finds its best expression in the artist’s book, which is at its most experimental with Surrealism. See F. Chapon, Le peintre et le livre. L’âge d’or du livre illustré en France 1870–1970 (Paris: Flammarion, 1987), or R. Riese Hubert, Surrealism and the Book (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). 21 Reading the correspondence of Breton and Éluard with their first wives, we can find several examples of sales of paintings and non-Western objects for financial purposes. For example, Breton wrote to Simone on 18 Octobre 1928: ‘[. . .] J’ai vendu le Populaire 14 000 à une brésilienne amenée par Péret (22 000 en réalité). Goemans doit venir demain avec des acheteurs belges.’ A. Breton, Lettres à Simone Kahn, 1920–1960, ed. J.-M. Goutier (Paris: Gallimard, 2016), 357. In the summer of 1929, Éluard wrote to Gala: ‘[. . .] Enfin, tout installé, bien, nous coutera quelques fétiches et un grand Chirico. Ça en vaut la peine. Nous en aurons plus de plaisir. Et j’ai tellement acheté! Et bien. Et il y aura des affaires à faire. Et j’espère demain coller à une vieille Américaine qui n’y connait rien un tas de fouillis que je vais chercher à

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Eaubonne et Montlignon aujourd’hui pour mettre dans le coffre.’ Paul Éluard, Lettres à Gala, 1924–1948, ed. P. Dreyfus (Paris: Gallimard, 1984), 85. 22 See F. Chapon, Jacques Doucet ou l’art du mécénat (Paris: Éditions Perrin, 1996), or C. Georgel, Jacques Doucet, collectionneur et mécène (Paris: Les Arts décoratifs, INHA, 2016). Concerning the de Noailles, see L. Benaïm, Marie-Laure de Noailles. La vicomtesse du bizarre (Paris: Grasset, 2001), or G. Rodani, Mecenatismo e collezionismo nella Parigi dei surrealisti: il caso dei visconti de Noailles (MA diss. Università degli Studi di Firenze, 2012). 23 See A. Ensabella and G. Roos, ‘Le lettere di Giorgio de Chirico a Paul e Gala Éluard (gennaio 1924 – gennaio 1925)’, in Studi OnLine, nos. 9 and 10 (2018): 27–38. 24 It is difficult to estimate the value of both collections as they were constantly changing. Just to give an example, in 1938 Paul Éluard sold his whole collection (or what remained of it), composed of about 100 pieces, for £1,700 to the English artist and collector Roland Penrose. Given his critical financial situation, Éluard would surely have sold his collection in 1938 at less than its market value. 25 From March 1941 to May 1946. 26 https​:/​/ww​​w​.cen​​trepo​​mpido​​u​.fr/​​cpv​/r​​esour​​ce​/ci​​​adqX/​​r9j6k​​xy 27 J.-C. Gateau, Paul Éluard ou le frère voyant (Paris: Laffont, 1988), 130. 28 See A. Ensabella, ‘L’arte de frères voyants. Caratteristiche e dinamiche del mercato artistico attorno al movimento surrealista (1919–1930)’ (PhD diss. Università La Sapienza, Rome and Université Grenoble Alpes (2017). On Breton and Éluard’s collections see also Breton, la beauté convulsive and Paul Éluard. Poésie, amour, liberté (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2013). 29 See F. Chapon, Jacques Doucet ou l’art du mécénat or F. Chapon, C’était Jacques Doucet, or C. Georgel, Jacques Doucet, collectionneur et mécène. 30 This aspect emerges clearly from letters that Breton sent to Doucet between 1920 and 1926. See A. Breton, Lettres à Jacques Doucet, 1920–1926, ed. E.-A. Hubert (Paris: Gallimard, 2016). 31 Ibid. 32 E.-A. Hubert, ‘Introduction’, Ibid., 23. ‘Il apparait également que Breton n’eut pas de peine à convaincre Doucet de rencontrer les peintres dont il lui présentait les productions: Chirico, Masson, Picabia, avec lequel se nouent des rapports particulièrement confiants’. 33 It was in Derain’s atelier that Breton negotiated for the Rousseau Charmeuse des serpents. 34 Two photographic portraits of Francis Picabia (sold for 25 francs each), a photograph of a woman smoking a cigarette (sold for 200 francs) and a ‘petit tableau vert’ [a small green painting] for 700 francs. See Breton’s letter to Doucet on 12 July 1922, in Breton, Lettres à Jacques Doucet, 120–1. 35 Ibid. 138, Breton’s letter to Doucet on 6 February 1923. 36 Ibid. 158, Breton’s letter to Doucet on 2 September 1923. 37 For a more exhaustive reconstruction of this sale, see A. Ensabella, ‘Les surrealists à Drouot. La vente de la collection Éluard en Juillet 1924’, in Ricerche di Storia dell’Arte, no. 1 (2017): 37–46. 38 Éluard was experiencing a period of personal crisis, both because of some tensions with other group members, but, most of all, because of the liaison between his wife Gala and Max Ernst who was living in their house in Eaubonne.

 Promoting Themselves 263 39 We understand there was a pact between the two from the first letter Éluard sent to Gala on 12 May 1924. See Éluard, Lettres à Gala, 17–18. 40 Archives de Paris, Fonds Alphonse Bellier, (hereafter APFAB) Boite D149E3 3, Collection Éluard. Tableaux modernes, aquarelles, gouaches, dessins, bois nègres (1924). 41 Ibid. This catalogue, conserved in the commissaire-priseur’s archives, is particularly interesting as it contains several notes by Alphonse Bellier. They give us further information on artworks that were auctioned. We learn, for example, that at the last minute Gala added two gouaches by Chagall, a watercolour by Picasso, one by Braque and one by Max Ernst (Fraise, cat. n. 9bis). Two oils were withdrawn by her (a canvas from Géricault’s school and a landscape of 1902 by Picabia). 42 Paintings by de Chirico had already appeared at Drouot in 1921, even if sporadically. This is not surprising as the dealer Paul Guillaume represented de Chirico from before the First World War and it was usual for dealers to check their artists’ prices on the secondary market. 43 For example, this group of works attracted the attention of André Fage, who mentioned the sale in his text, Le collectionneur de peintures modernes (Paris: Editions pittoresques, 1930), 14. 44 The Parisian press defined his collection as composed of ‘ultra-modern paintings’. See P. H., ‘La curiosité – Hôtel Drouot’, in Liberté, 6 July, 1924. 45 The fact that Breton and other friends of the Éluards were the main buyers of Surrealist works can be considered as another stratagem. Works by Ernst, Masson and Man Ray were completely unknown to the Drouot audience. Gala knew she would have gained a better result from the sale of Cubist works. Moreover, Breton, Paulhan and others could buy paintings and objects they were interested in directly from her. The fact that they bought during the sale shows that they probably were aiming to create a value for ‘their’ artists and give them a new visibility in the secondary art market. 46 All information about buyers and prices come from the sale’s registers, conserved in APFAB, Boite D149E3 3. 47 Ibid. Pierre Loeb bought a Vlaminck, one Chagall and one Modigliani. 48 For example, Littérature, La Révolution Surréaliste and, later, Le Surréalisme au Service de la Révolution and Minotaure.

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Part IV

Agents in the market for American collectors

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IV

Introduction Collecting alliances in the United States during the long nineteenth century Inge Reist

The decades following America’s Civil War that culminated in the period Mark Twain (1835–1910) dubbed the Gilded Age witnessed a frenzy of art collecting unprecedented in the United States and perhaps only equalled by the British collecting energy of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. For Americans, from the late 1860s onwards, industrialization led to new prosperity, bringing with it a wealth of opportunities to adorn and embellish private homes and public institutions. Not surprisingly, these novice collectors often sought advice from people they perceived to be more knowledgeable than themselves about art and the art market. Some of these advisers/agents were art dealers who deftly cultivated the collectors’ interests in what seemed at the time to be an inexhaustible supply of contemporary art by American and European artists. They often did this through the sale of reproductive prints, as well as the paintings from which those prints derived. Michael Knoedler (1823–78) and later his son Roland (1856–1932) (Plate 20) were examples of such dealers, becoming active in New York as agents of Goupil & Cie as early as the 1840s and subsequently building their own profitable business with branch offices extending beyond their New York base during the later decades of the century. After opening a branch office in Pittsburgh in 1897, Roland Knoedler and his partner Charles Carstairs effectively weaned a clientele of newly minted millionaires away from collecting prints to instil in them a taste first for contemporary art issuing from the Paris Salons and later for Old Master paintings of considerable value.1 Whereas some agents and advisers gained the trust of their clients primarily by impressing them with their knowledge and connoisseurship, Knoedler and Carstairs did so by forming bonds of friendship that reached well beyond their sales transactions, travelling together, golfing, and assisting with the care and display of their clients’ art (Figure IV.1). Inevitably, those clients were made to feel that they enjoyed preferential treatment and the first right of refusal when a masterpiece came onto the market. In time, during the early decades of the twentieth century, Knoedler also became what could be described as an agent for the agents,

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Figure IV.1  Postcard with view of the villa belonging to portraitist Théobald Chartran on the Island of Salagnon, Lake Léman, near Clarens, Switzerland (memento of a luncheon attended by Mr. and Mrs. Henry Clay Frick, Charles Carstairs and others). The Frick Collection/Frick Art Reference Library, New York. brokering and sharing the financial burden of important and costly pictures that had been purchased by their London or Paris counterparts, including P. & D. Colnaghi and Durand-Ruel.2 With Samuel Avery (1822–1904), the model of the dealer is different.3 Although he, like Knoedler, built a prosperous business marketing prints, with the help of American artists such as the Hudson River landscapists Asher Durand (1796–1886), Thomas Cole (1801–48) and Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900), Avery also became a trusted adviser to collectors apart from his business, due to his stature as a civic leader and philanthropist. He served as the Arts Commissioner for the American pavilion at the 1867 Paris Exposition, and for years thereafter he made a practice of arranging studio visits for numerous American collectors visiting the French capital. Avery also played a key role in the establishment of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, serving as a trustee and unofficial acquisitions adviser for that institution for more than thirty years. The respect that Avery enjoyed from cultural leaders, as well as collectors such as William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878) and William T. Walters (the financial backer for his business), and his exceptional influence on collectors, such as William Henry Vanderbilt, was regularly reinforced by his selfless actions on behalf of public institutions. For example, he negotiated the 1887 bequest of Catharine Lorillard Wolfe’s (1828–87) collection to the Museum and later also persuaded Vanderbilt’s heirs to donate important parts of that collection to the Metropolitan. Avery’s gift as an agent for change for the public good is attested by a comment published in 1904 in The New

 Introduction 269 York Evening Post: ‘His long and honorable career seems to us peculiarly exemplary because of the dignity with which he filled public positions and more especially because of the ease with which he turned from his business to public service.’4 While Avery was based in New York, his almost exact contemporary, the Baltimorean George Lucas (1824–1909), often acted in concert with him as an agent and matchmaker for collectors and French contemporary artists.5 Lucas was an expatriate, living in Paris and its environs from the age of thirty-three to the end his life, and although he was not an art dealer in the pure sense of the term, he did realize personal gain – usually 5 per cent – from the transactions he arranged. Lucas kept a meticulous diary whose 18,000 entries detail the richness of his life abroad, made possible by a generous inheritance, and his personal collecting passions.6 As a result of his contacts with wealthy art patrons of his native Baltimore, William Walters above all, but also John H. B. Latrobe (1803–91), Lucas played a major role in shifting the collecting preferences of American collectors in the direction of French academic painting. This shift was galvanized by the 1867 International Exhibition that saw the optimism for sales of American art dashed as the collectors flocked to the art of Ernest Meissonier (1815–91) and the Barbizon artists. Indeed, the art that Avery purchased and resold through the agency of Lucas beginning in 1865 gave the latter even more financial security than he had gained from his inheritance, and he became a respected member of the art world of Belle-Époque Paris. Other influential figures during the history of American collecting in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries presented themselves with greater emphasis on scholarship. Paramount among these was Bernard Berenson. A disciple of Harvard professor Charles Eliot Norton (1827–1908), BB, as he was known, embraced a Ruskinian approach to artistic styles, championing the art of the Italian early and high Renaissance above all. Through his publications, such as Venetian Painters of the Renaissance (1894) and Florentine Painters of the Renaissance (1896), with their indispensable lists of the oeuvres of little-known artists, Berenson established his reputation as the most knowledgeable person in the field of Italian Old Masters. As a result, Berenson was singularly responsible for shaping some of America’s most significant collections, notably that of Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840–1924), while realizing significant financial gain for himself through his association and business arrangement with art dealer Joseph Duveen (1869–1939). Berenson was not the only scholar/agent, however: Frederick Mason Perkins (1874–1956) similarly became a trusted adviser to collectors who included George Blumenthal (1858–1941), Philip (1861–1947) and Robert Lehman (1891–1969), and Helen Clay Frick (1888–1984). Like Berenson, Perkins profited from his advisory role, having entered into an agreement with Robert Langton Douglas (1864–1951) to receive a 10 per cent commission for influencing any sale realized by that London dealer.7 Curators also acted as agents during the Gilded Age, brokering sales and buying at auction. Bloomsbury artist, founder of The Burlington Magazine and curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1906 to 1910, Roger Fry (1866–1934) (Figure IV.2) acted as an agent for private collectors such as J. Pierpont Morgan (1837–1913) and Henry Clay Frick (1849–1919), as well as for the Museum’s growing collection. No

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Figure IV.2  Roger Fry. Self Portrait. 1928. Oil on canvas, 37 × 46 cm. Courtauld Institute of Art, London. Acquired in 1994 through the Art Fund. © Courtauld Institute of Art. doubt one of the most adventurous and most successful examples of Fry’s agency for a Gilded-Age collector was his journey to Poland to assess the potential purchase for Frick of Rembrandt’s Polish Rider at the castle of Count Zdzisław Tarnowski at Dzików. Fry had cabled Frick on 15 April 1910 to assure him ‘Can secure rembrandts polish cavalier sixty thousand pounds urge acceptance decision must reach me eighteenth / fry’. Both men agreed, however, that the purchase should be contingent on Fry’s assessment of the condition of the picture. After travelling to Poland to view the painting, Fry declared the count to be ‘a good natured rather rustic gentleman with the obstinate suspicions of a peasant type quite unused to business’ and ‘extremely difficult to deal with’. With uncharacteristic trust in the opinion of another, Frick authorized the purchase of the picture, indicating to Fry ‘You have authority to do as you think best in all matters’, and later, after the decision to buy had been made, he wrote to Fry: I am much pleased with the way you have handled this matter: of course, I have been governed entirely by you as to its value, as I have great confidence in your judgment. As to your remuneration, I want to be quite fair with you. Would be glad to have from you an idea as to just what would be satisfactory.

The £60,000 ($308,651.25) cost included Fry’s £3,000 commission and payment was made to Knoedler & Co., New York, which partnered with the Carfax Gallery in London for the sale. Upon receiving the painting, Frick cabled Fry on 22 July 1910 with a single word summing up his first impression: ‘Enchanted.’8 Perhaps the most flamboyant and, on the face of it, the most unlikely curator/agent was Belle da Costa Greene (1879–1950), librarian to J. Pierpont Morgan, with whom she developed ‘an honesty of thought . . . a soul-oneness which makes it possible for him to tell me things’9 (Plate 21). Raised in an exceptionally distinguished African American family, Greene not only helped shape Morgan’s taste for medieval manuscripts but also succeeded in bringing to his collection remarkable works that were deemed likely to

 Introduction 271 see fierce competition in the marketplace or to be denied for export. The most colourful incident of this kind was recounted by Greene herself in a 1912 interview with The New York Times. This was her successful acquisition, in 1908, of seventeen incunables from England’s first press founded by William Caxton (c. 1422–91), achieved through private negotiations with Lord Amherst prior to a major sale of his collection. After warning him that Morgan would not bid at the auction, Greene waited nervously for Amherst’s decision, while other likely buyers pleaded with her not to bid on various Caxton lots. Her success came only the night before the auction: You see, I just had to have them so I said to my lord, ‘Mr. Morgan offers you this,’ naming a goodly sum. Oh it was a hard and trying moment. I felt that there were members of the family who eyed me suspiciously. Possibly they didn’t like the way I dressed, they were so staid and so prim. . . . Well, the night before the sale . . . I was given a dinner by the London book men. One of them turned to me during the evening. ‘Miss Green [sic],’ he said, ‘will you promise me that in the morning you’ll not bid against me for such and such a Caxton?’ I was on the qui vive, waiting for my telegram which would tell me whether or not I had swept the collection from under the hammer. And as luck would have it, just before I replied the missive was placed in my hands. I read the gladdening news. Our offer had been accepted. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I’ll promise not to bid against you at the sale to-morrow.’ I believe that was my greatest coup.10

Although not unique to American collecting, the role of the artist as adviser is a constant throughout the nineteenth century; however, one cannot assume that the influence a given artist exerted on a collector necessarily resulted in financial gain. For example, to date, no evidence has been uncovered to point to any monetary reward Mary Cassatt (1844–1926) realized from the extensive counsel she gave to H. O. Havemeyer (1847– 1907) and his wife Louisine (1855–1929) as they purchased scores of Old Master and Impressionist works of art from both European and American dealers. In the case of Louisine Havemeyer, we have first-hand documentation of Cassatt’s role in the collector’s memoir Sixteen to Sixty: Memoirs of a Collector, where she recalled, ‘I felt that Miss Cassatt was the most intelligent woman I had ever met, and I cherished every word she uttered and remembered almost every remark she made. It seemed to me no one could see art more understandingly, feel it more deeply or express themselves more clearly than she did.’11 On another occasion, with regard to an early purchase of a Degas, Louisine remembered, ‘I scarce knew how to appreciate [the painting] or whether I liked it or not, for I believe it takes special brain cells to understand Degas. There was nothing the matter with Miss Cassatt’s brain cells, however, and she left me in no doubt as to the desirability of the purchase and I bought it upon her advice.’12 As Laura Corey’s recent and essential research on Cassatt has demonstrated, Cassatt’s social station as a member of a prosperous and respected Philadelphia family (her brother Alexander (1839–1906) was president of the Pennsylvania Railroad) situated her ideally as an adviser, not only to her close friend Louisine Havemeyer but also to several other collectors, including Colonel Oliver H. Payne, Theodore Davis and

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James Stillman.13 Moreover, Cassatt’s collegial relationships with so many artists of the Parisian avant-garde, Edgar Degas (1834–1917) most especially, often gave her open access to new work as it left the easel. William Glackens’s (1870–1938) advice and purchasing assignments for Albert C. Barnes (1872–1951) similarly seem to have been rooted in friendship, in their case dating back to the men’s school days at Philadelphia’s selective Central High School (Figure IV.3). Soon after Barnes re-connected with Glackens in 1911, having already developed an interest in art collecting partly by exposure to great Philadelphia collections such as that of John G. Johnson (1841–1917), another Central High alumnus, he gave the artist a purse of $20,000 with the charge to travel to Paris to obtain noteworthy avant-garde paintings for him. Glackens returned in 1912 with a trove of thirty-three paintings that included Vincent van Gogh’s The Postman (1889), Pablo Picasso’s Young Woman Holding a Cigarette (1901) and several works by Auguste Renoir and Henri Matisse.14 In one matter, the cost of a work of art, the novice collectors of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century America were not naïve nor did they seem to require outside agents to bargain down the asking prices for works of art. As more and more collectors’ and dealers’ archives become accessible, we learn that negotiations with purveyors of fine art could be protracted and seemingly headed to an impasse, but these negotiations were invariably carried out by the collectors themselves. Bearing in mind that the vast majority of America’s Gilded-Age collectors were self-made businessmen and culturally quite opposite from European grand tourists with inherited fortunes, they knew well how to inform themselves of recent sales for comparison’s sake and

Figure IV.3  Albert C. Barnes and William Glackens, c. 1920, unknown photographer. Glackens Family Donation, Photograph Collection. Barnes Foundation Archives, Philadelphia, PA.

 Introduction 273 gauge what the market would bear. Henry Clay Frick, for example, mixed and matched methods of payment, choosing, at times, to pay with Pennsylvania Railroad stock, claiming it would likely hold or improve in value better than works of art, or, as was the case for his acquisition of the Ilchester Rembrandt Self Portrait from Knoedler, making partial payment by returning a work by Jules Breton purchased earlier at a profit of $10,000, while paying the balance by check.15 The chapters in this section offer a set of case studies focused on individual agents and their clients, in some cases from the vantage point of the strategy of the agent, in other cases from the point of view of the network of agents developed by the client. Madeleine Beaufort’s lifelong research on Samuel Avery expands my brief earlier remarks to deepen our understanding of his fascinating and multifaceted career in Chapter 19. A dealer who relied on a vast number of intermediaries with profiles ranging from the aristocratic collector to the well-connected artist and who played an influential role in shaping American taste in later years was René Gimpel (1881–1945). As Diana Kostyrko documents in Chapter 18, beyond developing relationships with intermediaries and private collectors in America, Gimpel relished the challenge of serving as an intermediary between the marketplace and museums.16 Gimpel’s loans and donations to institutions, such as the Cleveland Museum of Art, Detroit Institute of Arts, Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard, many of whose acquisition policies were still in formation, powerfully influenced the future profiles of those collections. Presenting himself as much as a scholar as he was a dealer, Gimpel underscored his abilities as a connoisseur of older art who could be trusted to authenticate attributions accurately. The network of agents who shaped and catered to the collecting taste of millionaire James Hazen Hyde is examined by Louise Arizzoli in Chapter 20, while the proactive agency of another millionaire born to privilege, Harold Woodbury Parsons, and the imprint he left on American museums is the subject of MacKenzie Mallon’s Chapter 21. The strategies of Martin Birnbaum are exposed in Julie Codell’s Chapter 22, as she unravels that polymath’s network of dealers and informants who served his clients, Grenville Winthrop foremost among them. Viewed as a unit, this section demonstrates that Gilded-Age America can be regarded as a testing ground for examining the many approaches to agency that influenced collectors of the day and, ultimately, resulted in bringing exceptional art to America’s public institutions.

Notes 1 The most complete recent analysis and assessment of the activities of Goupil is Agnès Penot, La Maison Goupil: Galerie d’art internationale au XIXe siècle (Paris: Mare & Martin, 2017). The most comprehensive published account of Knoedler’s activities in America, beginning in 1846 with Michael Knoedler’s opening of the New York branch of Goupil et Cie., and his purchase of that business in 1857, remains DeCourcy E. McIntosh, ‘Demand and Supply: The Pittsburgh Art Trade

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and M. Knoedler & Co.’, in Collecting in the Gilded Age: Art Patronage in Pittsburgh, 1890–1910, ed. Gabriel P. Weisberg, John N. Ingham, DeCourcy E. McIntosh and Alison McQueen (Pittsburgh: Frick Art & Historical Center, 1997), 107–77. The extensive archive of Knoedler & Co. is held at the Getty Research Institute and much of it is accessible online at http:​/​/www​​.gett​​y​.edu​​/rese​​arch/​​speci​​al​_co​​llect​​ions/​​ notab​​le​/kn​​​oedle​​r​.htm​​l. Knoedler’s most prominent Pittsburgh clients included Charles Lockhart (1818–1905), Alexander McBurney Byers (1827–1900), David T. Watson (1844–1916), Henry Clay Frick and Andrew W. Mellon (1855–1937). Their collections are analysed in depth by Alison McQueen, ‘Private Art Collections in Pittsburgh: Displays of Culture, Wealth, and Connoisseurship’, in Weisberg, et al., 53–105, and for Frick, Byers and Lockhart, 70–82. 2 Examples of such shared investments in pictures initially brought to market by other dealers are detailed in Inge Reist, ‘Knoedler and Old Masters in America’, in Old Masters Worldwide: Markets, Museums and Movements 1789-1939, ed. Susanna Avery-Quash and Barbara Pezzini (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2020). 3 For recent scholarship on Avery, in addition to Chapter 19 by Madeleine Beaufort in this book, see Leanne Zalewski, ‘“A Public-Spirited Merchant”: Samuel P. Avery, Art Dealer, Advisor, Philanthropist’, in Dealing Art on Both Sides of the Atlantic, 1860–1940, ed. Lynn Catterson (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2017), 93–113. 4 New York Evening Post, 13 August 1904, reprinted in Editorials and Resolutions in Memory of Samuel Putnam Avery (New York: Privately Printed, 1905), 6, as quoted in Zalewski, ‘A Public-Spirited Merchant’, 101. 5 A comprehensive biography of Lucas that plumbs a wealth of archival material and touches on all facets of his life and career is Stanley Mazaroff, A Paris Life, a Baltimore Treasure: The Remarkable Lives of George A. Lucas and His Art Collection (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018). 6 Mazaroff, A Paris Life, a Baltimore Treasure, 7 details that Lucas ultimately owned over 18,000 works of art by over 500 different artists. 7 For Perkins, see Fausto Nicolai, ‘More than an Expatriate Scholar: Frederick Mason Perkins as Art Adviser Agent and Intermediary for American Collectors of the Twentieth Century’, Journal of the History of Collections 28, no. 2 (July 2016): 311–25, and ‘“Primitives” in America: Frederick Mason Perkins and the early Renaissance Italian paintings in the Lehman and Blumenthal collections,’ Journal of the History of Collections, 31, no. 1 (March 2019) 131–150. 8 Fry’s observations about the Count, Fry’s extensive correspondence with Frick, his invoice, and Frick’s single-word telegrammed reaction to the painting are found in documents in the Frick Collection/Frick Art Reference Library Archives, Henry Clay Frick Art Collection Files (HCFP), Series I, Purchases (Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, The Polish Rider, Folders 1–4, Container 3107300004194). The circumstances of the sale are recounted in detail by Esmée Quodbach, ‘Henry Clay Frick Collects Rembrandt, 1899–1919’, in Colin B. Bailey, Esmée Quodbach, Louisa Wood Ruby, Margaret Iacono and Joanna Sheers, Rembrandt and His School: Masterworks from the Frick and Lugt Collections (New York: The Frick Collection, 2011), 17–18 and are also summarized by Charles Molesworth, The Capitalist and the Critic: J. P. Morgan, Roger Fry, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016), 99–100. 9 Greene’s comments about her relationship to Morgan were published by Jean Strouse, ‘The Unknown J. P. Morgan: A Biographer Uncovers the Private Life of the Famous Banker’, The New Yorker (29 March 1999): 66–79. For an exhaustive study

 Introduction 275 of Greene, see Heidi Ardizzone, An Illuminated Life: Belle da Costa Greene’s Journey from Prejudice to Privilege (New York and London: W. W. Norton & Co., 2007). Greene was hired by Morgan in 1906, having been introduced to him by his nephew Junius Morgan while she was working in the library of Princeton University. She had little formal training that could have anticipated her success as an agent. 10 ‘Spending J. P. Morgan’s Money for Rare Books’, The New York Times (7 April 1912). 11 Louisine Havemeyer, Sixteen to Sixty: Memoirs of a Collector (New York, privately printed, 1961, repr. with an introduction by Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, New York: Ursus, 1993), 269–70. 12 Ibid., 249–50. 13 See Laura D. Corey, ‘The Many Hats of Mary Cassatt: Artist, Advisor, Broker, Tastemaker’, in ed. Catterson, 39–57. 14 Brian Seymour, ‘A Mentor for Dr. Barnes: John G. Johnson and a Culture of Collecting in Philadelphia’, Paper delivered at a conference ‘Have to Have It: Philadelphians Collect 1850–1930’, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 4 November 2017. 15 HCFP, Henry Clay Frick Art Collection Files, Series I, Purchases (Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, Self Portrait, Folders 1–4, Container 3107300004166). 16 Pamella Guerdat, ‘Through the Appraisal Process: René Gimpel (1881–1945) and Nicolas Poussin’s Self-Portrait, from Rediscovery to De-attribution’, Journal of Art Historiography 16 (June 2017): 14–16.

18

Can a leopard change its spots? René Gimpel, art dealer Diana J. Kostyrko

In 1929 René Gimpel (1881–1945) wrote to Leon Schinasi (1890–1930) in New York, shortly before the latter died: My dear friend . . . just now a wonderful Fragonard is offered in Paris from the estate of Mme Burat, the great collector. Its name is La Visite à la nourrice. It measures H: 27in ½, L: 35in. The owners ask four millions francs and ten per cent of commission for the intermédiaire. I think the picture could be bought for three millions francs plus the commission. Would you care to acquire it?1

Schinasi, apparently, did not care to acquire the Fragonard but, more to the point for this chapter, this is an example of Gimpel acting as an agent, rather than the art dealer he was trained to be. Unlike most of the figures in this book René Gimpel was purposefully schooled from an early age for a professional career in the fine and decorative arts, by his father Ernest Gimpel (1858–1907), who had begun as an intermediary, sourcing clients for Nathan Wildenstein (1851–1934) in the 1880s (Figure 18.1). The artful practice of cultivated exchange, which René Gimpel inherited, altered irrevocably with the Crash of 1929 and the ensuing Depression, by which time he was acting on his own account. Gimpel was forced to become more entrepreneurial to rescue his long-term investment in the Franco-American art market that he knew so well – or did he? Had he in fact become too homogeneous and complacent in a role that had become outmoded? In this chapter, I examine the strategies Gimpel employed to succeed as a cosmopolitan merchant, a connoisseur, an art critic and an intermediary, while offering his services as a benevolent friend of philanthropists and patrons. I also consider to what extent his strategies influenced, or were guided by, prevailing art market cultures. René Gimpel’s father’s apogee as agent can be located in 1904 when he sourced two British portraits for Knoedler’s in New York, who then sold them to Henry Clay Frick: Lawrence’s Julia, Lady Peel and Romney’s Lady Hamilton as ‘Nature’ (Frick Collection, New York). By this time he had graduated as a transatlantic art dealer, having brought off a coup the previous season with the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s purchase of two

 Can a Leopard Change Its Spots? 277

Figure 18.1 Ernest Nathan Gimpel c. 1896. Photograph. Courtesy of the Gimpel Family. ©Gimpel Family Archives. eighteenth-century French portraits – the museum’s first of this genre, the acquisition of which raised E. Gimpel & Wildenstein’s professional standing. As burgeoning cosmopolites, Ernest and René Gimpel could act as agents for dealers in Paris who chose not to risk setting up in North America; they either took a share in the work or a commission on sales which they effected. But while Parisian dealers were familiar with the hard-nosed French amateur-collectors and their proclivities, they had yet to learn to ‘read’ a North American audience. An early experiment which exemplified this involved a significant picture by Jan Steen of 1661, The Prince’s Birthday or Prinsjesdag, 14th November (private collection), which had been bought by Franz Kleinberger at a Paris auction on 30 May 1903 (Figure 18.2). Ernest Gimpel took the Steen to New York and exhibited it at their gallery in December 1903 and December 1904, then lent it to the National Arts Club in New York in February 1905, when it was titled Festival of the First Born (and mistaken for a scene of celebration for a newly born infant, when it actually represented a celebration of the birthday of William III of Orange, later to become king of England). But ‘vulgar fun’, as the arts journalist Charles de Kay described it in The New York Times, was not a subject which then appealed to New York collectors. Unsold, it recrossed the Atlantic with the Gimpels and was soon acquired by Oscar Huldschinsky (1846–1931), a Berlin millionaire industrialist whose collection Wilhelm Bode cultivated.2 The Gimpels’s experiment in this genre represented a lesson that they did not repeat; instead they concentrated on eighteenth-century portraits of aristocratic French women, such as that of Madame Dompierre de Fontaine, niece of Voltaire, then attributed to Drouais, but now considered to be a self-portrait (Château de Voltaire, Ferney-Voltaire) (Figure 18.3).3 The Gimpel father-and-son art dealership, singly and in tandem with Wildenstein until 1919, were representative of a select group of Parisian art-dealing élites and dynasties, who operated at the upper end of the market and who learned to target North American clients in particular, among whom were the Durand-Ruels, the Seligmanns, the Lowengards, the Duveens, the Goupil/Knoedlers, the Jonases, the Storas, the Bernheims, the Rosenbergs, the Demottes, Galerie Kleinberger and so on.

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Figure 18.2  Jan Steen, The Prince’s Birthday, signed and dated 1661. Oil on canvas, 86.5 × 99.5 cm. Private collection. Courtesy Sotheby’s. They operated in a system of oligopolistic competition, whereby each player ran a substantial segment of the shared market while being acutely aware of, and conditioned by, their contemporaries’ actions.4 In attempting to promote their businesses ahead of their rivals, these firms used similar strategies. A common modus operandi was to set up gallery premises around the Madeleine or the 8th arrondissement, on the right bank of the Seine, where many wealthy aristocrats and art collectors lived.5 These grandees were not only discerning and knowledgeable about fine and decorative art but they knew very well how to manage their collections and handle Parisian dealers, while some dabbled in dealing themselves. Therefore, in order to stay ahead of the amateurcollectors, dealers relied on intermediaries to flush out ‘high-class’ Old Masters of the French, Dutch, Flemish, Italian and Spanish schools, which were not necessarily in the marketplace. Modern travel by rail and road, which gathered momentum from the mid-nineteenth century, allowed both dealers and intermediaries significantly greater and speedier access to sources of supply outside metropolitan centres.6 Intermediaries initially were the precursors to professional art dealers; they acted as ‘talent’ scouts, on the periphery or in the background and not only sourced goods but also delivered potential customers to dealers. They were more likely to employ less scrupulous methods, however, since in general they were less accountable. Overall, there was less risk and more expediency in the actions of agents and they offered fewer services; in short, they were more flexible. Agents might also be failed dealers,

 Can a Leopard Change Its Spots? 279

Figure 18.3  Madame de Dompierre de Fontaine, née Marie-Elisabeth Mignot, Selfportrait before 1771. as in the case of Herbert Silva White (1866–1932), who had been employed by the house of Duveen as an agent since 1917 and who by 1931 was considered valuable enough (and fickle enough in his allegiance) to be put on a retainer so as to secure his services exclusively for the firm.7 Gimpel too had dealings with White. On making representations to the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio, Gimpel lauded White as ‘the most precious intermédiare in England . . . and of the highest dignity’.8 In some quarters, however, agents were thought of as the parasites of the art trade, although many undoubtedly acted with probity since it was a competitive market in which each regulated the other. We know from Gimpel’s journal, for instance, that Armand Lowengard (1893–1944) of Duveen Bros was scathing about Bernard Berenson’s practices of which he had much first-hand experience, Berenson being a particularly fertile and influential agent for Italian Old Masters. A sticking point with Lowengard was that Berenson jealously guarded his extensive knowledge, meting it out sparingly in order to preserve demand for his authority as a scholar-agent. As with most art dealers of the period, René Gimpel routinely used the services of intermediaries and wrote of their tactics, sometimes with wry amusement and at other times with amazement bordering on reproach. In one journal entry Gimpel describes an episode of chicanery involving Régis Chanas, whom he described as ‘the intermediary who has made the most money’ (Chanas, who also worked for the Duveens, collected a commission of 10 per cent on sales which he negotiated, sometimes at both ends of the

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deal). En route to the Château de Chevry at Chevry-en-Sereine, home of the comte and comtesse de Pélissier, where three tapestries of Boucher’s Loves of the Gods series were on offer, Chanas instructed Gimpel to pretend to be a rich American amateur-collector in order to impress the vendor. On another occasion, Chanas and Gimpel travelled by train to visit Arthur Dufresne, comte de Saint-Léon (1848–1947), to view a folly in the grounds of his château. Again, Gimpel was instructed to assume a false identity. Exasperatedly he wrote: ‘Chanas had written to the comte that I was an American, without warning me. Chanas is diabolical; he always creates a host of complications; he means to make me play a ridiculous role.’9 He added that agents such as Chanas had no qualms about profiting from others’ misfortune, such as forced sales. Gimpel employed another first-rate intermediary, Henri Lacombe, an amateur historian who was not above visiting the homes of the newly deceased in order to canvas their widows for goods from the estate; while Madame Jonas, an intermediary of ‘macabre’ habits, Gimpel wrote, attended all the burials of wealthy people in order to take stock of their collections. There was another class of intermediary with whom the dealer was familiar: aristocrats such as comte André de Ganay (1863– 1912), Prince Charles Casimir Poniatowski (1897–1980), who took a commission from introducing Gimpel to the wealthy American businessman, James Stillman (1850–1918) and Baron Maurice de Rothschild (1881–1957); while Alphonse Kann (1870–1948) was described as the pendant to de Ganay: ‘There’s not a friend he hasn’t drawn a commission from’, Gimpel wrote. He added that comte Boni de Castellane (1867–1932) claimed a fee from articles which he had persuaded his mistress to buy from the house of Wildenstein. For the most part these French intermediaries, while canny, knowledgeable and aggressive in their pursuit of income, were reactive rather than proactive; they did not seek to condition collecting trends, they merely responded to what they perceived to be an existing demand. An exception to this was the artist-agent, who might collect a commission on sales of his own work or on his recommendations. One such was the Paris-based American artist, Walter Gay (1856–1937). Gimpel, who had presided over a moderately successful exhibition of Gay’s work in March 1913 at E. Gimpel & Wildenstein, New York, and had consequently formed an ongoing relationship with the artist, wrote: Although he married a very rich woman, a relative of the wife of James Speyer, the American banker, he is extremely interested in personal gain. An unintelligent timid person, his love of money sometimes allows him to forget his timidity and to put aside his scruples. I don’t begrudge him the commission that he asks for in regard to Speyer but I cavil at what he demands on purchases by the Boston museum, for which he is the Paris representative and curator.10

A change in Gimpel’s somewhat paternalistic view of agents came about after his association with the contemporary artists Rose Adler (1890–1959), Robert Bonfils (1886–1972) and Marie Laurencin (1883–1956). Adler acted as an agent, advising and encouraging purchases by the Australian socialite and arts patron, Louise Dyer (1884– 1962), together with the Belgian bibliophile Odile Fontaine-Solvay (1877–1962). Adler particularly promoted the work of the avant-garde Nîmois/Parisian, Lucien Coutaud (1904–77), and it was North American buyers whom Adler sought; consequently,

 Can a Leopard Change Its Spots? 281 Gimpel purchased a gouache Allegory with Boats (Toledo Museum of Art) from Coutaud on 27 October 1931, on behalf of the Toledo Museum. In her role as mediator, Adler appeared not to be motivated by personal gain. In his profession as a transatlantic art dealer René Gimpel developed a repertoire of techniques to enhance his prospects, which included sending Christmas cards to private collectors and gifts to their hotel rooms and residences – commonly flowers and art reference books. Such genteel gestures of respect are seemingly removed from commerce, but as Genevieve Warwick notes after Marcel Mauss: ‘An object changes hands under the guise of a disinterested gift when in fact its intention, understood by both parties, is to procure a return. It is further distinguishable from other types of trade in that the return takes both a material and an immaterial form.’11 Gimpel particularly concentrated his courtesies on North American patronesses, such as Mary Frick Garrett Jacobs (1851–1936) and in general he did not neglect the wives of prominent collectors. He accompanied current and potential clients, or their wives, to the Louvre where he could acculturate them with intent. Another approach, as a token of his influence, was to gain them admission to eminent private collections in Paris, or famous artists’ ateliers, which might otherwise be off-limits.12 Clients’ artworks were included in select gallery exhibitions with the entrance proceeds accruing to charity – such as the E. Gimpel & Wildenstein exhibition of Fragonard pictures of 1914 in New York – thereby consecrating the lenders’ acquisitions in the pantheon of fine art and confirming their status as philanthropists, while naturalizing the gallery’s for-sale pictures. René Gimpel also cultivated friendly relations with gatekeeper-custodians of major private collections such as Belle da Costa Greene (1883–1950), who acted for J. Pierpont Morgan (1837–1913) in New York and is discussed by Inge Reist in the introduction to this section. The face-to-face consultation was in fact the art dealer’s main tool in building advantageous relationships and a flurry of polite correspondence usually preceded any appointment; in this respect Bernard Berenson, who was a prolific enjoiner in writing, provided a model. Of more lasting significance – in both discharging and creating a sense of obligation (determining where one’s obligation lay was a critical mainstay of an art dealer’s stock-in-trade) – Gimpel donated artworks to North American public museums. This had become standard practice in Paris, particularly during the late nineteenth century and across a range of private donors, which integrated and surpassed a tradition inherited from the Ancien Régime, as Véronique Long writes.13 It was as yet a nascent practice in North America, which quickly gathered momentum. Gimpel’s gifts included Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux’s terracotta bust of the Laughing Neapolitan Girl to the Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, in 1923, and its pendant, the Neapolitan Fisherboy, which he donated to the Toledo Museum of Art in 1926.14 In 1924 he donated a fragment from an important thirteenth-century fresco cycle by the Master of Le Palazze, The Swaddled Christ Child, to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. In 1928 Gimpel gave another fragment from the same cycle, Shepherd (with One Hand of the Reclining Virgin) to the Fogg Museum at Harvard University and in the same year yet another fragment to the Wadsworth Atheneum, The Youngest Magus.15 He also assisted museums by securing loans from private Paris collections for their exhibitions.16

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From 1926 onwards René Gimpel began to experience a shift in the tidal flow of the art market with which he was familiar, and which reached a critical level for him in the early 1930s. His traditional client base was reaching saturation point and, for reasons which can only be speculated, he had not managed to attract a new generation of clients, most likely because taste for the expensive arts of the Ancien Régime had declined. There were only a few on whom he could now rely, such as Schinasi, who died in 1930 shortly after he had offered fifteen ancient iridized pieces of glass for the dealer to give to Toledo. The stock market crash of 1929 dealt a fatal blow to the high end of the transatlantic art market; as Gimpel noted, in writing a supplicatory letter to the millionaire-collector Samuel Kress (1863–1955), Kress remained one of only a handful who were still buying pictures during the ‘distressful crise’.17 Gimpel had first encountered the Toledo Museum of Art in March 1923, when he met and was impressed by the director and assistant director, George and Nina Stevens. The Stevens introduced him to a trustee, William A. Gosline – ‘Billy’ – (1873–1947), who was scouting in Paris for the museum. (At that time Gimpel was fully aware of the importance of the Libbeys as major patrons to the museum but had not yet been introduced.) Courtesy of Florence Scott Libbey (1863–1938), whom Gimpel would nurture in the role of patroness, together with the patrons Leon Schinasi and Isidor Stettenheim (1855–1946), the Toledo Museum would become significant to his role as intermediary via their donations, and his own.18 Meanwhile, the museums with whom Gimpel had a long association were reviewing their acquisition policies. Harold Woodbury Parsons (1882–1967), as discussed by Mackenzie Mallon in Chapter 21 in this book, the American gentleman-agent for the Nelson-Atkins and Cleveland museums, with whom Gimpel became increasingly associated (at the same time having less to do with French intermediaries), informed him that Kansas City would only conduct business with established New York-based dealers: a strategy to protect his own agency.19 René Gimpel responded to these trials by expanding his role into agency, and he extended his brief to acquiring the work of living artists, an unfamiliar field. In 1927 he acted for the Detroit Institute of Arts by attending the John Quinn estate auction on 10 February 1927; on the museum’s behalf, he bid for Arthur B. Davies’s Dances, Augustus John’s The Mumpers and Maurice Prendergast’s Promenade, reassuring the museum that he had acquired the pictures ‘for very little money’ (all Detroit Institute of Arts). His foray into agency was given a fillip when the Toledo Museum of Art, encouraged by Florence Libbey, agreed to commission him to source modern works of art for the museum’s collection on a finder’s arrangement. Between 1930 and 1932 Gimpel purchased twenty-one contemporary works in Paris on the museum’s behalf; by his own admission he took advantage of ‘bad business amongst all those small dealer [sic] to try to buy as cheap as possible’.20 His choices were wildly eclectic and some were sound: Bonnard’s Abduction of Europa, de Chirico’s Self Portrait and Soutine’s Dead Fowl stand out.21 But the museum’s board of trustees, faced with experimental works and unknown artists, was ambivalent. The vice-president, Arthur J. Secor, who owned a collection of Old Masters and nineteenth-century American art, which he eventually donated to the museum, was openly resistant, being by his own admission unsympathetic to ‘many of the trends of modern art’.22In the background, American newspapers were full of the forthcoming election and the unemployment

 Can a Leopard Change Its Spots? 283 situation. The museum’s director, Blake-More Godwin, expressed himself relieved that this focus obviated the need for the museum to publicize its new acquisitions, writing to Gimpel: ‘it is perhaps best to let them ooze into our collections very quietly and thereby bring forth a minimum of comment.’ Indeed, Godwin obliquely hinted that some of the pictures would not be hung in the gallery at all.23 René Gimpel’s experiments with avant-garde art continued nevertheless and so did his brokering. The bear market in art between 1930 and 1939, corresponding to severe economic recessionary periods in Europe and the United States, was followed in 1940 by a dramatic rise in art prices and a bull market until 1986.24 Too late for René Gimpel, who by July 1940 was in exile in the south of France, in retreat from Nazi-occupied Paris, and soon to be forbidden from practising his trade by the Vichy government, on account of his Jewish identity. On the eve of the Second World War, however, when he could hardly know that he would never travel to America again, Gimpel wrote to George Edgell, the director of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston: ‘I could introduce you to the owner of the Toulouse Lautrec who has the Chilpéric. I think that you could buy it direct from the owner. It would be cheaper and easier. What do you think about it?’ Edgell was interested enough to promise to send an emissary to Paris to assess its potential25 (Plate 22)

Notes 1 Corr. René Gimpel, Paris, to Leon Schinasi, New York, 18 November 1929 (Gimpel Family Archives, London and France, henceforth GFA). This previously unpublished note offers new provenance information for Fragonard’s The Visit to the Nursery (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art). 2 With a long and distinguished provenance, the picture was last brought to the marketplace at Sotheby’s London auction on 9 July 2008 (29), but was not sold. 3 This picture was among those lent by Gimpel and Wildenstein to Duveen Bros to exhibit in London, May–July 1906. 4 Regarding oligopolistic competition in the art marketplace, see Constance S. Bates, ‘An Unexplored International Market: The Art Market’, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science11, no. 3 (1983): 240–9. 5 René Gimpel was an exception. He lived at 19 rue Spontini in the 16th arrondissement, many kilometres from the concentration of his cohort (he later moved to 37 rue de l’Université on the Left Bank). Although he modelled his palatial residence in rue Spontini as a fine-art collector’s gallery – after Jacques Doucet, whose residence it had been – ultimately this position may have been detrimental to his business; he relocated to Place Vendôme in the mid-1930s. For an account of Parisian art dealers’ locations, see Léa Saint-Raymond, Félicie de Maupeou, Julien Cavero, ‘Les rues des tableaux: The Geography of the Parisian Art Market 1815– 1955’, Artl@s Bulletin 5, no. 1 (2016): 119–59. 6 In Ernest Renart’s Repertoire général des collectionneurs de la France et de l’étranger of 1904 (a useful guide but by no means complete) the author lists 476 active amateurcollectors in Paris compared to 813 in provincial France. In 1912 Renart issued a supplement which included the addresses of more than 2,450 American collectors.

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7 A son of the well-known picture dealer, Edward Fox White, Herbert Silva White had been in business with Artemus Tooth at 21 Queen Victoria Street, London, in the late nineteenth century. In October 1900, as a sole trader at 168 New Bond Street, he was declared bankrupt but gradually recovered by selling all his stock. 8 Corr. René Gimpel, Paris, to William Gosline, Toledo, 25–31 January 1928 (GFA). 9 René Gimpel, Journal d’un collectionneur: marchand de tableaux, 21 octobre 1918 (Paris: Editions Hermann, 2011), 98. 10 Gimpel, Journal, 4 octobre 1919, 174. Walter Gay was married to an heiress, Matilda E. Travers. 11 Genevieve Warwick, ‘Gift Exchange and Art Collecting: Padre Sebastiano Resta’s Drawing Albums’, The Art Bulletin 79, no. 4 (1997): 632. 12 These courtly strategies, for the most part, were not extended to Parisian clients. 13 Véronique Long, ‘Les collectionneurs d’œuvres d’art et la donation au musée à la fin du XIXe siècle: l’exemple du musée du Louvre’, Romantisme: Revue du dix-neuvième siècle, 112, vol. 2 (2001): 45. 14 Other artworks were donated to the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Detroit Institute of Arts, Cincinnati Art Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, Washington DC, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University. 15 These fragments came from a fresco cycle of the Life of Christ, removed from the former monastery of Santa Maria inter Angelos, Spoleto, in 1921, by the owner Guglielmo Cianni, two larger pieces of which Gimpel acquired by 1923 (from an unknown agent) and sold to Raymond Pitcairn of Bryn Athyn in 1925 for $58,475: Annunciation to Mary, and Légende de la Vierge au Manteau (Bryn Athyn, PA: Glencairn Museum). For the history of the cycle, see Martin Davies, ‘Frescoes from Spoleto’, in European Paintings in the Collection of the Worcester Art Museum, ed. Louisa Dresser (Worcester, MA: Worcester Art Museum, 1974), 465–75. 16 For example, the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition of Corot and Daumier held in New York on 16 October–23 November 1930. 17 GFA, Corr. René Gimpel, Paris, to Samuel H. Kress, NY, 6 October 1931. 18 Courtesy of Stettenheim, Gimpel presented Toledo with a Soutine Dead Fowl (MoMA, NY), and a portrait of the poet Miré by La Fresnaye (Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY), both subsequently deaccessioned. In 1926 he donated Gustave Doré’s The Mocking of Christ, and in 1927 a portrait by Heinsius said to be of La Fayette (deaccessioned). The few sales that the art dealer made to Toledo during this period were effected via the mediation of a Miss Ethel Hughes, who later became an art dealer in Versailles. 19 GFA, undated instruction René Gimpel to Alfredo Sidès c. 1936. 20 Corr. René Gimpel, Paris, to Blake-More Godwin, Toledo, n.d. but c. 1931 (courtesy Nicole Rivette, Toledo Museum of Art). 21 For a full list of the works and their fate see Diana J. Kostyrko, The Journal of a Transatlantic Art Dealer: René Gimpel 1918–1939 (Turnhout: Harvey Miller, 2017), 224–7. 22 GFA, Corr. Blake-More Godwin, Toledo, to René Gimpel, Paris, 30 January 1931. 23 GFA, Corr. Blake-More Godwin, Toledo, to René Gimpel, Paris, 12 February 1931. Toledo began deaccessioning the majority of these works in 1936. 24 See William N. Goetzmann, ‘Accounting for Taste: Art and the Financial Markets Over Three Centuries’, The American Economic Review 83, no. 5 (1993): 1370–6. 25 GFA, Corr. René Gimpel, Paris, to George H. Edgell, Boston, 2 February 1939. ‘The Chilpéric’, at the time owned by Mme Georges Dortu, referred to Marcelle Lender Dancing the Bolero in ‘Chilpéric’ (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art).

19

Samuel P. Avery’s early career The emergence of a successful art agent, art dealer and art expert Madeleine Fidell-Beaufort

This chapter explores factors leading to the success of Samuel Putnam Avery (1822– 1904) as an art agent, dealer and expert between 1864 and the end of the nineteenth century. This success was less a matter of following a strategy than having the luck to be born at a moment when collecting contemporary art was becoming fashionable and American collectors had money to spend.1 Avery knew and was highly regarded by a great many people in a wide variety of professions. He was well organized and adapted easily to new situations. Avery grew up in lower Manhattan, a key location for his earliest profession, which was working as a wood-engraver. Several artist illustrators appreciated Avery because he provided them with work that could supplement their modest incomes. Artists probably saw S. P. A., as he called himself, as an associate and colleague, rather than as an ordinary client. Although he was not an artist himself, he was able to offer encouragement and advice to art professionals in need of a sounding board.2 The wood-engraving trade brought Avery into contact with many artists and illustrators, who passed through his rooms over the years (Figure 19.1).3 Avery, in turn, visited artists in their studios and supported their associations such as the National Academy of Design and the Artists Fund Society. Long before he could help to exhibit their work, Avery followed the careers of these artists, seeing paintings by them when they were exhibited in galleries or at artist’s receptions.4 By the end of the 1840s, the demand for commercial wood-engravings had increased and Avery needed help to meet deadlines. In 1847 Avery took on a hard-working, fourteen-yearold apprentice named Isaac Pesoa (1833–1901), who was soon competent enough to lighten his workload and enable him to expand his business. Avery’s trade card in 1851 announced that he was able to execute, at short notice and on reasonable terms, engravings in any genre: portraits, landscapes, views of buildings, as well as book and magazine illustrations and labels for druggists, perfumers and manufacturers. He also could create show bills, newspaper headings, maps, billheads, cards and illustrated catalogues.

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Figure 19.1 S.P. Avery Engraver on Wood 129 Fulton Street, New York, from his scrapbook. Courtesy of the author. Avery continued making wood-engravings on commission for publishers like William Henry Appleton (1814–99), Benjamin Day (1810–89), the Harper brothers, Frank Leslie (1820–80) and George P. Putnam (1814–72). Later, as an art dealer and expert, Avery’s understanding of how newspapers and periodicals functioned helped him when he sent in articles to announce exhibitions at his gallery, to publicize his auctions and to report information about contemporary European artists.5 He became an entrepreneur as well. He compiled and had his own jest books printed, imitating popular English literature (Figure 19.2). The books he assembled and printed are today outmoded, but were popular at the time. The rights of English and American authors were unprotected in each other’s countries, which explains how Avery could use material from Punch. Like some of his contemporaries, Avery began collecting what he called ‘scraps’.6 They were studies or sketches by artists for an album he was making for himself. He helped others like William T. Walters, who were creating similar albums.7 He continued to help Walters and other Baltimore collectors like John Striker Jenkins (1831–78) to buy paintings from artists living in New York City. He wrote again to William Sidney Mount, this time requesting that he make a painting for Jenkins. Walters lived in Baltimore and wanted drawings by New York

 Samuel P. Avery’s Early Career 287

Figure 19.2  Front page of Punch’s Pocket Book of Fun, compiled by S. P. Avery. New York: D. Appleton and Co. 1857. Courtesy of the author. artists for his album. By the 1850s Avery was collecting pictures and that framing them to hang in his office or at home. His first purchases were modest paintings and drawings which he bought at auction or at annual exhibitions. He also wrote to artists he knew like William Sidney Mount (1807–68) asking him to make a drawing or watercolour for him. He continued to help Walters and other Baltimore collectors like John Striker Jenkins (1831–78) to buy paintings from artists living in New York City. He wrote again to William Sidney Mount, this time requesting that he make a painting for Jenkins.8 During the Civil War Avery supported the Union cause. He helped to organize a major art exhibition and sale in Brooklyn to raise money to pay for supplies for Union soldiers.9 Surprisingly, Avery’s loyalty towards the north did not compromise his friendship with William T. Walters, who was heavily involved with railroad business in the south and was president of the first line of steamships between Baltimore and Savannah, Georgia. When the war began, Walters decided that it would be prudent to move to Paris, where he lived between 1861 and 1865. In 1864, while living in Paris, Walters decided to sell part of the art collection which he had left in the United States, and he asked Samuel Avery to organize an auction for him in New York. Avery worked with an auctioneer named Henry Leeds. His role was that of an art expert who

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guaranteed that the works of art being sold were authentic.10 The sale took place on 9 April 1864. Avery designed the wood-engraving for the title page of the catalogue with his name in a cartouche at the bottom of the page. Henry H. Leeds, the auctioneer for this event, probably received a commission for a percentage of $36,515, the total sum for the works sold at Walters’s sale. Avery would probably have been paid for designing and cutting the wood-engraving used for the title page. However, Walters did better than just paying for a wood-engraving. He rewarded Avery by backing the art gallery that Avery opened nine months later in December 1864. Walters provided paintings for Avery to sell in his gallery and at auction. The Walters sale was the beginning of Avery’s long career as an art expert, as was seen on the title page where Avery is listed having been consigned the sale of the paintings and was the engraver of the title page as well. In the painting of An Auction Sale in Clinton Hall New York City 1876, painted by Ignacio Leon y Escosura (Plate 23), Avery appears on the left-hand side as the figure with his back to the viewer. He is wearing a top hat and his hands are behind him. He attended auctions often and frequently helped organize them, acting as the expert who guaranteed the authenticity of works of art. He was soon to become a professional art agent and an art dealer as well. From the time he arrived in Paris, in the fall of 1861, Walters collected contemporary European painting and was helped by George A. Lucas, a fellow Baltimorean, who had been living in France since 1857.11 Although he was trained as an engineer, Lucas preferred working as an art agent for American collectors. On 4 December 1864, Avery opened his gallery at 649 Broadway on the corner of 4th Street. In March of that year, prior to the sale of his paintings in April, Walters had written a contract in which he stated that he would pay for paintings and have them shipped to Avery for sale at auction or in an art gallery. Avery would be entitled to a percentage of the profits.12 Walters put Lucas in touch with Avery in 1865, and the two men began exchanging letters that year. Lucas and Avery were able to work together successfully for almost forty years. The announcement for the inauguration of Avery’s first gallery, financed by Walters, included signatures by forty-eight American artists endorsing the new gallery. Among the best known were Asher B. Durand, Albert Bierstadt, Frederick E. Church, Jasper F. Cropsey, Charles Loring Elliot, Eastman Johnson, John Frederick Kensett, Emanuel Leutze, Elihu Vedder and Worthington Whittredge. They were members of the National Academy of Design and no doubt looked forward to Avery’s help in selling their pictures. However, Avery soon found that he could make more money selling European art in the United States than he could selling art by Americans. Walters had the money to buy European pictures, and he and Lucas could buy contemporary academic or ‘Salon’ paintings in Paris at reasonable prices. Lucas worked well with artists and knew reliable bankers, art dealers, frame makers and shipping agents. Lucas and Avery finally met in person in March 1867, when Avery went to Paris. Avery had been working in New York as secretary to the United States Agency for the Paris Exposition Universelle.13 This agency selected works of art for the American section at the exhibition. Avery was given the title of Commissioner of Fine Arts for

 Samuel P. Avery’s Early Career 289 the American section at the Exposition. Walters’s influence may have helped him to get the appointment. Avery was responsible for assembling the works in New York, getting them crated, loaded on board a ship and accompanying the material to France. However, Avery did not select the works himself. On arrival in Paris, he supervised the installation of the work in the exhibition galleries. Avery sailed with the art collection, as well as other American products, on a ship called l’Europe on 9 February 1867. Just before leaving New York, he organized a threeday sale of the contents of his library and a two-day sale of the American paintings he had collected over the previous fifteen years.14 He earned $21,686 and anticipated being able to buy paintings, antiques and fine porcelain abroad. The Universal Exhibition opened on 1 April 1867 and closed at the end of October. The space allotted to America was described as being cramped and unattractive. The critical reaction to American art was unfavourable. Only one painting, Frederic Church’s Niagara, was awarded a silver medal. The American art section also exhibited fewer works than other countries, because artists in the United States were hesitant about lending their most recent work for an exhibition so far from home. They worried that the Federal Government would not pay the cost of shipping their work back to the United States. Fortunately, public-spirited American art collectors were willing to lend work from their own collections, and approximately one-third of the paintings in the American section were lent by these collectors.15 Since critical reception of American works in the American Fine Arts section in Paris had been so disappointing, American art collectors, previously supportive of compatriots, began buying contemporary works by European artists whose work was exhibited in the 1867 exhibition. They were eager to acquire works by artists who had received a Salon ‘seal of approval’. During the six months Avery spent in Paris, he had time to study contemporary art from many countries at the Universal Exposition. Lucas introduced Avery to Salon or ‘academic’ painters such as William Bouguereau, Jules Breton, Charles Gleyre and Ernest Meissonier. He made it possible for Avery to commission paintings for his clients directly from artists, and to have them framed before being shipped to the United States. Avery also met and began to work with wellknown Paris art dealers like Paul Durand-Ruel and Adolphe Goupil. He frequented the Hôtel Drouot, where Paris auctions were held and found paintings in small private galleries as well. Avery’s diaries list his visits to the shops and stalls of antique sellers, places where glass vases, fine porcelain and prints were sold. In 1868, a few months after his return from Paris, Avery was invited to join the Union League Club of New York. This club had been in existence since February 1863 and membership increased rapidly when the club moved to larger quarters in 1868. The Union League Club had a strong interest in art, and artist members were able to contribute paintings to the club’s collection in payment of their dues. At the time of the Civil War, club members tried to raise money for the United States Sanitary Commission. After the Civil War, the club devoted itself to civic projects and ‘clean’ government. Avery worked on the Union League Club art committee which organized monthly shows of works of art owned by fellow members. Eventually he became chairman of the art committee, where his administrative skills and knowledge of the

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art market were appreciated. It was an ideal post for Avery, who helped to organize monthly exhibitions with work from members’ collections. He met new clients and learned about the works of art they and other club members already owned. Members of the Union Club actively promoted the founding of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Avery attended the Union League Club dinner with twelve other club members when this new museum was being discussed throughout 1872. The provisional committee sometimes held its meetings at the Century Club or at Avery’s art rooms, which by then had moved to 88 Fifth Avenue. Avery became a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum in the same year and remained in office for the rest of his life. As a ‘Met’ trustee, he was in the company of artists and collectors he had known and worked with earlier.16 Unfortunately, no records of day-to-day transactions in Avery’s art rooms exist. Information about what Avery exhibited at his gallery can be traced through the press, as Avery, like Durand-Ruel and Goupil, sent in articles that were published in local newspapers. More information is available about two auctions he held each year to sell art bought in Europe between 1865 and 1880.17 As an expert, Avery also directed a number of auctions of existing collections as well. After the Civil War, the number of art collectors and buyers increased enormously. In 1876, the sale of two major art collections (that of John Taylor Johnston and John Striker Jenkins) led people to believe that art was a good investment. Journalists pointed out that in both these auctions the price at which paintings sold exceeded their original purchase price. By the 1880s, American newspapers were reporting results of public art auctions. Articles in the press frequently mentioned the names of people attending sales and of the buyers, as well as the final sale prices. A specialized group of American art periodicals began publication and provided information about art, artists and art collections. In conclusion, Samuel Avery’s success as an agent, art dealer and expert was finally due to a series of fortunate circumstances, rather than single-minded determination on his part. As a wood-engraver working with many local artists, he came to know them and their work, and helped them when he was able to do so. In the 1850s, when Avery was collecting on a modest scale himself, he came to understand the needs of fellow collectors. During the twenty-one years (from 1846 to 1867) he lived in Brooklyn, he belonged to local cultural associations, met and worked with Brooklyn art buyers and collectors and observed how local art exhibitions were organized and promoted. His later experience on the art committee at the Union League Club, his membership at the Century and other clubs, meant that Avery was continuously in contact with people who wanted to collect art. The good fortune Avery had in winning William T. Walters’s confidence in the 1850s was essential for his success, not only through his support of Avery’s gallery but also the introduction to Lucas. This enabled Avery to become familiar with the Parisian art market through a trustworthy and reliable associate. Thanks to Lucas, Avery met art and antique dealers, frame makers, bankers and shipping agents who specialized in sending works of art to the United States. Avery also discovered other art agents and dealers when he was in Europe on annual buying trips.

 Samuel P. Avery’s Early Career 291 Making thirteen yearly trips Avery crossed the Atlantic twenty-six times. Average crossings took ten or more days and Avery sometimes met potential clients on board. On one trip, in 1878, Avery travelled with William Henry Vanderbilt (1821–1885) on a buying trip to London and Paris, where they visited the Universal Exhibition of 1878.18 Vanderbilt paid both Avery and Lucas for their help. When the paintings and decorative objects that Vanderbilt bought arrived in New York, he asked Avery for his help in installing them. Avery’s diary reveals not only his tremendous energy, but also the precise details of the transactions he made with artists and collectors. While on buying trips, Avery wrote and received letters from artists, agents, collectors, art dealers, family and friends. Cables to and from his son Sam Jr., who ran the gallery in New York in his absence, were extremely effective in finalizing sales. Over the course of Avery’s career, he encountered and remained in contact with a great number of people in many professions. His success as an art dealer and art agent owed a great deal to his many contacts, his trustworthy expertise and the network of reliable professionals that he could count on throughout Europe and England. When he was seventy-five years old, a group of Avery’s friends and clients got together and commissioned Aaron Scharf to create a portrait medallion in 1897 (Figure 19.3).

Figure 19.3  Anton Scharf, Portrait Medallion of Samuel P. Avery. 1897, Bronze. 4.6 × 12 cm, private collection.

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Notes 1 Albert Boime, ‘America’s Purchasing Power and the Evolution of European Art in the Late Nineteenth Century’, in Salons, Galleries, Museums and Their Influence on the Development of 19th and 20th Century Art, ed. Francis Haskell (Bologna: CLUEB, 1982), 123–39. 2 See Ruth Sieben-Morgen, ‘Samuel Putnam Avery (1822-1904), Engraver on Wood; A Bio Bibliographic Study’ (MLS diss., Columbia University, New York, 1940) revised with additions, 1942. She doubted whether Samuel Avery was actually an artist and made drawings himself. Ibid., 48. 3 Metropolitan Museum of Art (hereafter MMA), The Thomas J. Watson Library, 201.9 Av3, Scrapbook: Avery’s business cards including the one cited here. His various addresses were located on Nassau, Fulton and Beekman streets. 4 According to Sieben-Morgan, Avery made engravings of drawings by artists like Felix Octavius Carr Darley (1822–88), William M. Hart (1823–94) William John Hennessy (1839–1917) Daniel Huntington (1817–1906) and Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze (1816–68) among others. Avery worked near auction houses, art galleries and studio buildings where receptions for artists were held. See Carrie Rebora Barratt, ‘Mapping the Venues: New York City Art Exhibitions’, in Art and the Empire City: New York, 1825-1861, ed. Catherine Hoover Voorsanger and John K. Howat (Metropolitan Museum of Art and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), Appendix A: ‘Exhibition Venues’ and Appendix B: ‘Exhibitions and Auctions, Art and the Empire City New York 1825–1861’, 47–81. 5 See Madeleine Fidell-Beaufort, Herbert L. Kleinfield and Jeanne K. Welcher, The Diaries 1871-1882 of Samuel P. Avery, Art Dealer (New York: Arno Press, 1979). See also Leanne Zalewski, ‘Samuel P. Avery, Art Dealer, Advisor, Philanthropist’, in Dealing Art on Both Sides of the Atlantic 1860–1940, ed. Lynn Catterson (Leiden: Brill. 2017), 93–114. 6 Joy Peterson Heyrman, ‘Signature Drawings: Social Networks and Collecting Practices in Antebellum Albums’ (PhD diss., University of Maryland, 2008) discusses this early American collecting practice. 7 For information about Walters, see William R. Johnston, William and Henry Walters the Reticent Collectors (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999). 8 In a letter to Avery from William Sidney Mount, written from Port Jefferson L. I. in August 1862, Mount wrote, ‘My Dear Sir, It affords me pleasure to send you (at your request) a sketch in oil of my Portable Studio, my own design and the first ever built for a painter. The idea has been on my mind about seven years. You will please accept the sketch (in oil) as a present?’ Mount mentioned that the studio was built in May and June 1861. See Alfred Frankenstein, William Sidney Mount (New York: Abrams, 1975), 265. 9 The Brooklyn and Long Island Fair in Aid of the U.S. Sanitary Commission was held in 1864 under the auspices of the Brooklyn Art Association. 10 Catalogue of Paintings Having Never Before Been Exhibited, Collected in Europe Over the Past Three Years and Now Consigned to Samuel P. Avery . . . sold at Auction on Saturday Evening April 9 by Henry Leeds at the Dusseldorf Gallery, 548 Broadway, New York, 9 April 1864. The dimensions of paintings are not provided in the catalogue. 11 See Lilian M. C. Randall, The Diary of George A. Lucas an American Art Agent in Paris 1857–1909, 2 vols (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979). See also

 Samuel P. Avery’s Early Career 293 Stanley Mazaroff, A Paris Life, A Baltimore Treasure. The Remarkable Lives of George A. Lucas and His Art Collection (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018). 12 Randall, The Diary of George A. Lucas, vol. 1, 33. This chronology mentions a contract between Walters and Avery stipulating the funding and sharing of profits for artworks purchased by Walters abroad and sold by Avery in the United States. 13 Carol Troyen, ‘Innocents Abroad: American Painters at the 1867 Exposition Universelle, Paris’, The American Art Journal 16, no. 4 (1984): 2–28. Troyen lists the titles of paintings, their owners and provides reasons why American art was not well received. 14 Avery sold the contents of his library at three sales: 30 and 31 January and 1 February 1867 at Bangs Merwin & Co 694 and 696 Broadway, N.Y. He sold his collection of paintings on 4 and 5 February 1867 at Henry H. Leeds and Miner at their gallery 817 Broadway. See: Harold Lancour, American Art Auction Catalogues 1785-1942, A Union List (New York: The New York Public Library, 1944, reprinted 2000). 15 The Chairman of the selection committee was William J. Hoppin. Robert L. Stuart, John Taylor Johnston, R. M. Olyphant, Jonathan Sturges, Abraham M. Cozzens, Marshall O. Roberts, William P. Wright, Sheppard Gandy, Henry T. Tuckerman, Charles Tiffany, Michael Knoedler, Joseph Harrison Jr. and George Whitney were members. Samuel P. Avery was the secretary. This can be found in a formal letter from the U.S. Agency for the Paris Universal Exposition on 19 January 1867, MMA, Thomas J. Watson Library, the Avery Art Notes. 16 The list of Trustees is found in Calvin Tomkins, Merchants & Masterpieces: The Story of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Revised and Updated (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1989), 395. 17 See: Lancour, American Art Auction Catalogue, note 14 for information about Avery’s sales. 18 Vanderbilt was buying pictures from Avery in New York several years before their 1878 trip to England and Europe. An annotated auction catalogue for Avery’s sale on 28 December 1866 shows that Vanderbilt had been collecting art previously. He bought four American paintings for a total of $850. See: Leanne Zalewski, ‘Art for the Public: William Henry Vanderbilt’s Cultural Legacy’, Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 11, no. 2 (2012), accessed at http:​/​/www​​.19th​​cartw​​orldw​​ide​.o​​rg​/su​​mmer1​​ 2​/lea​​nne​-z​​alews​​ki​-wi​​lliam​​-henr​​y​-van​​derbi​​​lts​-c​​ultur​​al​-le​​gacy.​

20

Dealing with allegories of the four parts of the world James Hazen Hyde (1876–1959) and his network Louise Arizzoli

The American collector James Hazen Hyde assembled a collection illustrating allegories of the four continents, in Paris between the two World Wars, which he ultimately donated to several institutions in New York City1 (Figure 20.1). It is an unusual collection because of its thematic scope, and stems from Hyde’s long-term interest in the way European artists represented visually and allegorically the Other. His fascination with his chosen subject led him to document the four continents through an extensive library and photographic archive, and to write about it in several scholarly articles. His collection before the Second World War was much wider than what is now represented through his gift to art museums in New York City, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and consisted of paintings, sculptures, tapestries, decorative art objects, drawings and prints, which displayed Europe, Asia, Africa and America embodied as female figures holding a variety of attributes.2 His wish was to survey this iconographic theme throughout the ages, thus creating an encyclopaedic demonstration of allegorical interpretations of the world since antiquity. His buying practice was thus to search for pieces that would contribute to his aims, irrespective of their cost. The collection thus becomes complete only if seen and understood with the photographic archive that he assembled in the same years. In fact, he had planned to compile and publish a catalogue. However, his endless research remained unpublished, while his collection is now dispersed. To fulfil his encyclopaedic project, he surrounded himself with art dealers throughout Europe who sought artworks to sell to him, as well as experts such as museum directors, archaeologists and art historians, who gave him advice and collected photographs to contribute to his archive.3 This chapter aims to investigate the network surrounding the collector in order to analyse how it functioned. By studying the relationships the collector had with the people who worked for him, this study attempts to understand who acted as his agents and advisors and how much Hyde relied on them before purchasing an artwork.

 Dealing with Allegories of the Four Parts of the World 295

Figure 20.1  Emile Friant, James Hazen Hyde, c. 1905. Black pencil drawing, from black and white photograph. James H. Hyde photographic archive, Fonds Hyde, Bibliothèque du Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris. Courtesy Bibliothèque du Musée des Arts Décoratifs. Within his network, different typologies of agents may be underlined through three figures who were important to Hyde in the 1920s: Carl Tancred Borenius (1885–1948), Eugénie Sellers Strong (1860–1943) and Ludwig Pollak (1868–1943). They provided friendly advice and sometimes they also received commissions. Their profile is diverse and shifting and helps to clarify the way in which the art market worked in the first decades of the twentieth century. The ninety-three unpublished volumes of Hyde’s journal and his vast correspondence preserved at the New York Historical Society are crucial, as they enable the analysis of the role of the agent from the collector’s perspective and also nuance the way in which the collector was perceived from the agent’s point of view. This chapter furthermore examines a specific period within Hyde’s collecting activity, around 1925, that details how such transactions were carried out. James H. Hyde was born in the wealthy New York Society of the Gilded Age; he was the only son of the millionaire head of the Equitable Life Assurance Society, Henry Baldwin Hyde.4 In 1899, after the death of his father, he inherited the majority of the shares of the insurance company, but his way of life was too self-indulgent for the responsibilities

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with which he was faced. His continuous extravagances led to his involvement in one of the major Wall Street scandals of the opening years of the twentieth century, namely the magnificent costume ball inspired by the court of Louis XVI in Versailles that Hyde threw in January 1905, which led to his enforced resignation from his directorship at the Equitable.5 As a result, Hyde restarted his life by finding an environment and an intellectual pursuit that would be more congenial to his personality. In 1905, he sold his shares in the company and went to France, where he ended up staying for thirty-six years without going back to the United States, only returning because of the Second World War.6 While in Paris, he dedicated himself to his interests and his intellectual work, in which collecting played a central part.7 Indeed, collecting was a way for him to affirm his social status within the new environment of the Parisian cultural élite, as well as providing a source of creative intellectual fulfilment. His papers give accounts of his research on art objects, his travels and his findings, and also help in the understanding of the art market at that time. The meticulous card catalogue of his collection provides detailed information about each piece within his collection: each work was described in detail with additional information such as the seller, date of the sale and price of the work.8 Hyde also frequently noted if the sale occurred through an intermediary figure, or if he received an expert’s advice before acquiring the object. Hyde’s collection was both repetitive and eclectic: through a close examination of its card catalogue, it is noticeable that the collector classified his objects according to their medium, and then through their chronology and country of production. In other words, he was not primarily interested in famous artists, but rather in iconography and its variants. Therefore, there are great variations in price between the artworks he purchased. Among the most expensive items in his collection were four paintings by Jan van Kessel that Hyde bought in Frankfurt in 1928 for 15,000 marks;9 eighteenth-century Vincennes porcelains bought through the Parisian ceramic dealer, Galerie Vandermeersch (founded in 1880) in 1925 for 70,000 francs; or the tapestry representing America, after the design by Lodewijk van Schoor (Brussels, 1675) for which Hyde paid 75,000 francs. Interestingly, he acquired older pieces at a much lower price: a capital with four heads from the thirteenth century cost 25,000 francs, while he paid 450 francs for a small Hellenistic bronze head, and 3,000 Italian lire for a Roman marble bust representing Africa. He was also interested in acquiring copies and casts of ancient pieces or coins to complete his collection. Through his travels, Hyde began to shape his connoisseurship and his taste. He travelled extensively around Europe and defined his trips as ‘voyages d’étude’, as they were planned months in advance, with meticulously prepared itineraries. To undertake the encyclopaedic project of exclusively collecting allegories of the four continents, Hyde cultivated a solid network of people who helped him everywhere he went. He sought the advice of eminent art historians, librarians and curators in public institutions, and kept systematic contacts with antique dealers and with European auction houses to look for material of interest. In each country he visited, Hyde undertook walks from one antique dealer to another sometimes accompanied by a friend, but more often by an expert, an advisor or an agent. Often, he asked for more than one opinion before purchasing.

 Dealing with Allegories of the Four Parts of the World 297 Within this network, the relationship between Hyde and Borenius10 highlights the agent’s role as an intermediary figure in the art market, acting for various collectors, including the Earl of Harewood. A Finnish art historian, expert on Italian Renaissance art, Borenius had been established in London since 1909 and succeeded Roger Fry in 1914 as a lecturer at the University College of London. In 1924, he became an advisor at Sotheby’s, specializing in paintings, drawings and prints, but he also worked with Joseph Duveen at the same time.11 In 1925 he participated in founding the scholarly journal Apollo, where Hyde would later publish two articles on the allegories of the four continents. In his journal, Hyde recalled a meeting that he had with Borenius and his interaction with the scholar: Borenius lunched to-day with me. He is most clever and seems to know everyone. He gave me much information as to the private collections I want to see [. . .]. The other day, as I was at Sotheby’s looking at a sale, I saw Borenius, who is always there, and asked him his condition for buying for me. He said he usually asked 5% on the price. I said what difference do you make between your buying with 5% commission and Sotheby doing the same for nothing, where is my advantage? He said, the difference is the same as between the brain and a book.12

Borenius appears frequently in Hyde’s archival documents between the years 1927 and 1934 as he bought or sent photographs of artworks to Hyde for approval.13 In 1927 he sold Hyde the drawing by Bernard Picart, Mexican Sacrifice to the God of Hunting.14 Borenius also acted directly as the seller and proposed all sorts of objects to Hyde: paintings, sculptures, porcelains and decorative arts.15 For example, he sold Hyde a Triumph of George II, an eighteenth-century oil painting, with a personification of Britannia and of America for £65 and took £3.5s as commission. Even though the painting was not an expensive purchase, this transaction demonstrates that Hyde’s interest in his theme was greater than for the authorship of the works and that Borenius was buying for him and taking 5 per cent of the price of the artwork as commission. Connoisseurship, expertise and attribution were all part of the discussion between the agent and the collector. Hyde bought four pastels by Rosalba Carriera representing Europe, Asia, Africa and America on 17 December 1926, at Christie’s in London (Plate 24). When he bought them, these pastels were only attributed to the school of Rosalba Carriera. Relying on the expertise of Max Jacob Friedländer,16 who believed they were by Rosalba herself, he bought the four works for £168.16s.9d. Furthermore, he then compared his own series to the one preserved in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden through his own system of cross-references in his photographic archive. In 1928, he recorded in his papers that Borenius proposed another four continents series by Carriera, from the collection of the marquis Talleyrand-Périgord in Rome. Hyde kept the photographs, but did not buy the set, probably because it only had two – Asia and America – of the four. As there is no mention of Borenius in connection to the first purchase, it would thus seem that Borenius started working for Hyde only after December 1926. This suggests that either Borenius was not aware that Hyde had the

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complete Carriera set or that he was informing him about what was available on the market, possibly for comparative purposes. If Hyde spent much time in England every year, he also went very often to Italy, especially to Rome, where he had excellent introductions into the Italian art market through his many friends. Again, he surrounded himself with personalities from diverse facets of the art world, scholars or dealers or both.17 In the second half of the 1920s, Hyde was especially drawn to Rome for the antiquities market, as he was researching allegories of Africa in ancient art. His long-term friendship with the British archaeologist Eugénie Sellers Strong, Assistant Director at the British School at Rome (1909–25) and specialist in Roman antiquities, was indicative of the types of relationships Hyde formed18 (Figure 20.2). Well placed in the Roman intellectual milieu, as well as with the market, she often provided unpaid advice to collectors.19 She was well acquainted with British private collectors of ancient art and curated an exhibition on Greek art in British private collections.20 She had authored the catalogue of the British industrialist and politician Sir Alfred Mond (1868–1921), 1st Baron Melchett’s collections of ancient Greek objects. Despite Mrs. Strong’s profile as a museum archaeologist,21 she often advised Hyde on his purchases and in Rome often

Figure 20.2  Eugénie Sellers Strong, unknown photographer. Courtesy British School at Rome.

 Dealing with Allegories of the Four Parts of the World 299 acted as intermediary between collectors and dealers.22 Her connoisseurship and her networking abilities were often requested by both groups, which she supplied ‘although she was ambivalent about the growing trade in classical art’.23 Strong often collaborated with the classical archaeologist Ludwig Pollak, director of the Museo di Scultura Antica Giovanni Barracco.24 Pollak’s fame is due to his wellknown recovery of the right arm of the ancient statue of the Laocoön.25 Born in Prague, he became a key figure in the Roman art market, living in Rome for almost fifty years, from 1893 to 1943, when he was deported to Auschwitz with his entire family.26 Unlike Strong, Pollak was also a collector and an art dealer himself; his own collection could be seen in the Palazzo Albertoni, Piazza dei Santi Apostoli, which he often showed to collectors and from which he sold to them. From what remains of their correspondence, it can be seen that Strong and Pollak often exchanged favours with regard to collectors and the art market. Thus in 1928, Pollak asked her to introduce him to collectors she knew in England because he wanted to sell artworks from his collection,27 while in the following year, she seems to have acted as an intermediary figure between Pollak and Sir Alfred Mond. As the letter to Mond’s secretary indicates, she was able to convince him to buy a stele for the price asked by Pollak: Dear Mr. Davies, I had a visit from Pollak on Sunday morning. He was discussing a number of matters and at the end spoke of the stele. I did my best for Lord Melchett, saying that if Lord M. after all made up his mind to pay £ 1850, which of course was still doubtful, then in my opinion this considerable sum should cover all costs of carriage and duty from Pollak’s house to Lord’s Melchett’s. At this Pollak got quite excited and said it was out of the question. He admitted that the price was high, but there it is: you cannot get an antique which is not only an original but also has an absolutely clear pedigree, without paying for it. [. . .] he gave me a hint that other people were after the marble. Of course, I do not know if this is so, but the visitor’s season is upon us, when rich Americans and others come to Rome for Easter, and doubtless the stele will be seen by others and perhaps coveted by them for their collections. Pray do not think that I am pressing Lord Melchett to buy. In fact, though I often advise friends about this, that or the other, I practically make it a rule to have nothing to do with the financial part of any transaction. And this is done out of pure friendship, as I know you will believe.28

Mrs. Strong began her correspondence with James H. Hyde just after the First World War, in which they generally discussed their friends, lectures they attended, or meeting in Paris or in Rome. They provided each other with introductions to people they wanted to meet, especially in museums, or in academia and in 1925, Hyde wrote: On Sunday Mrs. Strong, a very old friend of mine, came and lunched with me; she told me the most interesting things about Rome and my visiting the museums for

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the representations of the three parts of the world in Greek and Roman art, about antiquarians and book-shops. She has been for twenty years the soul of the British school of Rome and is considered by everyone who knows her a most cultivated and charming woman [. . .].29

It is in 1921, however, that we first see any mention of Hyde’s research and her advice regarding the art market: [. . .] after consultation with Dr. Ashby,30 who knows better than anyone the dealers, booksellers and experts in this place, we think that for your purpose you cannot do better than commission Olschki (Lungarno Acciaioli, 4 in Florence and via Fontanella Borghese, 21 in Rome) to get you the books you require and keep an eye on sales. He is expensive as you know but after all he can only charge you a commission of 10 %, which is the usual rate of booksellers. [. . .] For art sales there are three men who are all good and trustworthy and would I think do well what you want; they are 1) Jandolo via Margutta 31 and also via Flaminia 2) Simonetti 11 Via Vittorio Colonna and Sangiorgi Palazzo Borghese. I can mention to Innocenti who used to be so good but is rather fallen off of late, his address is via del Babuino. I do hope this information may be of interest.31

Art dealers who wished to approach Hyde with artworks for sale asked Mrs. Strong to be the intermediary, as can be seen through this request from the art dealer, Baron Mac Arrow from Munich, in 1928: Speaking of the porcelains of the house of Hesse on the Rhine, of which the sale has not yet started, you mentioned the name of James Hazen Hyde (Paris XVI, 18 rue Adolphe Yvon) as a possible buyer. I obtained some information about him and it is my understanding that it is impossible to approach him without a recommendation letter. Would you be able to write a few words on my behalf? [. . .] Mr. Hyde is well-known to be a ‘difficult’ man, and I cannot risk travelling to Paris without knowing if he will receive me.32

From 1921 on, there were regular exchanges between Mrs. Strong and James Hyde regarding his four continents collection, especially during the years 1925–8, which saw Hyde in search of ancient allegories of Africa and Asia.33 In those years, Mrs. Strong was ‘looking out for the African part of the world’ for him, as well as providing him with introductions.34 Mlle Fontaine and I met at the cabinet des medailles this morning and almost at once we came up with three busts of Africa (in the reserves). It is a marvellous collection. I would not be surprised if we found a good deal there. She has also found there the name of a new collector or rather dealer in medals, so time was not lost.35

Eugénie introduced Hyde to museum figures in Rome such as Bartolomeo Nogara, director of the Vatican Museum, who also contributed to Hyde’s quest for the ancient

 Dealing with Allegories of the Four Parts of the World 301 allegory of Africa. In fact, before he went to look at antique dealers, Hyde first visited the Vatican Museum, accompanied by Nogara. In the afternoon, I met the General Director of the Vatican Museum, B. Nogara, who was waiting for me in the courtyard with all the keys of Saint Peter in hand. He was most cordial and took me all over the place, which was a great pleasure to see without any visitors, perfectly empty and quiet. In the Roman sculptures, I found two most interesting objects for my subject, the bust of a woman with an elephant headdress and a Roman autel [altar] of the II century, with a very complete allegory of Africa.36

Through Mrs. Strong, Hyde met Pollak, who initially asked Hyde to visit his apartment in Palazzo Albertoni to see what he had, then took him to tour antique dealers in the city, seeking an allegory of Africa, as similar as possible to the one he had seen in the Vatican Museum. Pollak’s diary records his meeting with Hyde on 26 March 1925, when he showed Hyde an allegory of Africa.37 Hyde returned with Strong the next day, who then not only confirmed Pollak’s expertise but also admitted it was being sold at a good price (Figure 20.3).

Figure 20.3 Allegory of Africa, first century CE, Roman marble, James H. Hyde Photograph. Photographic archive, Fonds Hyde, courtesy Bibliothèque du Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris.

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Mrs. Strong accompanied me in the afternoon to see some antiquaries she knew specially, and then she recommended me to buy the Africa, which Pollak showed me. I made the purchase for three thousand lire, which she said was not too expensive as it is an old piece dating of the first century.38

In his photographic archive, Hyde compared this head of Africa with a similar one, then owned by Mrs. Ashley, at Broadlands, Romsey in Hampshire (now home of the Earl and Countess Mountbatten) that was acquired in Italy, by Henry Temple, second Viscount Palmerston (1739–1802), in 1764 for £17.39 In 1928, still looking for representations of Africa in ancient art, Hyde found another piece to buy, for which he again relied on Eugénie Sellers Strong’s connoisseurship. On 25 August of that year, Hyde wrote to her: I have received the bas-relief from Franck, but I had a great deal of trouble with this man. However it is here now, and very handsome, and I am very much obliged to you.40

Additional information about the piece can be found in Hyde’s card catalogue. Considered a rare piece representing ‘Africa Capta’, we also learn that he displayed it in his garden. In the entry, Hyde provided a detailed explanation of the process of his acquisition: Ancient bas-relief, Paros marble, 1st century BC/CE belonged probably to a frieze or to a triumphal arch. Woman, draped à l’antique, coiffed with an elephant trunk, she rests her head on her fist; she represents the Africa capta. A Roman emperor stands before her: probably Marcus Antonius or Augustus, holding a spear and shows her the aplustre (emblem of naval victory). Seen by Mrs. Strong, who considers it an excellent piece. Salomon Reinach also made an expertise. Purchased for 6000 lire plus fees of 3216,80 lire and taxes: 2020 lire. Seller: Franck, Rome, August 1928. This Representation of Africa is very rare and has never been seen before by archeologists. The information comes from [Ludwig] Curtius, Director of the German School of Archaeology in Rome.41

Unfortunately, neither piece representing Africa formed part of the collection bequeathed by Hyde to New York museums. However, thanks to his meticulous records, the photographs are still preserved in his archive. Only part of Hyde’s collection arrived in New York when he repatriated it during the Second World War. In 1941, he left France precipitately without his collection, then the Nazis occupied his mansion in Versailles42 and it is likely that some of the artworks then disappeared. Through the examples of Borenius, Strong and Pollak we can start to identify the complex role played by intermediary figures in the art market. Hyde certainly had many experts

 Dealing with Allegories of the Four Parts of the World 303 who worked for him, paid or unpaid, and with different levels of competence, who participated in finding and acquiring works for his collection.

Notes 1 For James H. Hyde’s years in Gilded Age New York, see Patricia Beard, After the Ball: Gilded Age Secrets, Boardroom Betrayals and the Party That Ignited the Great Wall Street Scandal of 1905 (New York: Harper Collins, 2003). On James H. Hyde’s profile as a collector and his life in Paris, see Louise Arizzoli, ‘James Hazen Hyde and the Allegory of the Four Continents. A Research Collection for an Amateur Art Historian’ (PhD diss., Indiana University, 2013). 2 The collection is now divided between the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Historical Society, the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, and the Brooklyn Museum in New York City. The 10,000 volumes composing Hyde’s library were donated to the city library of Versailles and to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, a few months before Hyde decided to return to the United States during the Second World War. 3 He befriended academics, military figures, politicians, other collectors, art historians, museum directors, to cite just a few famous names among his Parisian milieu: Emile Mâle, Henri Focillon, Louis Réau, Léonce Bénédite, director of the Musée du Luxembourg and then of the Musée Rodin, Salomon Reinach, archaeologist, and Pierre de Nolhac, curator at the Château de Versailles. 4 For biographical details about James H. Hyde’s family, R. Carlisle Buley, The Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States 1859–1864 (New York: Meredith Publishing Company, 1967), vol. 1, 181–204, 511–699. 5 See: Beard, After the Ball. 6 James Hazen Hyde had loved France, its language and its culture since his college years at Harvard (1894–8). He went there several months a year and already owned his hôtel particulier in rue Adolphe Yvon, near the Bois de Boulogne. 7 His first academic interest was in the historical relationships between France and the United States. He wrote articles on the subject and gave academic lectures across French universities, see, for example: James H. Hyde, ‘Les Relations Historiques Franco-Américaines (1776–1912)’, in ed. Emile Boutroux, Les Etats-Unis et la France: Leurs Rapports Historiques Artistiques et Sociaux (Paris: Librairie Félix Alcan, 1914), 25–51. 8 Due to the tumultuous events related to Hyde’s repatriation of his collection and papers during the Second World War, this card catalogue seemed to have disappeared, but it re-emerged after the reorganization of Hyde’s papers at the Bibliothèque des Arts Décoratifs, where it is still preserved in its original boxes. 9 Hyde’s set is closely related to the one produced in 1664–6 by Jan van Kessel and preserved since 1799 in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. The complete set comprises a main panel framed by sixteen smaller paintings with views and animals distinctive of the different regions. An incomplete series with only the smaller paintings is preserved in the Museo del Prado, while there is one panel with the Allegory of Europe, in a private collection in New England. This last one was sold in Manhattan and is published in James A. Welu, The Collector’s Cabinet: Flemish Paintings from New England Private Collections (Cambridge, MA: University of Massachusetts Press,

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1983), 83. It may be the one owned by Hyde that was sold with part of his collection by his heirs after 1959. 10 On Borenius, see bibliography for this section. 11 Colin Simpson, Artful Partners (London: Macmillan, 1986), 240–3. 12 Journal, New York Historical Society, James Hazen Hyde Papers (henceforth JHP), 6 June 1926. 13 There are many artworks in different media that Borenius purchased for Hyde, the earliest references that can be associated with Borenius begin in June 1927. 14 Bibliothèque des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, Fonds Hyde, Card catalogue. This is a preliminary drawing for Plate 19 of the first volume of ‘Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde’, dated 1722, published by Bernard Picart and Bruzen de la Martinière in Amsterdam in 1723. Hyde also bought the print sold together with the drawing at auction at Sotheby’s in 1927. He indicated Borenius as intermediary at the sale. The drawing is now preserved in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (accession number 1974.206). See Hugh Honour, The European Vision of America (Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1977). 15 For other examples, such as Borenius selling artworks to Agnew, see Barbara Pezzini and Michael G. Brennan, ‘Provenance as a history of change: from Caliari in Scotland to Tintoretto in America. The commercial and connoisseurial trajectories of a Venetian portrait’, Journal of the History of Collections (2017): 77–89. 16 Hyde occasionally relied on Friedländer’s expertise in the 1920s, although there is no evidence of the art historian serving as his agent. 17 Pezzini and Brennan, ‘Provenance as a History of Change’, 6 and Ivan Gaskell, ‘Tradesmen as Scholars: Interdependencies in the Study and Exchange of Art’, in ed. Elizabeth Mansfield, Art History and its Institutions. Foundation of a Discipline (London: Routledge, 2002), 146–62. 18 For a full portrait of Mrs. Strong see the biography by Stephen Dyson, Eugénie Sellers Strong. Portrait of an Archaeologist (London: Duckworth, 2004). 19 Ibid., 195; Eugénie Sellers Strong, Roman Sculpture from Augustus to Constantine (London: Duckworth and Company, 1907). 20 Eugénie Sellers Strong, Catalogue of an Exhibition of Ancient Greek Art Held at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1903 (London, 1904). 21 Dyson, Eugénie Sellers Strong, 93. 22 For Eugénie Sellers Strong’s friendship with Sir Alfred Mond see ibid., 105. Their bond was also associated with another close friend of Eugénie, Henrietta Hertz, a key figure of the Roman artistic milieu of this time. 23 Ibid., 169. 24 Orietta Rossini, ‘Ludwig Pollak e il Museo Barracco’, in Museo Barracco Storia della Collezione ed. Maresita Nota Santi, Orietta Rossini and Elena Cagiano de Azevedo (Rome: Istituto Poligrapfico e Zecca dello Stato 2000), 73–98. 25 Ludwig Pollak, Der Rechte Arm des Laokoon (Rome, 1905). 26 Pollak gave a very useful and detailed account of Rome and the art market between 1893 and 1943 in Ludwig Pollak, Römische Memoiren: Künstler, Kunstliebhaber und Gelehrte 1893–1943, ed. Margarete Merkel Guldan (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 1994). See also Margarete Merkel Guldan, Die Tagebücher von Ludwig Pollak: Kennerschaft und Kunsthandel in Rom 1893–1943 (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1988). For the Roman art market in those years see

 Dealing with Allegories of the Four Parts of the World 305 also: Sabrina Spinazzè, ‘Artisti-antiquari a Roma tra la fine dell’Ottocento e l’inizio del Novecento: lo studio e la galleria di Attilio Simonetti’, Studiolo (2010): 103–22. 27 British School at Rome, hereafter BSR, Eugénie Sellers Strong Papers, Box Gertrude Robinson A, Ludwig Pollak to Eugénie Strong, 26 October 1928. 28 Ibid., Eugénie Strong to Mr. Davis, 27 February 1929. 29 JHP, Journal, 24 March 1925 30 Director of the British School at Rome from 1906 to 1925. 31 During the 1920s, Hyde followed her advice since he regularly had contacts with all the art and book dealers she had mentioned in this letter. JHP, Strong, 7 October 1921. 32 BSR, Eugénie Sellers Strong Papers, Box Gertrude Robinson A/Baron Mac Arrow to Eugénie Sellers Strong, November 1928: ‘En parlant des porcelaines de Hesse du Rhin et dont la vente n’est pas encore entamée, vous avez nommé la personne de James Hazen Hyde (Paris XVI, 18 rue Adolphe Yvon) comme un acheteur présomptif, je me suis informé sur sa personne et j’ai cru comprendre qu’il est impossible de s’approcher de lui sans un lettre de recommandation [. . .] je me permets de vous demander, s’il vous serait possible de m’accorder l’assistance par quelques mots adressés à M. Hyde . . . M. Hyde est connu comme un homme “assez difficile” et je ne pourrai pas risquer de tenter un voyage pour Paris sans savoir d’avance que je serai reçu.’ 33 JHP, Strong, 30 April 1925. 34 Mrs. Strong wrote to Hyde while on her way to Munich where she promised to look for artworks of interest for him. She also mentioned her search for Africa in another undated letter, in which she told Hyde she had found one in a private collection in Parma, Italy, that she would like him to see. JHP, Strong, 26 September 1928. 35 JHP, Strong, 21 September 1928. 36 JHP, Journal, 24 March 1925. 37 Museo Barracco, Biblioteca Pollak, Rome. Ludwig Pollak, Tagebücher, 1925, vol. XX, 45. 38 JHP, Journal, 27 March 1925. 39 Adolf Michaelis, Ancient marbles of Great Britain (Cambridge University Press, 1882), 222, n.19. 40 JHP, Strong, 25 August 1928. 41 Bibliothèque des Arts Décoratifs, Fonds Hyde, Card Catalogue. The original text reads: ‘Jardin: Bas-relief antique, marbre de Paros, 1er siècle avant J.C. ayant fait partie d’une frise ou peut-être d’un arc de triomphe. Femme assise en robe drapée à l’antique, coiffée de la dépouille d’éléphant, la tête sur le poing et représentant l’Africa capta (Afrique captive). Debout devant elle, un imperator, ou un empereur romain, probablement Antoine ou Auguste, tenant une haste à la façon d’un empereur, lui montre l’aplustre, emblème de la victoire navale. Vu par Mrs. Strong et considéré excellent morceau. Egalement apprécié par Mr. Salomon Reinach. Achat : Lires 6000. – plus les frais: 3216 lires 80 et 2020 frs de taxe. Vendeur : Franck, Rome, Août 1928. Cette représentation de l’Afrique est tout à fait nouvelle et n’a pas été rencontrée jusqu’ici par les archéologues. Renseignement fourni par M. Curtius, Directeur de l’Ecole Allemande d’archéologie à Rome.’ 42 Beside his hôtel particulier in Paris, Hyde owned a mansion in the outskirts of the capital that he purchased in 1918 and where he displayed most of his collection.

21

Laying the foundation Harold Woodbury Parsons and the making of an American museum MacKenzie Mallon

Although agents have contributed to the buying and selling of art since the beginning of the art market itself, as evidenced in this book, those who worked in the United States and Europe during the 1920s and 1930s were active in exceptionally challenging times. These agents navigated a roller coaster of economic conditions during the interwar years, from the market boom and prosperity of the 1920s, through the October 1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression that followed. An agent’s advice during this time could make or break a collection and the fortunes of the collector. One influential agent during this period was Harold Woodbury Parsons (1882–1967) (Figure 21.1), an independently wealthy connoisseur who served as an agent for more than a dozen American museums and private collectors over the course of a forty-year career, most prominently for the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City.1 Parsons’s appointment as European agent to the Nelson-Atkins in March 1930 coincided with the beginning of the Great Depression, forcing him to work within a weakened economy for the first time, and he struggled to find his footing in a market of dealers and collectors who had previously known only prosperity. The depressed market conditions affected his purchasing ability, as well as his relationship with the trustees he served, whose collecting strategy did not always coincide with Parsons’s own vision. His ability to adapt to this changing market shaped Parsons’s methods for the rest of his career, influenced the development of the Nelson-Atkins during the years in which its collection was formed and is characteristic of the unique role played by agents in the art market during the Great Depression and the economic recovery that followed.2 Born near Boston in 1882, Parsons grew up in the Commonwealth Avenue home of his maternal grandfather, John Page Woodbury (1827–1910), a wealthy real estate broker and collector of books and prints. When Parsons, in his early twenties, expressed an interest in going to Europe to study art, Woodbury sought the advice of family friend Sam Warren (1852–1910), President of the trustees of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Warren in turn connected Parsons to his brother, Edward Perry Warren (1860–1928),

 Laying the Foundation 307

Figure 21.1  Harold Woodbury Parsons, unknown photographer. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Archives, RG 70, Ephemera Collection, Series II, box 11.

called Ned, an antiquities collector and agent for the Boston Museum, who founded a community for scholars focused on the arts of antiquity at his southern England estate. Ned Warren recommended that Parsons make the European tour and advised him on where to go and what to study. For several years, Parsons travelled throughout Europe, especially in Germany, Italy and England. In his own words, he, ‘. . . became acquainted personally with the leading authorities on all branches of art, studied with one of them, and familiarized myself with the sources of supply of art works and with dealers and their shops and stocks’.3 During his first few years in Europe, Parsons occasionally made purchases on Ned Warren’s behalf, as one of several such connoisseurs Warren helped support in exchange for their help in building his private collection. Access to Warren’s network of collectors and dealers was perhaps the most influential aspect of Parsons’s affiliation with Warren and formed the basis for Parsons’s own collecting network. One of his most enduring connections was with the Italian Renaissance scholar Bernard Berenson (1865–1959), Warren’s long-standing friend. In exchange for Berenson’s advice on attributions, Parsons proposed objects for Berenson’s private collection or for Berenson to offer to his own clients. Parsons considered Berenson to be his greatest mentor and their association would last forty-seven years.

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Through his collaboration with Warren, Parsons also made connections with the directors and curators of several American museums. As he built his reputation as a respected agent, he stepped away from Warren’s sphere of influence and began to work on his own, recommending objects to and acquiring objects for several American museums and private collectors in the 1910s and 1920s, including the Cleveland Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design and Robert Lehman (1891–1969). His longest affiliation was with Cleveland, for which he collected for over fifty years beginning in 1914.4 Meanwhile, the trustees of the future Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art were considering how to fulfil their mission to create a great art museum from scratch in the American Midwest. Although their funds were plentiful, the trustees had limited knowledge of art, so they asked their Midwestern museum neighbours for advice. Cleveland Museum of Art Director Frederic Allen Whiting (1873–1959) recommended they hire Parsons as an art advisor. Robert B. Harshe (1879–1938), Director of the Art Institute of Chicago, Edward W. Forbes (1873–1969), Director of Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum and several other prominent members of the museum community with whom Parsons had worked in the past added their own endorsements over the next few months. Based on these testimonials, the Nelson-Atkins trustees agreed to hire Parsons as their advisor and agent. They reached a joint agreement with Cleveland in March 1930, by which Parsons would work for both museums simultaneously, but was also free to continue to work with private clients and offer them ‘such objects as neither Cleveland nor Kansas City may care to consider’.5 Each museum paid him $5,000 annually and his travel expenses in Europe, where he spent several months each year sailing from port to port on his private yacht, Saharet, scouting for acquisitions and entertaining collectors, dealers and museum colleagues onboard. Although he had received little formal art training, Parsons was an energetic and enigmatic man who possessed an agent’s essential personal connections and a connoisseur’s eye; a combination of personality and expertise that was advantageous to navigating the art market. Official notice of Parsons’s appointment to the Nelson-Atkins appeared in The Kansas City Star on 17 April 1930, along with an announcement of the purchase of the first ten paintings for the collection.6 This original group, acquired by the trustees before Parsons’s arrival, came from Kansas City dealers Yunt Art Galleries and Findlay Galleries and included mostly eighteenth-century English portraits. Only four of the ten remain in the Nelson-Atkins collection today. Although Parsons did not disparage the trustees’ first selections, and in fact described them as ‘a really fine group’, he had different ideas on what they should be collecting.7 He felt they should acquire the finest examples of works by celebrated masters and consider price only secondarily. He recommended paintings by artists such as Rembrandt, Titian, Van Dyck and Gainsborough, in addition to pieces from the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Assyria, Greece and Rome. The trustees responded positively in their correspondence but were reluctant to place their full trust in his suggestions. Parsons was moving too quickly for their comfort; they were still unsure about him and the direction the collection should take. During the first few months after Parsons’s appointment, they repeatedly

 Laying the Foundation 309 rejected his proposals as too expensive or portraying an undesirable subject. Despite the recommendations they received regarding Parsons’s ability, they also continued to seek advice from other scholars. Their lack of trust offended Parsons and delayed the acquisition process. As a result, the trustees lost the opportunity to acquire several objects because they took too long to approve the purchase. Harshe, to whom they sent a list of objects Parsons had recommended, urged the trustees to place their confidence in Parsons’s eye and hasten their decisions. ‘[Parsons] has recommended a group of works which would grace any Museum in the World. Your Board must realize, however, that you must devise some mechanism for the rapid consummation of purchases . . . really great works of art are snapped up fast as they come on the market and it is this competition that must be met by you.’8 Parsons grew increasingly frustrated with what he saw as the trustees’ uncultured taste, reluctance to spend money and inability to make a decision. However, the trustees had reason to be cautious. Parsons’s first recommendations came in the early months of 1930, just weeks after the October 1929 stock market crash. As successful businessmen, J. C. Nichols (1880–1950) and his fellow trustees understood that although the prices of high-end commodities did not dramatically decline immediately following the crash, these prices would most likely drop significantly in the future if Parsons could just be patient. Nichols, one of the most successful city developers in the United States, especially recognized the imminent downturn and its potential to spread abroad. He tried to describe the state of the economy and outline a purchasing strategy in a letter to Parsons, who was in Europe during the summer of 1930. You are so far removed from the United States at this time you may not realize the financial panic which has been growing . . . we feel conditions may grow a great deal worse . . . a large number of these pictures may be bought at considerably less a little later on . . . have no hesitancy to offering a lower figure than the dealer has quoted. . . . I know of many instances where real estate can be bought at fifty cents on the dollar over six months ago. . . . I can hardly believe that if all other commodities can be so affected that the art dealers can realize values at near the former figures.9

Parsons, however, was not a patient man. He had spent twenty years collecting for wealthy clients in the booming art market of the 1910s and 1920s. As he began his work for the Nelson-Atkins, he expected to continue in the same vein, advocating that the trustees spare no expense for great works, despite the threat of Depression on the horizon. He wrote to them arguing that the currently high prices would remain so and further delay in making purchases would only lead to more missed opportunities. As they argued back and forth, Parsons’s lack of business acumen increasingly frustrated the trustees. Nichols wrote, . . . while we have great confidence in Parsons’ ability and integrity, he has been dealing with pretty wealthy clients and we must be careful to keep him in the frame

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of mind that will cause him to practice great economy in our buying and take plenty of time to get the prices down to the best figure. Many museum directors seem to have the attitude that in buying objects of art they cannot negotiate very much on the price. . . . We wrote Parsons last week and tried to drill into him that as a business proposition we want to be quite sure we are getting our money’s worth.10

As outsiders to the art market, the trustees were less inclined to accept the quid pro quo. This became apparent when Nichols went to New York with Parsons in January 1931 on what would be a landmark trip for the development of the Nelson-Atkins collection. Playing an active role in the purchasing brought out the shrewd negotiator in Nichols. He described the experience to fellow trustee Arthur M. Hyde, I had a great time in negotiating lower prices . . . Mr. Wildenstein you will remember priced the David at $27,000. I first got him to $25,000; then to $23,500, which Parsons thought we should immediately accept, but I finally got it at $22,000. Mr. Wildenstein protested . . . but I noticed he was very happy afterwards and I am sure we did not offend them. . . . Mr. Parsons was afraid I was creating antagonism among the art dealers.11

In two days, Nichols arranged for several dealers to make $100,000 worth of reductions from the prices they had quoted Parsons, confirming Nichols’s suspicions: even though asking prices were still high, there were good deals to find. ‘Objects of art’, he wrote, ‘are not necessarily little gods in pedestals and . . . some commercialism enters into the lives of their owners.’12 Parsons, however, was concerned this hard-nosed business negotiation would ruin his relationships with dealers. He was a proud man who placed great importance on his reputation, and now that the depressed economy required stronger tactics, he resisted. The most expensive purchase Parsons and Nichols made on this trip was the dual acquisition of Rembrandt’s Portrait of a Young Man (Figure 21.2) and Meindert Hobbema’s Road in the Woods from Joseph Duveen (1869–1939). Paintings by Rembrandt and Hobbema had recently brought extraordinary prices, upwards of $245,000 and $160,000 respectively, but Parsons insisted works by these artists were essential to the Nelson-Atkins collection and described Duveen’s Rembrandt as, ‘the greatest Rembrandt which has been available for years . . . an outstanding example of the master’s mature style’.13 The dealer quoted Parsons a ‘special museum price’ of $300,000 for the Rembrandt and refused to consider counter-offers. Considering his recent success, however, Nichols decided to negotiate with Duveen anyway. According to Nichols’s account, after about an hour of negotiations Duveen offered to sell him both the Rembrandt and a Hobbema together for $425,000. When Nichols expressed disappointment at this offer, Duveen offered a Carpeaux marble as a gift to the new museum. Nichols gratefully accepted and described to Hyde what happened next. He immediately assumed that with that gift . . . we would fall all over ourselves to pay $425,000 . . . and expressed great surprise when I still was not satisfied and

 Laying the Foundation 311 threw himself into all kinds of gestures and ejaculations of astonishment. . . . He certainly is a great actor and anyone would have thought that he would be ruined if he took off another $25,000 and all his reputation of years would be lost.14

Duveen ultimately gave in, took off the additional $25,000 and sold the Nelson-Atkins the Rembrandt and Hobbema together for $400,000, with the gift of the Carpeaux included.15 Parsons was flabbergasted. Despite his twenty years of experience as an art agent, Nichols had taught him a lesson in how to use the market to his advantage. Nichols knew Duveen’s chances for profit were better now rather than later, and he would want to sell before economic pressure started to erode the high-end market. Indeed, Duveen was adept at making a profit; he made almost $280,000 on the sale of the Rembrandt and Hobbema.16 Nichols was right – Duveen was a good actor. Parsons understood the economic lesson, even if he did not always abide by it in the future. He would continue to recommend works of art the trustees considered too expensive, but he did not protest as much when they asked him to renegotiate with a seller.

Figure 21.2  Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, Young Man in a Black Beret, 1666. Oil on canvas, 32 1/8 × 25 3/8 inches (81.6 × 64.5 cm). The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri. Purchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust, 31–75. Photo: Jamison Miller.

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The trustees learned from the experience as well. Although they disparaged Parsons’s lack of economic understanding, they recognized his value as a connoisseur. The public response to the Duveen purchase was very positive. The Art News published a large photograph of the Rembrandt and other press reviews and comments from the museum community praised the painting’s exceptional quality.17 From this point, the trustees sought outside scholarly opinion with much less frequency and placed more trust in Parsons to find the best objects for the collection. Parsons and the trustees purchased steadily throughout the Depression years and the economy continued to benefit them. When he returned to Europe in 1931, Parsons found that, just as Nichols had predicted, prices of high-end commodities like Old Masters were beginning to drop, particularly if one could acquire directly from private hands. For example, the previous fall, Parsons had recommended the acquisition of a painting by Nicolas Poussin, The Triumph of Bacchus (Plate 25), from an English private collection. At the time, the price was $43,740 and the trustees decided it was too expensive. When Parsons found that the painting was still available the following summer, he negotiated the price down to $28,000, a $15,000 savings over the price asked six months previously.18 True to his desire to fill the collection with works by great masters, Parsons also acquired paintings by Titian, El Greco and Gainsborough, and objects of ancient and non-Western art, such as an Etruscan statuette and a Cambodian Buddha, many of which were acquired at prices much lower than they would have been two years earlier.19 By 1939, the Second World War prevented Parsons from returning to Europe, so he spent the war years in the United States, criss-crossing the country visiting collections. Initially, he and the trustees were once again at odds. The trustees claimed they were short of funds and were reluctant to make large purchases in the hope prices might drop again as the war progressed. As he did during the Depression, Parsons once again urged them to continue collecting despite the political and economic uncertainty. When most of the Museum’s staff left to serve the war effort, it seemed the steady growth of the Nelson-Atkins collection might cease. However, Parsons found an ally in Ethlyne Jackson, assistant to Nelson-Atkins Director Paul Gardner. When Gardner joined the army in November 1942, Jackson became acting director. She shared Parsons’s belief that the Museum should make purchases during the war years, just as they had during the Depression, so the two advocates joined forces. Jackson and Parsons persuaded the trustees they should once again perceive economic uncertainty as an opportunity and continue to collect, including fourteen objects from the William Randolph Hearst collection. Since curator of Asian Art Laurence Sickman had also joined the military, Parsons stepped in to assist with acquisitions of Asian art as well. From the liquidation of the dealer Yamanaka, he bought an Indian Head of a Crowned Buddha, and from dealer C. T. Loo he helped acquire a pair of Chinese Chimera Tomb Guardians.20 With the purchase of thousands of objects in a relatively short period, even Nichols knew mistakes were possible. ‘We are going to buy a fake someday for the museum’, he wrote. ‘We know that it is certain to happen, but we are glad that we have a young man like Harold W. Parsons, who is willing to spend his summer cruising along the shores of the Mediterranean, using his expert knowledge in our behalf.’21Although almost

 Laying the Foundation 313 all of the objects Parsons purchased for his clients were valuable additions to their collections, he did make a few missteps. In May 1927, he purchased a Greek Athena from dealer Jacob Hirsch for the Cleveland Museum of Art. A few months later, it was determined to be a forgery created by contemporary Italian artist Alceo Dossena, whom Parsons described as ‘the greatest forger who ever lived’.22 Cleveland returned the sculpture to the dealer and the situation was resolved. Nevertheless, the experience shook Parsons. He assisted with the subsequent investigation and identification of Dossena works around the world and spent the rest of his life studying art forgery. However, Dossena continued to be a thorn in his side throughout his career. In 1950, he bought an Etruscan antefix for the Nelson-Atkins from a dealer in Florence. A few years later, Parsons came across a photo of Dossena’s studio in which the antefix was clearly visible. It remains in the Nelson-Atkins collection today as a valuable tool for studying forgeries.23 In 1953, Parsons retired to Rome. He had played a part in developing the collections of some of the most prominent museums in the United States, but most were now well established and not collecting as actively in the past. He still had some private clients, but he was disillusioned with the increasing difficulty of exporting objects out of Europe due to customs laws, and felt he was not able to acquire objects of the quality he had been able to purchase two decades before. Although he continued to occasionally recommend works of art on a commission basis, for the most part he spent the remainder of his life investigating and exposing forgeries. He died in Rome on 27 May 1967. Parsons was one of the last of a breed: an independently wealthy, dapper, globetrotting art agent who collected for a wide variety of clients and had an extensive network of contacts. Despite his continuing conflict with the Nelson-Atkins trustees, they respected each other’s strengths. The trustees came to rely on Parsons’s broad collecting vision and his ability to seek out exceptional works of art, which contributed to the building of a collection whose quality would outlast changes in artistic taste. Parsons, on the other hand, gained from the trustees a better understanding of the complexities of navigating the art market during economic uncertainty. He continued to apply aspects of this lesson to his dealings through the rest of his career, including in his negotiations for works of art that were otherwise beyond the Nelson-Atkins’s financial reach. Two months before his death, Parsons wrote to Henry Sayles Francis, curator at the Cleveland Museum of Art, and described a compliment he had recently received from a friend: ‘Harold: Those of us who work in museums will always be grateful to you for the many fine works of art you have caused to cross the Atlantic.’ Parsons added, ‘I felt it was my artistic epitaph.’24

Notes 1 The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art has undergone several name changes throughout its history. Its current name is used here in order to avoid confusion. 2 While the development of American collecting during this period is well documented, the contributions of agents such as Parsons to the history of collecting are often

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overlooked as they worked behind the scenes, negotiating on behalf of clients who frequently wished to conduct their transactions quietly, if not anonymously. Parsons is no exception to this cloak of invisibility, exacerbated in part because records of an agent’s collecting activities are less often retained as complete archival resources. According to his own account, Parsons discarded his private papers upon his retirement to Rome in 1953. His records from that date until his death in 1967 are included as a subsection of the Giuseppe (Pico) Cellini Archive, Biblioteca di Area delle Arti, sez. Storia dell’arte, Università Roma Tre, Rome. They deal mostly with Parsons’s work to expose modern forgeries in museum collections. His work on behalf of the NelsonAtkins between 1930 and 1953 is revealed through the correspondence and purchasing records maintained by the archives of the Nelson-Atkins and his other clients. 3 Harold Woodbury Parsons (hereafter HWP) to J.C. Nichols (hereafter JCN), 25 February 1930, box 4, folder 1, William Rockhill Nelson Trust Records (hereafter WRNT), RG80/05: 1926–33, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (hereafter NAMA) Archives, Kansas City. 4 Parsons played a role in the acquisition of dozens of objects for the Cleveland Museum of Art. These works are mostly antiquities and European objects, including a Greek Column Krater (1926.549) and Filippino Lippi, The Holy Family with Saint John the Baptist and Saint Margaret (1932.227). Parsons also acquired a Bartolo di Fredi Cini, Madonna and Child (20.207) for the Rhode Island School of Design and a Bernardo Daddi, The Assumption of the Virgin for Robert Lehman (today in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1975.1.58). 5 HWP to Frederic Allen Whiting, 21 April 1930, box 24, folder 232, Frederic Allen Whiting Records, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives. 6 ‘Buy 10 Paintings: First Purchases for the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art are Announced’, Kansas City Star, 17 April 1930, 1. 7 HWP to Adam Paff, 6 May 1930, box 2, folder 16, Durlacher Brothers Records, Series I: Correspondence, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. 8 WRNT, RG80/05: 1926–33, Robert B. Harshe to the University Trustees, 2 May 1930; box 3, Robert B. Harshe Director Chicago Art Institute 1928-1930. 9 JCN to HWP, 7 August 1930, box 4, folder 2, WRNT, RG80/05: 1926-1933, NAMA Archives. The author acknowledges that although this article discusses Nichols’s financial success as a real estate developer, the covenants for his neighbourhoods were often inequitable and discriminatory toward people of colour. See Sherry Lamb Schirmer, A City Divided: The Racial Landscape of Kansas City, 1900-1960 (Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press, 2002). 10 JCN to Arthur M. Hyde, 17 April 1930, box 2, Hon. Arthur M. Hyde, WRNT, RG80/10: J. C. Nichols 1926–33, NAMA Archives. 11 Ibid., JCN to Hyde, 26 January 1931. 12 Ibid. 13 HWP to Hyde, 12 December 1930, box 4, folder 2, WRNT, RG80/05: 1926–33, NAMA Archives. 14 JCN to Hyde, 26 January 1931, box 2, Hon. Arthur M. Hyde, WRNT, RG80/10: J. C. Nichols 1926–33, NAMA Archives. 15 Rembrandt van Rijn, Young Man in a Black Beret (31–75); Meindert Hobbema, Road in the Woods (31–76); Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Crouching Flora (31–77). 16 For Duveen’s purchase of the Rembrandt, see stock number 29448, stock book 1928, Duveen Brothers Records, Series I.A: Business Records – New York House, Getty

 Laying the Foundation 315 Research Institute, Los Angeles. For the Hobbema, see stock number 28338, stock book 1925. 17 Art News, 11 April 1931, 3. 18 HWP to JCN, 9 September 1930, HWP to Nelson Trust, 27 May 1931, HWP to Nelson Trust, 11 June 1931, box 4, folder 2, WRNT, RG80/05: 1926–33, NAMA Archives. Nicolas Poussin, The Triumph of Bacchus (31–94). 19 Tiziano Vecellio (called Titian), Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle (30–15); Domenikos Theotokopoulos (called El Greco), The Penitent Magdalene (30–5); Thomas Gainsborough, Repose (31–56); Etruscan, Statuette (30–12); Cambodian, Buddha Sheltered by the Serpent King Muchalinda (30–26). 20 Indian, Head of a Crowned Buddha (43–16); Chinese, Pair of Chimera Tomb Guardians (44-26/1, 2). 21 ‘Nelson Gallery Into Search of Orient for Ancient Art’, Kansas City Times, 4 March 1931. 22 HWP to Laurence Sickman, 21 June 1956, Box 1c, HWP 1947–64, Laurence Sickman Papers, MS001, NAMA Archives. 23 Alceo Dossena, Forgery of an Etruscan Antefix (50-25). 24 HWP to Henry Sayles Francis, 14 March 1967, Henry Sayles Francis Papers, Subject/ Correspondence Files: HWP, Archives of American Art, Washington, DC.

22

Convergences Art history, museums and scholar-agent Martin Birnbaum’s transatlantic art for the public Julie Codell

One of the most important, but still understudied, agents involved in early twentiethcentury American collecting of modern French and English art was polymath Martin Birnbaum (1878–1970) (Figure 22.1). A Hungarian immigrant, he was educated at City College of New York, trained as a lawyer at Columbia University and as a violinist at New York’s National Conservatory of Music, photographer, playwright, and travel writer. He spoke French, German, Hungarian and Italian fluently. After touring Europe’s art galleries he turned to art, first managing the American branch of the Berlin Photographic Company (BPC) in New York from 1910 to 1916, where he created modernist exhibitions and published short, lively catalogues, going far beyond his assignment to get permission to photograph artworks.1 He then joined art dealers Scott and Fowles until 1926 as a partner and exhibition curator who assisted patrons, collectors and artists, organized exhibitions and authored catalogues. After 1926 he became an independent art agent, working for wealthy clients whose collections were philanthropically intended for public institutions. Birnbaum eventually gained an international reputation, becoming commissioner in 1934 of the Venice Biennale’s American Pavilion, and in 1936 being invited by the Italian government to organize an international exhibit of nineteenth-century artists’ self-portraits in Venice.2 His work at the BPC and at Scott and Fowles prepared him for his role as art agent in several ways, encouraging his fearless entrepreneurship, sense of mission and choice of clients. At Scott and Fowles Birnbaum sold Old Masters to wealthy collectors and learned to be cautious around other dealers, but he insisted that this rather staid gallery create a high publicity profile with frequent ads in the American Art News and promote modernism to the American public. He exhibited graphic artists and women (Georgia O’Keeffe and Cecelia Beaux) and art from Europe’s corners (Norway, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia) across media, including living artists then little known in America: Paul Klee, Edward Munch, Käthe Kollwitz, Wassily Kandinsky, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Jules Pascin, Oscar Kokoschka, Lyonel Feininger, James Ensor, Augustus John, Aubrey

 Convergences 317

Figure 22.1  Arnold Genthe, portrait photograph of Martin Birnbaum, 1920, negative: nitrate; 5 × 7". C10:C11 Courtesy Library of Congress, Arnold Genthe Collection, LC-G401-T01-3398 01. Beardsley; decorative artists Léon Bakst, Charles Condor, Charles Ricketts; sculptors Elie Nadelman, Paul Manship, Eric Gill; graphic artists Edmund Dulac and Marcus Behmer; and German and East European Cubists (e.g. E. de Kónódy) not yet collected in 1920s America and overshadowed by the popularity of French and Old Master painting in America.3 From the very start of his career, Birnbaum recognized the importance of a wideranging geography to embrace burgeoning Midwest museums hungry for high art. Seeking new markets and a broad public, he sent his exhibitions to Buffalo, Montreal, and throughout the Midwest, accompanied by his historically informed catalogues written for the general public. Birnbaum’s appeal to middle-class consumers challenged art-world elitism and informed his choice of clientele who donated their collections to major museums (NYC, Philadelphia, Boston) and schools (Rhode Island School of Design and Cooper-Hewitt).4 His mission also included support of many immigrant European artists. In Europe he created a network of artists and dealers, a strategy the charming Birnbaum continued all his life, generating a wide circle of international artworld colleagues and prominent writers, artists and wealthy buyers across Europe that served him well when he became an agent.

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Birnbaum’s mission to democratize art emerged before 1926. In 21 October 1916, he wrote to Edward Forbes, Fogg Museum Director, that Scott and Fowles had ‘an important collection of drawings by John Flaxman’, formerly owned by Lord Hope: ‘these works should not all be buried in private collections but some of them ought to find a place in our museums to furnish the general public and the students with an inspiration and a standard’.5 He combined his commitment to sharing exhibitions widely with his desire to bring foreign artists to the United States. Already in 1912, to ‘arrange the finest exhibition of modern German graphic art ever shown in this country’, Birnbaum’s exhibition of contemporary German graphic art at BPC included 300 prints and drawings and introduced Max Liebermann’s work.6 This show travelled to the Art Institute, Chicago; the Albright Knox Gallery, Buffalo; Worcester Art Museum; St. Louis Museum; and the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh. Birnbaum’s daring exhibitions were much praised in the American art press.7 He is still considered one of the foremost innovators in the exhibition of prints in America before 1920.8 It is unclear how Birnbaum developed his connoisseurship, which was profound. His expertise was in nineteenth-century French and British art and modern European and American art. He also learned some tactics, often buying directly from owners, and less often from auction houses and dealers such as Knoedler, Colnaghi, Seligmann, Tooth and Goupil. His vast network of people in Europe was often subterranean, involving other dealers’ employees and owners’ servants and assistants as spies informing him about owners’ whereabouts, techniques he claimed to have borrowed from Joseph Duveen. His clients were well-to-do and generally did not travel to the extent he did to find artworks (e.g. the countryside, eastern Europe, and later Asia and Africa), nor did they seek out private owners. Most of his clients, when on their own, bought from dealers. Birnbaum found bargains and treasures in places his clients would not have explored. By 1926 his reputation for finding unknown promising artists, including women (e.g. Anne Goldwaithe), may have attracted Grenville Winthrop (1864–1943), a wealthy lawyer, whose huge collection of European art was intended almost from the start for Harvard’s Fogg Museum, where it went in 1943. Winthrop met Birnbaum at Scott and Fowles from whom he had purchased art. A withdrawn man, Winthrop travelled little and lived in New York City and in Groton, Massachusetts, while Birnbaum was an extrovert who travelled all over the world, the perfect agent to find works in Europe, and later Africa and Asia as Winthrop’s tastes developed. In his autobiography Birnbaum describes his role and the range of works he helped Winthrop collect: when I retired from active business in 1926, Mr. Winthrop asked me to be a kind of special agent for him, thinking that if I accepted his offer he could overcome the self-imposed obstacles of a sedentary life and share in absentia or vicariously a collector’s adventures. I was primarily responsible for drawings, sculptures, and paintings . . . outstanding examples of pre-Columbian, Chinese, Near Eastern and Renaissance art . . . were also found by me.9

Despite being sedentary, Winthrop was an adventuresome collector, seeking new artists hitherto uncollected, and Birnbaum contributed to this desire with his own interests: ‘He wanted virgin fields to plow, and . . . did not wish to collect in a mere desultory way. . .

 Convergences 319 . I suggested one of my personal enthusiasms – the collection of drawings by the salient figures of the nineteenth century. The field of original drawings had not yet been cultivated in America.’10 Winthrop intended his collection ultimately ‘to sow seeds, primarily at Harvard among the youth of America, to shape the course of our artistic progress’.11 Winthrop’s vision and the role of agent – exemplified by George Lucas (1824–1909), American art agent living in Paris from 1857 to his death – were part of a growing American self-consciousness about America’s perceived cultural lag behind Europe. American collectors, like their British middle-class industrialist-collector cohorts, were philanthropic, giving their collections to museums or establishing museums in their homes, like Isabella Stewart Gardner (1903), Henry Clay Frick (1931), Pierpont Morgan (1924), and Arabella and Henry Huntington (1919).12 As Neil Harris notes, even if ‘egotistic, competitive, grasping, crude’, American collectors ‘merged personal assets with collective goals . . . as cultural philanthropists’.13 Many believed that European culture would civilize America. Robert Gilmor, Jr., of Baltimore, thought that ‘importing it [British art] to the United States was central to American cultural development’.14 Samuel Bancroft, Pre-Raphaelite art collector, argued that English artworks in the United States can ‘really do more good to humanity by coming where they can illumine dark places than by staying in England’.15 Birnbaum’s clients were committed to public institutions: Eliza Radeke (President of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD)); Henry McIlhenny and William Donner, both donors to the Philadelphia Museum; Bertrand Arkell of the Arkell Museum in Canajoharie, NY; Thomas Cochran, who created the Phillips Academy Gallery; Stephen Carlton Clark, founding trustee of MOMA and donor to Yale University’s art museum; and Charles and Anna Sinton Taft, who donated works to the Cincinnati Art Museum. Birnbaum’s relations with them were free-wheeling, since he occasionally bought works on his own and later decided to whom he would offer them, knowing well his clients’ distinct tastes. Some clients worked with Birnbaum on his exhibitions, for example Clark and his brothers loaned works for Birnbaum’s 1913 exhibition of the works of Robert Blum.16 This philanthropy converged with art history, a new subject taught at Harvard by Charles Eliot Norton, a follower of John Ruskin. Winthrop was among Norton’s students, as were Bernard Berenson, Paul Sachs (1878–1965), Associate Director of Fogg and developer of an early museum studies courses, and Edward Forbes, Fogg Director and educator in art history and museum studies. Prominent Boston collector Isabella Stewart Gardner sat in on the classes, as well. Birnbaum adopted his own scholarly approach to art dealing, reading widely in art history, and insisting on the importance of the written word (e.g. labels, catalogues) to expand public art knowledge. While scholarship had become a force in the art market, for example, collaborations of Bode and Knoedler or Berenson and Duveen, Birnbaum was less oriented to commercial interests than to public education. Given his mission, Birnbaum at times expressed concern about his role as an agent. On 29 April 1939, he wrote to Sachs: I have been called in to advise the owner of a very great collection of treasures, . . . . There are superlative items from Rembrandt to Daumier. I am anxious to acquire

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some of them for men like Mr. Winthrop and Mr. McIlhenny, but there is so much that we ought to secure for America, that we must interest others.17

In a letter of 26 May 1939, he was anxious not to appear to be drumming up business: I no longer regard myself as a business man, but I am interested in helping to send good items to American institutions, or to collections which will eventually be a part of some public institute. This endeavor makes my interest in sales etc., much livelier than it otherwise would be . . . when I am successful, – and only then – I earn my commission of 10%. . . . I shall be only too happy to be of any service, particularly if the work will benefit an institution now or eventually.18

As Anne Helmreich notes in her introduction to section three of this book, there are interconnections among the concurrent emergences of the museum, art history and the art agent. Birnbaum was already aware of the opportunities within this convergence of new forces that created a knowledge enterprise that matched his entrepreneurial spirit. Rarely buying at auction, Birnbaum explored the whereabouts of works in private collections owned by artists’ friends and families, enabling him to intervene in a work’s market trajectory before it became public. This meant that he was assured of the provenance because he negotiated with the artists’ families, friends, pupils or the immediate descendants of the first owners.19 Thus, he often purchased works without a clear market value, despite the importance of the artist (e.g. David’s sketchbooks, Ingres’s drawings, works by Flaxman and Prud’hon) and negotiated vigorously for them.20 Winthrop’s and Birnbaum’s combined intentions led to specific searches. Winthrop saw collecting as a matter of filling in genealogies of artistic relationships and cultural lineage, ideals typical of the period’s new art history discipline. For example, he wanted works that covered Ingres’s entire career, becoming a pioneer collector of Ingres and contributing to Americans’ taste for French neoclassicism: we secured a still greater prize – a drawing of the Forestier family, showing the first Madame Ingres before her marriage. . . . It had once belonged to Degas . . . in the memorable Degas sale at which the Metropolitan Museum acquired its famous portraits of Monsieur and Madame LeBlanc by Ingres. The Winthrop collection was . . . adding something to the artistic heritage of America, . . . Royal Cortissoz, . . . reminded us that not so long before it had been impossible for an art student in America to examine an original work by Ingres. Soon that deficiency no longer existed.21

This excerpt has several salient points: Degas’s prior ownership of the work; Birnbaum’s strategic intervention in the work’s provenance and his addition of scholarship into the market; competition with the Metropolitan Museum at one of the few auctions Birnbaum attended (he considered auctions guilty of overpricing); and the pleasure at having a work that marked Winthrop’s collection as the largest collection of Ingres’s

 Convergences 321 work outside France. Ingres was rarely collected in the United States in few purchases by John Johnson, Henry Walters and Henry Clay Frick, usually through Wildenstein of Paris who provided an Ingres’s drawing to the Boston Museum of Fine Art in 1926 and purchased Madame d’Haussonville for Frick in 1927.22 Of the 104 works by Ingres in the Fogg Museum, nineteen drawings and paintings were acquired through Birnbaum. Agnes Mongan points out that Winthrop began collecting Ingres before the artist was well known or collected in the United States; works were varied and representative, ideal for Harvard’s teaching collection.23 For artists, too, Ingres was vitally important. The 1913 Armory Show’s first work was by Ingres and the first book on Ingres in English was a study by Walter Pach in 1939 in which Pach mentions Ingres’s 1859 selfportrait in Winthrop’s collection.24 Winthrop desired ‘artists not particularly well represented in American collections . . . items that showed the influence of one artist on another – as for instance Rowlandson on Géricault and Daumier’, grounded in ‘the keystone of . . . drawings . . . by . . . Ingres and . . . David’.25 David, whose reputation was established in the United States from the 1780s, was rarely collected in the United States. Pach was among the first to introduce David to America, negotiating in 1931 to get The Death of Socrates for the Metropolitan Museum.26 Before 1930 only one David painting had come to the United States: John D. Rockefeller in 1925 bought David’s portrait of Lavoisier and his wife Marie-Anne-Pierrette Paulze.27 These two acquisitions were followed by Birnbaum’s acquisitions of David’s portrait of Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès for Winthrop in 1936 and Pope Pius VII and Cardinal Caprara for McIlhenny in 1936.28 In a letter dated 30 December 1936, Sachs called McIlhenny’s David, bequeathed to the Philadelphia Museum, a ‘corner-stone to his nineteenth-century collection’.29 In good art historical fashion, Birnbaum and Winthrop sought ‘connecting links with the eighteenth century’, choosing Blake, Flaxman and Prud’hon. They believed Prud’hons’s work ‘formed a link between the masters of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. . . . at the public auction and at the subsequent sale of the collection of the Duc de Trevise’ Birnbaum bought the oil portrait of Doctor Dagoumer, the artist’s physician.30 Winthrop collected so many of Prud’hon’s works that ‘Winthrop’s group became worthy of the little room in the Louvre . . . hung with masterpieces by Prud’hon’.31 In their view Chassériau linked the feuding Ingres and Delacroix and they purchased his works too with the help of Chassériau’s nephew, the kind of owner close to the artist from whom Birnbaum successfully bought works.32 Birnbaum shared Winthrop’s and Pach’s evolutionary view of art history and chose works to fill in this linear art history in which style developed from master to pupil. He even bought works by Edwin Landseer and Ford Madox Brown whom Birnbaum and Winthrop disliked but considered historically important, putting history above aesthetics.33 Birnbaum often suggested ‘completing’ collected groups, such as English watercolourists or French art; he purchased a bargain Millais watercolour that ‘fills a gap in the English group.’34 In his commitment to this orderly collecting, in a letter of 9 December 1937, Birnbaum described his assumed curatorial activities, re-arranging works in Winthrop’s home with ‘some important additions (especially famous David drawings) and the Ingres room is entirely changed . . . . There is now a little Whistler

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room’, reflecting their desire to cover an artist’s entire career.35 An advocate for living modernists like John Singer Sargent and Augustus John, with whom he developed friendships, Birnbaum promoted them early on and purchased their works at reasonable prices, as well. How, then, did Birnbaum determine value, since he was buying many artists not widely collected in the United States or works that had not yet been on the market or at auction, and where did he find elusive works such as drawings and sketchbooks? Birnbaum found the Forestier family drawing while working at Scott and Fowles, The Golden Age (1862) from descendants of the widow of Mme. Ingres’s nephew for $57,000, David’s sketchbooks for $66,000 from the descendants of Mlle de Bassano, granddaughter of the second Duc de Bassano, Grand Chamberlain to the Emperor Napoleon III, paintings by Chassériau through the artist’s nephew, William Holman Hunt’s The Miracle of the Sacred Fire, Church of the Holy Sepulchre, 1892–9, from the artist’s son, Jacques-Louis David’s Study for ‘The Oath of the Tennis Court’, c. 1790, from descendants of David’s pupil José de Madrazo y Agudo for FR 25,000, and two paintings by G. F. Watts for £3300 directly from Watts’s widow, Mary.36 His negotiation strategies were to offer cash and to bargain very hard, not only about price. He convinced Mary Watts that Watts’s best works in the Fogg Museum would give him an international reputation. Birnbaum’s diplomacy, enhanced by cash and the attraction of a public institutional home for these works, convinced many to part with precious heirlooms. Thus, his view of the market was as much cultural and canonic as it was economic. When it came to prices, he appears almost cutthroat, but he generally knew the market value of each artist’s work. In a cable on 25 July 1928, he wrote to Winthrop that the price asked for Ingres’s Baigneuse watercolour was $14,000 but that he thought $7000 would do: ‘I am rather adept at this form of bargaining for cash, and feel gratified over some of the results.’37 To Winthrop on 4 July 1928, Birnbaum wrote: The superb Degas . . . I secured for £2500 from Maj. Turner. I learned that he originally asked for £4000 for it. He offered it to me . . . for £3000. . . . I went back and told him he must let me have it for much less if he really wants to win my favour. An hour of diplomacy secured it for £2500 to which I added 10%, instead of 15%, making the cost to you £2750.00. Degas will now be represented in our collection by as fine a pastel as one could desire.38

Birnbaum here calls Winthrop’s collection, ‘our collection’, revealing his sense of ownership and investment in it. But sometimes he paid more than the market value, since American collectors were often willing to pay more for celebrity artists’ works. Regarding Hunt’s Sacred Fire, Winthrop wrote to Birnbaum, on 23 August 1936, agreeing to buy this work for up to £2000/$9940. According to Gerald Reitlinger, in 1937, a preliminary version of the Triumph of the Innocents was sold for £567 ($2800).39 Winthrop bought Sacred Fire for £2625/$13,000 in 1936, partly because he thought Norton would have wanted this work. Clearly market value was driven by desire as well as by money, something Birnbaum understood as he deployed promises of international reputation in an American museum.

 Convergences 323 For Radeke, and now in the RISD collection for students and the public, he purchased works by Géricault, Delacroix, Puvis de Chavannes and Alfred Stevens, among others. His Géricault purchases varied, sometimes lower, sometimes higher than market value.40 Some works were quite esoteric, such as Jean-Antoine Houdon’s Sorrow Consoled by Justice Who Points to Fame (1774) that he bought at a Paris auction in 1929, Houdon’s only work on paper. The range of works for RISD was wide, including Augustus John’s On the Slopes of Arling Jack, from its first owner for £632.10 in 1928.41 Writing to Sachs on 13 December 1931, Birnbaum mentioned his additions to the Fogg: ‘the Manet “Courses”, the Van Gogh head, the Barye “Leopard”, and the new Géricaults (the group I think would be hard to match), the Chassériau and the new items in the Ingres room (I am in favour of items like the “Hands”, in a collection intended for students)’.42 Sachs called the Manet ‘a knockout’, the Van Gogh head ‘the finest drawing by Van Gogh in America – indeed as fine as any of its type in existence’, and praised the Barye, the Géricaults and the new Ingres picture from the Rothschild Collection.43 On 1 December 1936, Birnbaum wrote to Sachs that he acquired for Winthrop ‘an important watercolour drawing by Manet, a complete study of the “Lola de Valence” in the Louvre . . . this addition to the already important group of Manet drawings’.44 Here again is the motive to create a critical mass of an artist’s work to provide an in-depth study. Birnbaum’s connoisseurship and valuations were held in high regard. In a memo of 1930, Birnbaum replies to Sachs’s request for recommendations of leading living American watercolourists: ‘Homer, Sargent and Whistler first . . . – Sargent was the most skilful water colour painter that ever lived. . . . Marin, Demuth, Dodge MacKnight, and Burchfield’; lesser lights were Preston Dickinson, Charles Hopkinson, Hopper, Robert Bloom, Arthur B. Davies, Childe Hassam, among others. Birnbaum praised Manship and Nadelman as leading American sculptors and Despiau as ‘very great’ and ‘Maillol for certain things’.45 A 1930 note by Sachs lists Birnbaum’s sale items of British modernist artists: 2 Eric Gill drawings, $175 and $100. . . . 4 ‘good drawings’ by Augustus John, ‘Serpent’ for $400 and ‘Girl’s Head’ for $350, an architectural drawing by Muirhead Bone $500, and ‘a wonderful Van Gogh drawing for sale for under $5,000. It is No. 943 in the book of De la faille . . . . Birnbaum spoke of a picture by Whistler, the most important by him of which he knows. He says it is a $100,000 picture, and can be had for $67,000’.46

This clearly indicates Sachs’s trust in Birnbaum’s connoisseurship and market assessments. Birnbaum made striking contributions to American art education, museum collections (he himself was a donor to the Metropolitan Museum) and administration, public taste, promotion of alternative modernisms from eastern Europe and in works by graphic artists and women artists, and an integration of art historical values of the period – lineage, influences, chronological artistic relationships, historic over aesthetic value, and the active high-profile promotion of artists, for which his work at the BPC was fundamental.47 His own high level of energy, quick absorption of art history

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and connoisseurship, willingness to travel widely, to bargain and to find art outside venues of dealer galleries and auction houses were qualities that embodied the fertile convergence of the new discipline of art history, the emerging authority of museums, the philanthropy of collectors and the growing public interest in art across a widening American geography and a thriving transatlantic trade.

Notes 1 See Birnbaum’s obituary in the New York Times, at: https​:/​/ww​​w​.nyt​​imes.​​com​/1​​970​/0​​ 7​/24/​​archi​​ves​/m​​artin​​-birn​​baum-​​is​-de​​ad​-at​​-92​-a​​rt​-de​​aler-​​trave​​ler​​-a​​nd​-wr​​iter-​​frien​​d​ .htm​l 2 Julie Codell, ‘Martin Birnbaum’, in Art Market Dictionary, ed. Johannes Nathan (Berlin: De Gruyter), forthcoming; Stephan Wolohojian, A Private Passion: 19thCentury Paintings and Drawings from the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection, Harvard University (New Haven: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Yale University Press, 2003), 17–38. Matthew Goldstein, Landscape with Figures (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 118–120. 3 Alfred Werner, ‘Pascin’s American Years’, American Art Journal 4, no. 2 (1972): 90, 92–3, 98. Goldstein, Landscape with Figures. 4 Cooper-Hewitt is now divided between the Smithsonian Design Museum and the Cooper Union art school. 5 Martin Birnbaum, The Last Romantic (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1960), 84. 6 Birnbaum, 78; Robert Gore Rifkind, ‘Wild Passion at Midnight: German Expressionist Art’, Art Journal 39, no. 4 (1980): 266. Christopher With, ‘The Art of the Deal: Collecting Max Liebermann in America’, in Max Liebermann and International Modernism, ed. Marion Deshmukh, Françoise Forster-Hahn and Barbara Gaehtgens (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2011), 220–3. 7 The American Art News often praised his exhibitions: for example, v. 11, no. 3 (26 October 1912, 2) described him as ‘True to his past reputation for exhibitions of the original’; v. 14, no. 26 (1 April 1916), 3, refers to Birnbaum’s ‘talent for seeking and presenting to the public the work of interesting artistic personalities who are more or less well known’. 8 Reba White Williams, ‘Prints in the United States, 1900–1918’, Print Quarterly, 14, no. 2 (June 1997): 158. 9 Ibid., 186. 10 Ibid., 184. 11 Birnbaum, 220. 12 Inge Reist, ‘Introduction’, in British Models of Art Collecting and the American Response, ed. Inge Reist (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2014), 3. 13 Neil Harris, ‘The Long Good-Bye: Heritage and Threat in Anglo-America’, ibid., 197. 14 Lance Humphries, ‘British Aspirations on the Chesapeake Bay: Robert Gilmor, Jr. (1774–1848) of Baltimore and Collecting in the Anglo-American Community of the New Republic’, ibid., 147. 15 Rowland Elzea, ed., ‘The Correspondence Between Samuel Bancroft, Jr. and Charles Fairfax Murray 1892–1916’, Delaware Art Museum Occasional Paper 2 (1980): 79.

 Convergences 325 16 James A. Ganz, ‘Drawings at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown’, Master Drawings 42, no. 2, Drawings in American Museums (2004): fn 20, 123. 17 Letter from Martin Birnbaum to Paul J. Sachs, 29 April 1939. Paul J. Sachs Papers (HC 3), file 161. Harvard Art Museums Archives, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. 18 Ibid. 19 Birnbaum purchased Gilbert’s Stuart’s 1820 copy of his portrait of Washington; its provenance was: commissioned by General and Mrs. Nathaniel Greene, 1797, to their daughter Martha Nightingale, to her husband, to his first cousin, Madame de Courville, Paris, to her daughter Princesse de Poix, to Birnbaum, to Arkell (Arkell Museum, 1944). See 18 May 1944 Birnbaum to Frank Barber, Arkell Museum, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Thanks to Suzan D. Friedlander, Arkell Museum. 20 There are 104 works by Ingres at Harvard, some bought by Winthrop through Wildenstein: Ingres’s 19 drawings and paintings acquired through Birnbaum include Portrait of Delecluze, 1856; Martyrdom of St. Symphorien, 1858; Study for head of Octavia, in ‘Virgil Reading’, c. 1814; Study for ‘Virgil Reading’ c. 1814; Portrait of Countess Antoine Apponyi, 1823; Several studies of hands for various portraits, 1832–42; Studies for Martyrdom St. Symphorien; Studies for The Golden Age, c. 1842; Portrait of Princess Letizia Murat, 1913; Portrait of a Young Woman, 1804; Raphael and La Fornarina, 1814; Portrait J. A. de Nogent, 1815; The Dream of Ossian, c 1832–4; Portrait of Mme Reiset, 1846; Virgil Reading the Aeneid to Augustus, 1850; Virgin and Child Appearing to Sts. Anthony and Leopold, 1855; The Golden Age, 1862; The Betrothal of Raphael and the Niece of Cardinal Bibbiena, 1864; The Bather, c. 1809 or c. 1824–33. See Fogg Museum website. 21 Birnbaum, 189. 22 Ingres’s drawing of Madame Désiré Raoul-Rochette, 1830, was purchased for the Cleveland Art Museum in 1927. Herbert and Theresa Strauss bought Ingres’s Guillaume Guillon Lethière in 1930 through Wildenstein. Robert Lehman collected Ingres’s Princesse de Broglie in 1958 (Metropolitan Museum). By 1914 John G. Johnson had Martyrdom of Saint Symphorien, 1865, and David’s Portrait of a Youth, no date (‘John Graver Johnson, Bernard Berenson, Wilhelm Reinhold Valentiner’, Catalogue of a Collection of Paintings and Some Art Objects, v. 3 (Philadelphia: John G. Johnson, 1914), p. 36, entry 791). Mrs. S. D. Warren of Boston lent a version of The Cardinal Bibbiena Introducing Raphael and His Niece to the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, bought by Henry Walters in 1903 who bought Oedipus and the Sphinx in 1908 and Odalisque with Slave in 1925. Neither William nor Henry Walters bought works by David. 23 Agnes Mongan, ‘Drawings by Ingres in the Winthrop Collection’, Gazette des beauxarts 26 (1944): 387. 24 Walter Pach, Ingres (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1939), 130; Gary Tinterow and Philip Conisbee, eds, Portraits by Ingres (New York: Abrams/Metropolitan Museum, 1999), 459–65; Laurette E. McCarthy, Walter Pach (1883–1958); The Armory Show and the Untold Story of Modern Art in America (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1939), 42. 25 Birnbaum, 187. 26 McCarthy, Walter Pach (1883-1958), 96–7.

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27 Philippe Bordes, Jacques-Louis David: Empire to Exile (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), ix. 28 Birnbaum to McIlhenny, 27 November 1936, Martin Birnbaum papers, 1862–1967. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution and Birnbaum, 197–8. David’s The Fortune Teller (Legion of Honor, San Francisco) entered the United States in 1947. 29 Letter from Paul J. Sachs to Martin Birnbaum, 30 December 1936. Paul J. Sachs Papers (HC 3), folder 160. Harvard Art Museums Archives, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. 30 Birnbaum, 198. 31 Ibid. 32 His nephew Baron Chassériau helped Birnbaum find privately owned works by Chassériau, including a work Birnbaum gave to Radeke. 33 Winthrop to Birnbaum on Landseer, 21 July 1937, Martin Birnbaum papers, 1862–1967. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. See Purchases by Martin Birnbaum for Grenville L. Winthrop, 1938, Grenville Winthrop Papers (SC 21), folder 62. Harvard Art Museums Archives, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. Birnbaum hoped ‘all the Pre-Raphaelites may be represented in your collection’, in Letter from Martin Birnbaum to Grenville Winthrop, 26 June 1936. Grenville Winthrop Papers (SC 21), file 45. Harvard Art Museums Archives, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. On the Millais watercolour, Birnbaum to Winthrop, see Purchases by Martin Birnbaum for Grenville L. Winthrop, 1929, Grenville Winthrop Papers (SC 21), folder 62. Harvard Art Museums Archives, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. 34 Letter from Martin Birnbaum to Grenville Winthrop, 26 June 1936. Grenville Winthrop Papers (SC 21), file 45. Harvard Art Museums Archives, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. 35 Letter from Martin Birnbaum to Paul J. Sachs, 9 December 1937. Paul J. Sachs Papers (HC 3), folder 160. Harvard Art Museums Archives, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. 36 On securing Age d’Or and the watercolour Baigneuse for a price reduced by 45,000 fr, see Letter from Martin Birnbaum to Grenville Winthrop, 4 January 1929. Grenville Winthrop Papers (SC 21), file 60. Harvard Art Museums Archives, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. Birnbaum to Winthrop 21 July 1928: ‘I told her [Mary Watts] . . . it was important to distribute the art of Watts and not keep it all in a single country’, Martin Birnbaum papers, 1862–1967. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. 0094–0095. 37 Quote from Birnbaum to Winthrop, 21 July 1928 letter, Martin Birnbaum papers, 1862–1967. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 0094–0095. On prices, see telegram from Martin Birnbaum to Grenville L. Winthrop, 25 July 1928. Grenville Winthrop Papers (SC 21), folder 63. Harvard Art Museums Archives, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; Bill of Sale from Martin Birnbaum to Grenville Winthrop, 15 July 1928. Grenville Winthrop Papers (SC 21), file 64. Harvard Art Museums Archives, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, and Letters from Martin Birnbaum to Grenville L. Winthrop, 1928. Grenville Winthrop Papers (SC 21), folder 65. Harvard Art Museums Archives, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. 38 Martin Birnbaum papers, 1862–1967. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. 0090, Birnbaum to Winthrop, 4 July 1928, in Letters from Martin

 Convergences 327 Birnbaum to Grenville L. Winthrop, 1928. Grenville Winthrop Papers (SC 21), folder 65. Harvard Art Museums Archives, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. In 1911 the Fogg was the first museum to mount a Degas exhibition. 39 Gerald Reitlinger, The Economics of Taste (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961), 347. For the conversion from historic rates, see https://www.measuringworth. com/calculators/exchange/result_exchange.php. 40 Reitlinger puts Géricault’s painting Prancing Grey Horse at £283, or about $1415 in 1935 (p. 325). In 1932 Birnbaum paid $1294 for a Géricault drawing and $1650 for a Géricault watercolour for Winthrop, close to market value of Géricault’s Horse. Martin Birnbaum papers, 1862–1967. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. See letter to Winthrop listing prices, 1 December 1932, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. 41 See Daniel Rosenfeld, European Painting and Sculpture, ca. 1770–1937 in the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design (Providence: RISD, 1992). 42 Cited in Wolohojian, 26, fn. 86. Birnbaum first met Sachs when he worked at the BPC. 43 Letter from Paul J. Sachs to Martin Birnbaum, December 16, 1931, Paul J. Sachs Papers (HC3) folder 160. Harvard Art Museums Archives, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. 44 Letter from Paul J. Sachs to Martin Birnbaum, December 16, 1931, Paul J. Sachs Papers (HC3) folder 160. Harvard Art Museums Archives, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. 45 ‘Memorandum of a Journey to New York on December 9–10, 1930’, undated. Edward Waldo Forbes Papers (HC 2), folder 2413. Harvard Art Museums Archives, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. 46 ‘Works of Art for Sale, December, 1930’, undated. Edward Waldo Forbes Papers (HC 2), folder 2413. Harvard Art Museums Archives, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. 47 Judith Zilczer, ‘“The World’s New Art Center”: Modern Art Exhibitions in New York City, 1913–1918’, Archives of American Art Journal 14, no. 3 (1974): 3: ‘Prior to the Armory Show, Alfred Stieglitz’s Little Galleries . . . and Birnbaum’s Berlin Photograph Company had been the most prominent of a dozen such dealers’.

328 

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Agents in the market for American Collectors Arizzoli, Louise. ‘James Hazen Hyde and the Allegory of the Four Continents: A Research Collection for an Amateur Art Historian’. Journal of the History of Collections 25 (2013): 277–86. Barratt, Carrie Rebora. ‘Mapping the Venues: New York City Art Exhibitions’. In Art and the Empire City: New York, 1825–1861, edited by Catherine Hoover Voorsanger and John K. Howat. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000. Bates, Constance S. ‘An Unexplored International Market: The Art Market’. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 11, no. 3 (1983): 240–9. Beard, Patricia. After the Ball: Gilded Age Secrets, Boardroom Betrayals and the Party That Ignited the Great Wall Street Scandal of 1905. New York: Harper Collins, 2003. Birnbaum, Martin. The Last Romantic. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1960. Boime, Albert. ‘America’s Purchasing Power and the Evolution of European Art in the Late Nineteenth Century’. In Salons, Galleries, Museums and Their Influence on the Development of 19th and 20th Century Art, edited by Francis Haskell, 123–39. Bologna: CLUEB, 1982. Bordes, Philippe. Jacques-Louis David: Empire to Exile. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005. Davies, Martin. ‘Italian School’. In European Paintings in the Collection of the Worcester Art Museum, edited by Louisa Dresser, 307–492. Worcester, MA: Worcester Art Museum, 1974. Deshmukh, Marion, Françoise Forster-Hahn and Barbara Gaehtgens, eds. Max Liebermann and International Modernism, an Artist’s Career from Empire to Third Reich. Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2011. Dyson, Stephen. Eugénie Sellers Strong. Portrait of an Archaeologist. London: Duckworth, 2004. Elzea, Rowland, ed. ‘The Correspondence Between Samuel Bancroft, Jr. and Charles Fairfax Murray 1892–1916’. Delaware Art Museum Occasional Paper 2 (1980). Fidell-Beaufort, Madeleine, Herbert L. Kleinfield, and Jeanne K. Welcher, eds. The Diaries 1871–1882 of Samuel P. Avery, Art Dealer. New York: Arno Press, 1979. Frankenstein, Alfred. William Sidney Mount. New York: Abrams, 1975. Ganz, James A. ‘Drawings at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown’. Master Drawings 42, no. 2, Drawings in American Museums (2004). Gimpel, René. Journal d’un collectionneur: marchand de tableaux. Paris: Editions Hermann, 2011. Goetzmann, William N. ‘Accounting for Taste: Art and the Financial Markets over Three Centuries’. The American Economic Review 83, no. 5 (1993): 1370–6. Goux, Jean-Joseph. L’Art et l’argent. La rupture moderniste: 1860–1920. Paris: Blusson, 2011. Greenwald, Diana Seave. ‘Colleague Collectors: A Statistical Analysis of Artists: Collecting Networks in Nineteenth-Century New York’. Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 17, no. 1 (2018): 2–37. Guldan, Margarete Merkel. Die Tagebücher von Ludwig Pollak: Kennerschaft und Kunsthandel in Rom 1893–1943. Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1988.

 Bibliography 363 Harris, John and Richard Wilbourn. Rudolf Hess: The Last Word, A New Technical Analysis of the Hess Flight, May 1941. Cheltenham: The History Press, 2014. Hermann, Frank. Sotheby’s: Portrait of an Auction House. New York. London: Norton, 1980. Heyrman, Joy Peterson. ‘Signature Drawings: Social Networks and Collecting Practices in Antebellum Albums’. PhD diss., University of Maryland, 2008. Honour, Hugh. The European Vision of America. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1977. Houser, Craig. ‘Disharmony and Discontent: Reviving the American Art-Union and the Market for United States Art in the Gilded Age’. Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 11, no. 2 (2012): 48–66. Howard, Jeremy. ‘Art, Commerce, and Scholarship: The Friendship between Otto Gutekunst of Colnaghi and Bernard Berenson’. In Bernard Berenson: Formation and Heritage, edited by Joseph Connors and Louis A. Waldman, Villa I Tatti: The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, 2014, 33–68. Hyde, James H. ‘L’iconographie des quatre parties du monde dans les tapisseries’. Gazette des Beaux-Arts (1924): 253–72.  Hyde, James H. ‘Les Relations Historiques Franco-Américaines (1776–1912)’. In Les EtatsUnis et la France: Leurs Rapports Historiques Artistiques et Sociaux, edited by Emile Boutroux, Paris: Librairie Félix Alcan, 1914, 25–51. Johnston, William R. William and Henry Walters, the Reticent Collectors. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. Kostyrko, Diana J. The Journal of a Transatlantic Art Dealer: René Gimpel 1918–1939. Turnhout: Harvey Miller, 2017. Lancour, Harold. American Art Auction Catalogues 1785–1942; A Union List. New York: New York Public Library, 1944. Le Corbeiller, Clare. ‘Miss America and Her Sisters: Personifications of the Four Parts of the World’. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 19, no. 8 (1961): 209–23. Lindfors, Johanna M. ‘Borenius, Our Man in England’. In The Shaping of Art History in Finland, edited by Renja Suominen-Kokkonen. Helsinki: Taidehistorian Seura, 2007. Lindman-Strafford, Kristen. ‘Tancred Borenius − europé och viborgare’. In Finländska gestalter. Ekenäs: EkenäsTryckeri, 1976. Long, Véronique. ‘Les collectionneurs d’œuvres d’art et la donation au musée à la fin du XIXe siècle: l’exemple du musée du Louvre’. Romantisme: Revue du dix-neuvième siècle, 112, vol. 2 (2001): 45–54. Macleod, Dianne Sachko. Enchanted Lives, Enchanted Objects: American Women Collectors and the Making of Culture, 1800–1940. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. Mazaroff, Stanley. A Paris Life, a Baltimore Treasure. The Remarkable Lives of George A. Lucas and His Art Collection. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018. McCarthy, Laurette. E. Walter Pach (1883-1958); The Armory Show and the Untold Story of Modern Art in America. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1939. Michaelis, Adolf. Ancient Marbles of Great Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1882. Mongan, Agnes. ‘Drawings by Ingres in the Winthrop Collection’. Gazette des beaux-arts 26 (1944): 387. Pach, Walter. Ingres. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1939. Pezzini, Barbara and Michael G.Brennan. ‘Provenance as a History of Change: From Caliari in Scotland to Tintoretto in America. The Commercial and Connoisseurial

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 Bibliography 365 Troyen, Carol. ‘Innocents Abroad: American Painters at the 1867 Exposition Universelle, Paris’. The American Art Journal 16, no. 4 (1984): 2–28. Vakkari, Johanna. ‘Alcuni contemporanei finlandesi di LionelloVenturi: Osvald Siren, Tancred Borenius, Onni Okkonen’. Storia dell’Arte (2002): 108–17. Warwick, Genevieve. ‘Gift Exchange and Art Collecting: Padre Sebastiano Resta’s Drawing Albums’. The Art Bulletin 79, no. 4 (1997): 630–46. Werner, Alfred. ‘Pascin’s American Years’. American Art Journal 4, no. 2 (1972): 90–8. Wintle, Michael. The Image of Europe: Visualizing Europe in Cartography and Iconography throughout the Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. With, Christopher. ‘‘The Art of the Deal: Collecting Max Liebermann in America’. In Max Liebermann and International Modernism, edited by Marion Deshmukh, Françoise Forster-Hahn and Barbara Gaehtgens, New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2011, 220–3. Zalewski, Leanne. ‘Art for the Public: William Henry Vanderbilt’s Cultural Legacy’. Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 11, no. 2 (Summer, 2012). Zalewski, Leanne. ‘Samuel P. Avery, Art Dealer, Advisor, Philanthropist’. In Dealing Art on Both Sides of the Atlantic 1860–1940, edited by Lynn Catterson, 93–114. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2017. Zilczer, Judith. ‘“The World’s New Art Center”: Modern Art Exhibitions in New York City, 1913–1918’. Archives of American Art Journal 14, no. 3 (1974): 2–7.

Contributors Louise Arizzoli is an Instructional Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Mississippi. Before that she was an Acting Curator for Western Art before 1800 at the Eskenazi Museum of Art at Indiana University. Her research interests focus on Museum Studies, the history of collections and the art market in the United States and in France, as well as four continents allegories in the early modern world. Her most recent publication is a co-edited volume with Maryanne Horowitz, Bodies and Maps: Early Modern Personifications of the Continents (Brill: 2020). Jan Dirk Baetens is Assistant Professor of nineteenth-century art at the Department of History, Art History and Classics at Radboud University Nijmegen. He studied law (University of Antwerp) and art history (University of Leuven), and received his Ph.D. at the University of Leuven in 2011 for a dissertation on the Belgian painter Henri Leys. His research focuses on the nineteenth-century art market and on nineteenthcentury historical painting, and he has published widely on both topics. In 2019, he co-edited the volume Art Crossing Borders: The Internationalisation of the Art Market in the Age of Nation States, 1750-1914. Linda Borean is Professor at the University of Udine in the Department of Humanities and Cultural Heritage. Her research interests focus on patronage, art collecting and iconography in Renaissance and Baroque Venice. She has co-curated the project and the editorial series Il collezionismo d’arte a Venezia dalle origini all’Ottocento, and published monographs and essays in international journals. Her most recent books are La Galleria Manfrin. L’ultima collezione d’arte della Serenissima (2018) and Rencontres à Venise. Étrangers et Vénitiens dans l’art du XVII siècle (2018). Dr. Susan Bracken, FSA, specialises in the history of collecting, on which she has published widely. Her research focuses on collecting in seventeenth-century Europe, especially copies of Old Master paintings. Her latest publication is an essay: ‘Charles I and the Art of Italy in Spain’ (2020). She is co-convenor of the Seminar on Collecting and Display (Institute of Historical Research), which also organises conferences, several of which have been published. Susan sits on the steering committee of the Society for the History of Collecting. She lectures at the Victoria and Albert Museum and Birkbeck College. Susan is a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Arts Scholars. Maria Celeste Cola received her PhD in the History of Art from the University of Rome “La Sapienza”, where she is a Research Fellow and professor of the History of Art. She is a scholar of eighteenth-century art with a particular focus on the history of collections. Maria Celeste’s most recent book is a study of the Palazzo Valentini in

 Contributors 367 Rome – Palazzo Valentini a Roma. La committenza Zambeccari, Boncompagni, Bonelli tra Cinquecento e Settecento (2012) and I Ruspoli l’ascesa di una famiglia a Roma e la creazione artistica tra Barocco e Neoclassico (2018). Julie Codell, Professor, Art History, and affiliate in New American Film School and Asian Studies, Arizona State University, received the Evelyn Smith Research Fellowship, 2019-2020. She wrote The Victorian Artist (2003/2012), edited 19th-C. British Artists’ Autograph Replicas (2020); Transculturation in British Art (2012/2017); Power and Resistance; Political Economy of Art; Imperial Co-Histories; co-edited Replication in the Long 19th-C. (2018); Orientalism, Eroticism, Modern Visuality (2016/2018); Encounters in the Victorian Press; Orientalism Transposed (1998; Routledge Revival Series reprint, 2018). She received fellowships from: National Endowment for Humanities, Getty, Kress, Huntington, Ransom Center, American Institute for Indian Studies, and Yale British Art Center. Adriana Concin is a doctoral student at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. Her current research interests lie in sixteenth-century Habsburg collecting, cultural exchanges between Tuscany and the Holy Roman Empire and female patronage networks. She has held the Eva Schler fellowship at the Medici Archive Project in Florence and the Studia Rudolphina fellowship in Prague at the Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Most recently, she has published an article on the frescoes of Habsburg cityscapes in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence in the Burlington Magazine (2019). Alice Ensabella is Lecturer in Contemporary Art History at the University of Grenoble. She received her PhD in 2017 with a dissertation on the art market of Surrealist art in Paris in 1920s. Her research focuses on the Parisian and American art market in the interwar years, especially for Surrealist and Metaphysical art. She has published several articles and essays on this topic. As independent curator, she recently organized the exhibitions Giorgio de Chirico, Alberto Savinio. Una mitologia moderna (Fondazione Magnani Rocca, 2019) and Giorgio Morandi. La collection Magnani-Rocca (Musée de Grenoble, 2020). Madeleine Fidell-Beaufort, an independent scholar, taught art history at the American University of Paris. Her research interests focus on subjects concerning nineteenth century art collecting both in France and the United States. Her 2019 essay about the Interaction of artists, dealers, and collectors at a studio building in Paris was published in Making Waves. Crosscurrents in the Study of Nineteenth Century Art. An article about Karl Daubigny (1846-1886) appeared in Les Couleurs de la Mer, a 2020 exhibition at the Musée Eugène Boudin in Honfleur, France. She continues to work on the publication of Samuel Avery’s correspondence. Sandra van Ginhoven is Head of the Project for the Study of Collecting and Provenance at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. Her current interests focus on applying

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data analysis and modelling techniques to gain insights into the history of collecting and the art markets. Her research on the role of dealers and the art trade between the Southern Netherlands, Spain and Spanish America during the seventeenth century was published in 2017. Dr. Christine Godfroy-Gallardo is a Research Fellow at the Cultural and Social Art History department (HICSA, University Paris I – Sorbonne). She earned a Ph.D degree in Art History graduated with Highest Honors from the Sorbonne in 2014 under the direction of Professor Dominique Poulot, with a doctoral dissertation on dealers as art experts in the Louvre Museum from the French Revolution to 1848. Professor of Art History since 2015, her current interests focus on the history of the art market and the first national museums, and concern also the restitution of artworks seized in Europe during the French Revolution. Elena J. Greer wrote her doctoral thesis (Collaborative Doctoral Award with the National Gallery, London and the University of Nottingham) on the political, economic and art-historical context of the development of the National Gallery’s collection and policies at the end of the nineteenth century (2017). She has worked as a curator and author at the National Gallery, specialising early Italian and German Renaissance painting. She has published widely on Italian painting and the history of collecting and contributed to several accessible publications on art. Ulf R. Hansson is a classical archaeologist and cultural historian, director of the Swedish Institute of Classical Studies in Rome and Sr Research Fellow in Classics at the University of Texas at Austin. In addition to Etruscan and Roman art and archaeology, his research interests include the history of archaeology, antiquarianism and collecting, with special focus on early modern and modern Italy and Germany. Anne Helmreich is Associate Director, Getty Foundation, of the J. Paul Getty Trust. Her current research focuses on the history of the art market and the productive intersection of the digital humanities and art history. In 2019, she and Pamela Fletcher co-authored the epilogue to Art Crossing Borders: The Birth of an Integrated Art Market in the Age of Nation States (Europe, c. 1780-1914) (Brill) and she co-edited with Julia Drost, Fabrice Flahutez, and Martin Schneider Networking Surrealism in the USA: Agents, Artists, and the Market (arthistoricum.net in collaboration with the German Center for Art History Paris). Dr. Frances Suzman Jowell is a freelance art historian, trained at the University of the Witwatersrand, the Courtauld Institute and Harvard University. Her main areas of research have been the political journalist, art critic and art historian, Théophile Thoré (1807-69) and the works of Théodore Géricault (1791-1824). Her publications encompass the history of collecting and the art market, and the posthumous critical fortunes (and misfortunes) of artists. She has a particular interest in nineteenthcentury revivals of 17th century Dutch artists (such as Hals and Vermeer) and has lectured and published in the UK and abroad on all these subjects.

 Contributors 369 Tina Košak is a research fellow at the ZRC SAZU, France Stele Institute of Art History, and assistant professor of art history at the University of Maribor, Faculty of Arts. She has published on early modern art patronage, collecting and art market, as well as iconography and reception of aristocratic heritage. She has taken part in several research projects, currently she supervises project Art and the Nobility in Times of Decline: Transformations, Translocations and Reinterpretations (funded by the Slovenian Research Agency). Diana Kostyrko holds degrees in art history and curatorship, and material culture, from the Australian National University, where she earned a Ph.D in 2007. As a cultural historian and provenance researcher in the Research School of Humanities and the Arts, ANU, she is currently preoccupied with the culture of the transatlantic art dealers of the late-nineteenth into the mid-twentieth century, and their influence on the Franco-American art market. Her monograph, The Journal of a Transatlantic Art Dealer: René Gimpel 1918–1939 was published with Harvey Miller in December 2017. Tamsin Lee-Woolfe is a freelance curator and art historian, specialising in British art and collecting, and with a particular interest in French artistic influences. She has previously worked on the Collection Information Project at the National Gallery in London, and before this, in curatorial roles at the Fitzwilliam Museum, the Foundling Museum, and The Barber Institute of Fine Arts. She holds a PhD from the University of Nottingham for her thesis on the reception of French pictures and painters in Britain, c.1690-1740. Her most recent publication is in the Walpole Society Journal (2018). Rebecca Lyons is Director of Learning & Collections at the Royal Academy with a remit covering the permanent Collection, Library & Archive, Learning and Academic Programmes. She is also Director of the Attingham Trust’s prestigious Royal Collection Studies for museum directors, curators and art-world professionals. She was a Curator for the National Trust and prior to this, Director of the Fine & Decorative Art MLitt and MA programmes at Christie’s Education, London/University of Glasgow. Her recent publications include an essay on C18th collector Welbore Ellis Agar (2019) and a chapter of the Royal Collection exhibition book for George IV: Art and Spectacle (2019). MacKenzie Mallon is the Provenance Specialist at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri. Her primary research interest is Nazi-era provenance and the art market during World War II, and she curated the Nelson-Atkins exhibition Discriminating Thieves: Nazi-Looted Art and Restitution (2019). Other publications include, “A Refuge from War: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and the Evacuation of Art to the Midwest during World War II” (Getty Research Journal, February 2016). She is a frequent speaker and moderator at provenance researchrelated programs.

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Camille Mestdagh research revolves around the correlations between the development of revival furniture, the growth of a market for curiosities/antiques and the incorporation of decorative arts in museum collections across the 19th century. She has published her MA thesis as a book: L’ameublement d’art français (1850-1900), several articles on 19th century French furniture and bronze makers and on Parisian dealers. She is working on the publication of her PhD on the “Beurdeleys (1818-1895), from boutique to workshop. A history of trade in curiosities and furniture making in 19th century Paris” (2019). Dr. Corina Meyer is an Independent Scholar. Her research has focused on the reception of Italian renaissance art, narratives in art historiography, history of collecting and museum studies. Besides teaching art history at the Universities of Stuttgart, Frankfurt am Main, Mainz and Göttingen, she has held several fellowships for research (e.g. DAAD for a postdoc project at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2014); Gerda Henkel Stiftung, FAZIT-Stiftung). In 2016, she received the Johann David Passavant Award for her dissertation. Corina has also worked for and with several museums (e.g. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Städel Museum Frankfurt, Kunstmuseum Berne, Switzerland). Bénédicte Miyamoto is an Associate Professor of British History at the Université Sorbonne-Nouvelle, at the Institut du Monde Anglophone. Her research focuses on the artistic culture of Britain, 1600-1800. She has published on the art market, national school categories, and the use of art manuals. She co-edited with Louisiane Ferlier Forms, Formats and the Circulation of Knowledge (Brill, Library of the Written Word, 2020). Nick Pearce holds the Richmond Chair of Fine Art at the University of Glasgow. His research interests focus on photography in late-nineteenth century China and the history of collecting Chinese art, including provenance research. His recent publications include: ‘From relic to relic: A brief history of the skull of Confucius’, Journal of the History of Collections 26:2 (2014), ‘From the Summer Palace 1860: Provenance and Politics’, in Louise Tythacott (ed.), Collecting and Displaying China’s “Summer Palace” in the West (2018) and, (with Jane Milosch, eds.), Collecting and Provenance: A Multidisciplinary Approach, (2019). Inge Reist, Director Emerita of the Center for the History of Collecting and former chief of research collections and programs at The Frick Collection and Art Reference Library, holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Her research has concentrated on Italian Renaissance and Baroque art and the History of collecting. In addition to independent publications in journals and exhibition catalogues, she has edited and co-edited seven publications by the Center as well as the Getty publication Provenance: An Alternate Art History with Gail Feigenbaum. She has taught at Hunter College, Columbia and Rutgers Universities, and continues to serve on several editorial boards.

 Contributors 371 Dr. Renata Schellenberg is Associate Professor of German, Mount Allison University, New Brunswick. She specializes in German literature and culture of the long eighteenth century with a particular interest in scientific literacy and material culture. She has published on such key authors of the period as Goethe, Herder and Alexander von Humboldt and has co-edited a volume of essays on the interplay of text and visual culture at this time. In 2016 she published a book on commemorative culture in postwar Croatia. Dr Schellenberg is currently completing a monograph on museum culture in post-Enlightenment Germanophone Europe. Robert Skwirblies is a research assistant at Technische Universität Berlin, in the Department of Modern Art History. His work focuses on Italian painting of the Renaissance and on culture policy, art trade and the history of museums in Europe from 1700 to 1900. He wrote his PhD on the reception of and the market for Italian Old Master paintings in Germany (2015) and collaborates with Bénédicte Savoy in the research cluster translocations. Historical Enquiries into the Displacement of Cultural Assets. Adriana Turpin teaches the history of collecting and art market studies at IESA, Paris. A founder member of the Seminar on Display and Collecting at the Institute of Historical Research, she is a co-editor of their publications; she is also the Chairman of the Society for the History of Collecting and has published on a wide variety of topics in the history of collecting and furniture studies, including most recently. ‘Collecting French Furniture in the Nineteenth Century: Appropriation as a Form of Nationalism?’ in Art Crossing Borders: The Internationalisation of the Art Market in the Age of Nation States, 1750-1914, eds. Jan Dirk Baetens and Dries Lyna (Brill, 2019).

Index Aa, Pieter Boudewijnsz van der  120 Academician(s)  138, 140, 141–3, 147 Adam, Robert and James  102, 103, 105–8 Adler, Rose  280 Adriaenssen, Alexander  66 Agnew, Thomas and Sons  170, 237 Archives of  2 Albani Cardinal Alessandro  102, 103, 106, 107, 109, 115–17 collection  120 Pope Clement XI  92, 93, 102, 115 Allard, Jules  222 Allori, Alessandro  37 Almanach historique  142 Ambras  33, 34, 37, 38, 40 Amsterdam Buffa Gallery  7 Gruyter  187 Museum for Asiatic Art  246 Ancien Régime  91, 137, 162, 214, 217, 281, 282 Anderson, John  96 André, Nélie Jacquemart  234 Andrews, Roy Chapman  247 Andreossi, Enrico  231 Angelico, Fra  177, 178 Angiviller, marquis d’  143 Anna Jagellonica  34 Annoot, Charles  220 Anquetil, M.  145 Antiquities  4, 6, 105, 107, 113, 114, 116–18, 121, 176, 178, 233, 243, 244, 246, 248, 298, 307 Africa Capta  302 Apollo  297 Antwerp  4, 5, 24, 96 dealers in  25–7, 62 Aragon Louis  253, 257 Araignon, Noel  140

Archduke Charles II of Inner Austria  61 Archduke Ferdinand of Inner Austria  61 Archduke Ferdinand II of the Tyrol  23, 33–7, 40, 41 Archduke Leopold Wilhelm  49, 61 Archduke Matthias  38, 39 armour  36–8, 40, 41, 67, 113, 118, 219 Art Journal  169, 170 Arundel, Lord  107 Arundel collection  115 Astalli, Cardinal Camillo  108 Atlas, Topographical  113, 115, 116, 118, 119 Attems Hermann  61 Ignaz Maria  62, 64 Jacob Adam, Baron  61 Audran, Gerard  79 Augsbourg, Nilson, engraver at  145 Augsburg  152 Aumale, Duc d’  221 Au Sans Pareil  253, 254 Aved, Jacques-Joseph  143 Avery, Samuel  268, 269, 273, 285–91 and contemporary artists  185 as entrepreneur  186 at the 1867 Universal Exhibition  188, 189 Ayerst  220 Baillie, William  92, 95 Baldock, Edward Holmes  216, 217 Baldung Grien, Hans  121 Bandini, Angelo Maria  120 Banduri, Anselmo  115 Barbieri, Francesco  140 Barker, Alexander, sale  235 Barnes, Albert C.  272 Barthélemy, Jean Jacques  118 Baslini, Giuseppe  234

 Index 373 Bassano family (painters)  40, 55 Jacopo  64 Bassano, Mlle de & Duc de  322 Basso, Ercole  34 Bavaria Albert V, Duke of  61 Duke Wilhelm of  38, 39 King of  185, 192, 193 Maria of  61 Beaux, Cecelia  316 Bellier, Alphonse  257 Bellini, Giovanni  132 Christ at Emmaus  130 Virgin and Child  130 Bellotti, Pietro  51, 53 Beneman, Guillaume  216 Bentley, Richard  115, 120 Berenson, Bernard  269, 279, 281, 307, 319 Berlin  114, 117, 120, 157–8, 174–80, 186–7, 189–90, 205, 230, 246, 277, 316 dealers in  157 Gemäldegalerie  230 Royal Museum  176, 178, 179, 189, 190 Royal Picture Gallery  174 State Museum  246 Berlin Photographic Company  316 Bernheim brothers  257, 277 Bessborough, William Ponsonby, 2nd Earl of  122 Beurdeley firm  214, 215, 222, 223 Alfred  171, 215–21 Alfred Emmanuel  215, 221–3 Jean  214 Bianchi Filippo  52, 53 Sebastiano  115 Bianchini, Francesco  115–16 Bignon, Jean-Paul  115 Binyon, Laurence  247 Birnbaum, Martin  273, 316–24 collecting French artists  321, 322 expertise  318, 319, 320 philanthropic aims  319–21 Bishop, Heber Reginald  172, 243, 244 Blanc, Charles

Histoire des peintres de toutes les écoles  204 Blenheim Palace  81, 230 Bloemart, Abraham  161 Bluett  242, 247, 248 Blumenthal, George  269 Bode, Wilhelm  234, 277, 319 Bohemia  33, 63 Boit, Charles  81 Bologna  24, 34, 177–8 Academy  175–6 Bonaparte Lucien, Collection  187 Bonnard, Pierre: Abduction of Europa  282 Borenius, Carl Tancred  295, 297, 302 Borgognone, Il, see Courtois Borromini, Francesco  119 Boschini, Marco  28, 49–56 La Carta del navegar pitoresco (La Carta)  28, 49–54, 56 Bostelmann, Michael  153 Boston  9, 306, 317, 319 Museum of Fine Arts  273, 280, 281, 283, 306, 307, 321 Boswell, James  158 Botticelli, Sandro  234 Adoration of the Kings  235 bought as, An Allegory  235 Mystic Nativity  235 Venus and Mars  235 Bouchardon, Edmé  120 Bouguereau, William  289 Boulle, André Charles  216, 217 Bourdon, Sebastien  140 Boussaud and Valenton, see Goupil Bouttats Jan Baptist  96 John  5 Boxall, William  209, 231 Brais, Samuel de  138–41 Brandis, Counts  63 Brandolini, Brandolino  34 Braschi, Cardinal  107 Breton, André  172, 252, 255–60 as agent for the Surrealists  258, 259 as consultant to Doucet  257–60 Manifeste du Surrealisme  252 Breton, Jules  289

374 Breton, Simon  253 Brockes, Barthold Heinrich  154 Bronze(s)  140, 164, 296 caster  35 casting of cannon  40 effigy of Emperor Maximilian I  35 Brouwer, Adriaen  67 Brueghel Jan the Elder  63, 64, 67, 68 Jan the Younger  68 Brühl, Heinrich, Count von  138, 141 Bruni, Domenico  53 Bruslons, Savary de  142 Brussels Royal Museum of Painting and Sculpture  208 Bryan, Michael  5, 91 Bryant, William Cullen  268 Buchanan, William  92 Buchheim, Bishop Otto Friedrich  60, 69 Buonaccorso, Niccolò di: Marriage of the Virgin  235 Buonarroti, Filippo  115 Burckhardt, Jacob  190 Bürger, see Thoré, Théophile Burton, Sir Frederic  171, 172, 229 Charles Fairfax Murray and Sienese painting see Murray, Charles Fairfax purchases in Italy 1881–1883  231–6 relationship with Morelli see Morelli travels in Italy  230, 236 Bushell, Stephen Wootton  172, 242–4 Bute John, 3rd Earl of  94, 109 John, 1st Marquess  92, 95 Byres, James  109 Cagnacci, Guido  50, 53 Caledonian Club  108 Cambridge, MA Fogg Museum  273, 319 Camerlengo  109 Camuccini, Vincenzo  179, 187 cannon  40, 41 falconet  40 Cappello, Bianca  37 Caravaggio  24, 54

Index Cardinal Andreas of Austria  34 Caresme, Jacques-Philippe  141 Cariani, Giovanni  231 Carignan, see Savoy Carinthia  60, 61, 69 Carlisle, Earl of  115 Carlton House  164 Carniola  60, 69 Carpaccio, Vittore  132 Carpeaux, Jean-Baptiste  281, 310, 311 Carracci, the  121 Lodovico  130 Carriera, Rosalba  297–8 The Four Continents  297, 298 Carteret, Lord  116 Cartoni, Felice  172, 176–80 The Fall of Saul  176 Cassatt, Mary  8, 271, 272 Casteels, Alexander battle paintings  63, 64 Castellani, Alessandro  190, 231, 233, 235 Catani, Antonio  35 Catherine the Great, empress of Russia  157 Cavalcaselle, Giovanni Battista  190, 231 Caylus, comte de  118 Chanas, Régis  279, 280 Charlemont, James Caulfield, 1st Earl of  102, 104–7 Chassériau  321, 322, 323 Chechel, Gaspar  69 Cheroffini, Contessa  109 Chevaliers de Jubilation  120 Chicago Art Institute  308, 318 Great Exhibition  1893  222 Chinese works of art Chimera Tomb Guardian  312 Jades  241, 244 Chirico, Giorgio de  256–9, 282 Le Revenant  256 Paintings in Éluard sale  258 Self Portrait  258, 282 Christie, James  95, 162 James II  92, 164 Christie’s Auction House  2, 5, 152, 162, 164, 244, 297 Cicerone, ciceroni  104, 105, 108, 109, 115

 Index 375 Clarke, George  79, 81 Clarke, Louis  246 Claude Lorrain: Apollo and the Muses  108 Clemens, J.F.  144 Clement XIV, Pope (Ganganelli)  105 Clérisseau, Charles-Louis  107, 108 Cleveland Museum of Art  273, 282, 308, 313 Cochin, Charles-Nicolas  142, 143 Cochin, Nadal (“Monsù Cussin”)  56 coins  34, 113, 115, 119, 296 Colins, François Louis  92 Collins, William Frederick  247, 248 Colnaghi, P & D  209, 268, 318, see also Gutekunst Comoedia  253 condottiere  36, 37 Conti, Prince de  142 Copies (of works of art)  10, 50, 79, 113, 119, 120, 296 copy (of work of art)  37, 68, 78, 119, 179 copyist  235 Cordua, Joannes de  62 Corner, Flaminio  131 Correggio  121 Corsini, Cardinal  106 Corsini, Clement XII Pope  117 Cortona, Accademia Etrusca  117 Costa, Lorenzo  176 and Mainari Pala Strozzi  234 Saint Sebastian  231 Costanzi brothers  119 Carlo  120 Cosway, Richard  161 Courtois, Jacques (“Il Borgognone”)  63 Coutaud, Lucien: Allegory with Boats  281 Crofts, George  244, 248 Crowe, Joseph A  190 Writing with Cavalcaselle  231 Crozat, Antoine  121 Pierre  115, 121 Cuel, Gilbert  222 curiosity dealer  171, 214, 220, 221 curieux  147 Currelly, Charles Trick  244, 245 Cuyck, Jean-Baptiste van  220

dactyliothecae (gem cast cabinets)  119 Daelen, Cornelis van  67 Dalton, Richard  94 David, Jacques Louis  186, 310, 320–1, 322 Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès  321 Lavoisier and his wife Marie-AnnePierrette Paulze  321 Pope Pius VII and Cardinal Caprara  321 Study for The Oath of the Tennis Court  322 Degas, Edgar  204, 271, 272, 320, 322 Dehn, Christian  119 deism  120 Delacroix, Eugène  323 Delaroche, H., 161 Demosthenes  120 Desenfans, Noel Joseph  96 sale  161 Devonshire, Duke of  115 Dezallier d’Argenville, Antoine-Joseph  138 Diepenbeeck, Abraham van  68 Dietrich, Christian Wilhelm Ernst  145, 146 Dietrichstein Ferdinand Joseph  68 Georg Seifried, Count  62, 63 Diomedes  120 Dornberg, Veit von (Vito, Vitus), Baron  33, 61 Dossena Alceo (forger)  313 Bartolomeo  66, 69 Dou, Gerrit (fijnschilders)  210 Double, Léopold  203, 206–8 Doucet, Jacques  256, 257, 258, 260 Douglas, Robert Langton  269 Dresden  114, 116, 117, 158 collection  121, 140, 157, 189, 192, 297 Royal Gallery  138, 139 Dubois, Simon  95 Dubreuil, Pierre  139 Duca, Lodovico del  35 Duccio: panels from the Maestà  235 Durand-Ruel, Paul  7, 8, 170, 268, 277, 289, 290

376 Dürer  121 Durlacher  220 Dutuit, Eugène  219 Duveen, house of  170, 223, 279, 291 Joseph  220, 269, 277, 279, 297, 310–12, 318 Dyck, Anthony van  308 Portrait of Charles I  230 St. Jerome  67 Dyck, Daniel van den  52, 54 Eastlake, Charles  185, 193, 194, 208, 229, 234, 235, 236 Edgell, George  283 Edinburgh Royal Scottish Museum  246 Eggenberg, Johann Seyfried, Prince of  63, 64, 66, 68 Egizio, Matteo  115 Eismann, Johann Anton  56 E. J. van Wisselingh & Co, see Wisselingh, Elbert Jan Elbeuf, Prince d’  115 Ellis, John  79 Éluard, Paul  172, 253, 256–60 Sale of collection  258 Emperor Charles V  33 Emperor Charles VI  79, 92, 115 Emperor Ferdinand I  33, 34, 61 Emperor Francis I  118 Emperor Maximilian II  61 Emperor Rudolf II  38, 61 Engerand, Ferdinand  140 Enlightenment, Age of  4, 94, 120 Ennis, Jacob  104 Ernst, Max  253–6, 258, 259 exhibition at Au Sans Pareil  253 La Savoie  259 L’Intérieur de la vue  258 Relief tricoté  254 works of art in Éluard sale  258 Este, family  3 Alfonso IV d’  53 Evelyn, John  94 Fagan, Robert  93 Fagel, François  114–16, 120–1

Index Fanello, Matteo  131 Farnborough, Charles Long, 1st Lord  165 Fennie, Mr. (probably Alexander Finny)  107 Fesch, Cardinal Joseph  185, 187, 191, 193 auction  185, 191 collection  192, 193, 194 Ficoroni, Francesco de  115–16, 122 Findlay Galleries  308 Fiore, Francesco  132 Fiore, Jacobello del Virgin and Child with St Jerome and St John the Baptist  132 Fitzherbert, Maria  161 Flaxman, John drawings  318, 320, 321 Florence  34–5, 37, 39–40, 91, 107, 114–15, 117–18, 120, 122, 175–8, 187, 234–5, 300, 313 Academy  176–8 borgo degli Albizi  113 Marucelliana  120 Museo Stoschiano  113–14, 117–18, 122 Palazzo Ramirez de Montalvo  113 Riccardiana  120 Società Colombaria  117 Floris, Frans  63, 67 Foggini, Giovanni Battista Flaying of Marsyas  140 Mercury Binding Prometheus  140 Fontana, Prospero  176 Lamentation  177 Forbes, Anne  107 Forbes, Edward  308, 318, 319 Forchondt family or firm  26, 62–4, 66–8 Alexander  62–3, 66–8 Guilliam  62–3 Guilliam the Younger  62–3 Marcus  62–3 Melchior  62–3 Forgery, forgeries  113, 118, 230, 313 Fountaine, Sir Andrew  81, 115 Francia, Francesco  176 altarpiece from the Oratorio della Stretta  176

 Index 377 Madonna in Glory  176 Nativity  178 Francis, Henry Sayles  313 Franck  302 Franck & Co S. M.  244 Frankfurt  185, 188, 192, 193, 296 Städel Art Institute  185–9, 191–4, 205, 208, 209 Franks, Augustus Wollaston  243 Fraula, Thomas de  79 French Revolution 1789  90, 147, 161, 214 1848  201 Frick, Henry Clay  268–70, 273, 276, 319, 321 Frick Collection, see New York Fritsch, Gaspar  120 Fry, Roger  269, 270, 297 Fusi, Antonio  175, 180 Gaddi, Agnolo Triptych  177 Gaignat, Louis-Jean  92 Galaria  51 Galerie Paul Guillaume  256, 257, 260 Galerie Pierre  255 Galerie Surréaliste  255 Galerie Vandermeersch  296 Gardner, Isabella Stewart  269, 319 Gardner, Paul  312 Gauchez, Leon  208 Gazette des Beaux-Arts  169, 204 Gem, gems  38, 113, 115, 118–22, 233 Genoa  33 Genoese  54 George III, king of England  119, 162 George IV, king of England  160 Prince of Wales  161, 164 Prince Regent  160–5 Géricault, Théodore  321, 323 Gersaint, Edmé François  5, 96 Ghezzi, Pier Leone  115–17, 120, 122 Ghirlandaio, Domenico: Madonna in Glory  177 Giambologna  35 Gillemans, Jan-Pauwel  67 gilt bronzes  215, 216, 218, 221, 222, 223 Gimpel, Ernest  276, 277

donations to museums  281 and Wildenstein  276, 280 Gimpel, René  273, 276, 279–83 Giorgione  130 Adoration of the Kings  231 Giotto  132, 188 Glackens, William  272 Gleyr, Charles  289 glyptomania  119 Godwin, Blake More  283 Goethe, Wolfgang von  154 Gonzaga Anna Caterina  36 Carlo II  54 collection  4 Gori, Anton Francesco  113, 115 Gorizia  60, 61 Gotzkowsky, Johann Ernst  157–8 Goupil & Cie  7, 9, 170, 267, 277, 290, 318 Adolph  289 Gradisca  61 Grand Tour  90, 110, 119, 162, 216, 236 Grant, Peter  93–4, 102–10 Gray, James  108 Graz  26, 60, 63–4, 66, 68–9 Greene, Belle da Costa  270, 271, 281 Greenwood John  87, 94 Gregory, William H.  230–5 Grevedon, Henry  205, 206, 208 Greville, sale  163 Grimston, James  107 Gruyter  187 Guariento  129, 132 Guercino  130 Guggenheim, Michelangelo  231, 234 Guilhiermoz, Baptistin  204 Guillaume, Paul  256, 257, 260 Gutekunst, H.G.  170 Habsburg(s)  4, 26, 33, 34, 36, 60–1, 116, 119 Hagedorn Christian Ludwig von  156 Friedrich von  156 Hague, The  9, 114, 116, 120 Hals, Frans  170, 172, 203–6, 210

378 The Laughing Cavalier  203 Portrait of a Woman  204, 205 Hamburg  156 art market  152–4, 157 BörsenSaal  153 Hamilton, Sir William  163 Hamilton Palace, sale  230, 234 Hampton Court  79 Hanover, House of  102, 116 Harrach, Ferdinand Bonaventura, Count  60 Harris, Dr John  78 Hatvan  38 Havemeyer, Lousine  271 Hay, Andrew  81 Head of a Crowned Buddha  312 Hedlinger, Johann Carl  120 Heem, De  67 Heinecken, Karl Heinrich von  146, 157 Heintz, Joseph  52 Heldenrüstkammer  36–8 Helmont, Mattheus van: An Alchemist  67 Herberstein Ana Magdalena  68 Johann Ernst the Elder, Count  62 Rosina Elisabeth, Countess  63 Herculaneum excavations at  108 Museum at (Portici)  108 Hertford 2nd Marquess  161 3rd Marquess (Yarmouth)  160–5 4th Marquess  203–4, 220 Hickman, Dr Nathan  77 Highmore, Joseph  77 Hirsch, Jacob  313 Hirt, Aloys  178 Hoare, Mr.  131 Hobbema, Meindert  204 Road in the Woods  310–11 Wooded Landscape  204 Hobson, R. L.  242, 247 Holbein, Hans  121, 161 Holderness, sale  160 Hollis, Thomas  105 Hooch, Pieter de

Index Boy Bringing Bread  204 The Visit  208 Hope, Charles  107 Hopetoun House  108 John 2nd Earl of  107 Hoym, Karl Heinrich, Count von  139 Hubert, Guillaume  81 Hugford, Ignazio  107 Huggins, John  81 Huldschinsky, Oscar  277 Hume, Abraham  129–31 Hume, Patrick  107 Hungary  38, 316 Hunt, William Holman Church of the Holy Sepulchre  322 The Miracle of the Sacred Fire  322 Hyde, James Hazen  272, 294–303 gifts to New York museums  294 Ingres, Jean-Auguste-Dominique  320, 321–3 Madame d’Haussonville  321 Inner Austria(n)  34, 60, 61–9 Innsbruck  33–7, 40 Inquisition (Roman)  120, 122 Jackson, Ethlyne  312 Jacobite(s)  102–3, 107, 116 James, Gregory  247 Jamineau, Isaac  103 Janssens, Abraham: Vertumnus and Pomona  63 Jenkins, John Striker  286, 287, 290 Jervas, Charles  79–82 Joddrell, Richard Paul  109 Jode, Hans de  62 Johanna of Austria (Duchess of Florence)  34 Johnson, John G.  272, 321 Johnston, John Taylor  290 Jones, Thomas  109 Juncker, Justus  155 Kahnweiler Daniel-Henri  257 Kaller, Johann Christian  155 Kandinsky, Wassily  316

 Index 379 Kansas City Nelson Atkins Museum  306, 308–13 Karlbeck, Orvar  245–8 Key, Willem  67 Khevenhüller, Hans, Baron  61 Khisl, Johann Jakob II, Count  63, 68 Klee, Paul  358, 316 Kleinstaaterei  151 Knapton, George  77 Knights of Santo Stefano, Order of  38 Knoedler & Co.  9, 268, 270, 273, 277, 318, 319, see also Goupil & Cie Michael  170, 267 Roland  267 Küster, Lüdolf  115 Lafontaine Pierre-Joseph  91 sale  164 Laguerre, Louis  81 Lallemand, Jean Baptiste  107 Lamberg, Leopold Joseph, Count  60 Lami, Eugène  221 Langetti, Giambattista  51, 52 Apollo Flaying Marsyas  54 Crucifixion  54 Langford, Abraham  87 Lassalle & Cie  223 Lawrence, Sir Thomas  165 Julia, Lady Peel  276 Layard, Austen Henry  230–4, 236, 237 Le Brun, Charles  27, 143 Lebrun, Elisabeth Louise Vigée  93, 143 Lebrun, Jean-Baptiste-Pierre  5, 6, 143, 161 Lechi, Count Teodoro, collection  189, 190 Lehman, Robert  269, 308 Leiden  120 Leipzig  120, 144 Le Leu, Theodore  140 Leonardo  130, 188 Le Revenant  256, 258 Leslie, Walter, Count  63, 68 Levier, Charles  120 Leyden, Van sale  161 Libbey, Florence Scott  282

Liberi, Pietro  52, 53 Libero, Giovanni Alberto  37 Liechtenstein Charles Eusebius, Prince of  60, 68 Johann Adam, Prince of  60 Liger, Louis  78 Ligorio  121 Linz  26, 63 Lippi, Filippino  177, 187 Littérature  253 exhibition of Max Ernst  254, 255 Revue  253, 254, 257 Livorno  117, 118, 120 Livry, M. de  145 Ljubljana  60, 69 Academy of Fine Arts and Design  64 Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts  64 Lodoli, Padro Carlo  132 London British Museum  233, 242, 246, 247 Covent Garden  91 National Gallery  171, 185, 208, 209, 229, 232, 235, 237 No. 8 Clifford Street  81 Royal Academy  169 Royal Exchange  91 St. James’s Square  91 St. Paul’s Cathedral  77 Society of Antiquaries  105 Society of the Virtuosi of St Luke  81 Soho  91 South Kensington Museum  220, 243 Loo, C.T.  242, 312 Longhi attributed to (see Nazari) Exhibition of a Rhinoceros at Venice  234 Lorenzetti, Pietro: Saint Sabinus before the Governor of Tuscany  235 Lo Spagna: Nativity  178, 179 Loth, Johann Carl  50, 54 Lotto, Lorenzo  188, 232 Protonotary Giovanni Giuliano, (bought as)  234 Louis XIV, king of France  3, 81, 94, 138, 143

380

Index

Louis XV, king of France  92, 137, 138, 140 Lowengard, Armand  279 Lowther, Sir William  108 Lowther, William, later 2nd Earl of Lonsdale  216 Lucas, George  269, 288–91, 319 Lupi, Gimignano  37 Lycomedes  120 Mac Arrow, Baron E.  300 Madrid  24 Maes Godfried: Allegory of Hope  64 Nicolaes: Christ Blessing the Children  209 Maffei, Francesco  53 Maîtrise  138 Malo, Vincent  66 Manet: Study of Lola de Valence  323 Manfrin, Girolamo  132 Manfrin collection  231 Mann, Horace  103, 107, 117, 122 Man Ray  255, 256, 258 Mantegna, Andrea  121 Maratta, Carlo  140 Marchand, Prosper  120 marchand amateur  230 marchands merciers  79, 96, 214, 216, 217 Margaret of Austria  33 Marie-Antoinette, Queen of France  143, 201 Mariette, Pierre Jean  146 Marino, Giambattista: Galeria  51–2 Marlborough collection  233 Sarah, Duchess of  81 Marly  81 Marolì, Domenico  52 works by  55 Marteau, François  120 Martin, Guillaume  95, 137, 141–3 Masini, Lorenzo  121 Masonic  114, 117, 122 Masson, André  256, 257, 258 paintings in Éluard sale  258 Matsuki, Bunkio  170 Mazzolino, Ludovico  178

Mazzoni, Sebastiano  50–1, 53 McIlhenny, Henry  319, 320, 321 Mecholi, Giuseppe  69 medals  34, 78, 81, 113–15, 118, 120, 219, 300 dealer in  300 sold by Beurdeley  219 Medici  4, 38–9 Cardinal Leopoldo de’  49–50 collection  37, 187 Cosimo I (Duke)  34 Cosimo III  115, 140 Francesco de’  37 Gian Gastone  117 Meganck, Renier  62 Meissonier, Ernest  269, 289 Memmo, Andrea  132 Menabuoi, Giusto de  131 Mengs, Anton Raphael  105 Merck, Johann Heinrich  154 Metropolitan Museum of Art, see New York Metsu, Gabriel  161, 208 The Letter Writer Surprised  208 Metzger, Giovanni Battista  186, 187 Michiel, Michele di  40 Middlesex, Charles Sackville, Earl of  117 Milan  36, 175, 179, 234 Milano, Giovanni da: Christ and the Virgin Enthroned with Six Saints  233 miniature(s)  37–8, 109, 161 Miseroni family  36 Mocetto, Gerolamo  232, 236 Monbro  220 Mond Ludwig  232 Sir Alfred  298, 299 Montecuccoli, Raimondo, Count  68 Montfaucon, Bernard de  115, 122 Montor, Jean-Alexis-François Artaud de  93 Monzello, Hans Adam von  66–8 Morell, Gerhard  157 Morelli, Giovanni  171, 190, 230–2, 236 Moretto da Brescia (known as)  172, 185, 188–94, 234

 Index 381 Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints Anthony Abbot and Sebastian  189 Madonna with Child and the Four Latin Church Fathers  185, 191 Portrait of a Man  234 Santa Giustina  189 Morgan, John Pierpont  222, 269–71, 281, 319 Moroni, Giovanni Battista  188, 234 Mount, William Sidney  286, 287 Mulgrave, Lord  163 Munch, Edward  316 Mündler, Otto  190, 208, 209, 229 Murphy, Edward  106 Murray, Charles Fairfax  171, 235, 236 Murray, Margaret  103 Museo Stoschiano  113–14, 117–18, 122 Muti, family  108 Muzell, Heinrich Wilhelm  117–18 Nalesso, Giovanni Battista  131 Nani Federico  55 Giovanni  49, 55 Naples  24–5, 103, 107–8, 115 Palazzo Sessa  108 Napoleon  165, 174, 175 Napoleonic era  175, 180 Napoleonic wars  178, 216 Natoire, Charles-Joseph  105 Natter, Lorenz  119–20 Naturalia  4, 26, 113, 118 Naumann, Johann Heinrich  153 Nazarenes  186, 190, 191, 192 Nazari, Nazario: Portrait of Andrea Tron  234 Nelli, Plautilla  177 Nelson Atkins Museum, see Kansas City Nesbitt, Sir John, sale  163 Netscher, Caspar: The Lacemaker  161 Neuhaus, Schloss (residence of Sprinzenstein family)  40 Neve, Franciscus de, the Younger  62 Newcastle, Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of  81 New York Frick Archives  69, 93

Frick Collection  203, 208, 276 Metropolitan Museum of Art  171, 244, 268, 269, 276, 290, 294, 320, 323 Union League Club  289, 290 Nichols, J. C.  309–12 Nieuwerkerke, Alfred Emilien O’Hara, comte de  209, 216, 219 Noailles, Charles and Marie de  256, 257, 259, 260 Noailles, marechal de  139 Norris, Richard  107 Norton, Charles Eliot  269, 319, 322 Nottingham, Earl of  115 Notzing, Jakob Schrenck von  36 Odam, Girolamo  115 Oesterreich, Matthias  158 Oggiono, Marco, d’: Virgin and Child  231, 232 O’Keeffe, Georgia  316 Oliphant, Laurence  109 Oppenheim, Henry  246 Orcagna, Andrea: Attributed to  177, 178 Orléans, Philippe II, Duke of (Regent of France)  115, 121 Orléans collection  162, 187 Orsini, Cardinal  106 Ossenbeeck, Jan van  62 Ostade, van  140 Overbeck  192, see also Nazarenes Oxford Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of  81 Oxford University  81 Paderni, Camillo  108 Padua  129 Baptistery  132 Paillet, Alexandre-Joseph  5, 94, 161 Palamedes  160 Palatine, Madame, ElizabethCharlotte  115 Palma, Vecchio  130, 232 portrait  23 Paris  81–2, 91, 96, 115, 118, 121, 138–9, 144, 147, 151 Académie de Saint-Luc  138, 142–3 Au Sans Pareil, bookshop  253

382

Index

Centre Pompidou, Musée National d’Art Moderne  256 Exposition Retrospective  204, 208 Expositions Universelles (Universal Exhibitions)  7, 169, 214, 267, 269, 291 Exposition Universelle (1867)  201, 220, 288, 289 Faubourg Saint Honoré  91, 204 French Academy in Rome (see Rome) Hôtel Drouot  169, 172, 201, 209, 210, 218, 252, 257, 258, 259, 271, 289 Louvre Museum  139, 171, 207, 219, 220, 281, 321, 323 Palais Royal  81, 91, 162 Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture  82, 137–8, 141–4, 146–7 Rue Sainte Honoré  78, 214 Parker, John  104–6 Parma, Duke of  119 Parmigianino  12 Parsons, Harold Woodbury  273, 282, 306–13 agreement with Cleveland Museum  308 friendship with Ned Parsons  306–8 negotiations with Duveen  309–10 purchase of the fake Greek Athena  313 Passamani  190, 191 Passavant, Johan David  185–94 Kunstreise durch England und Belgien  188 Rafael Von Urbino und Sein Vater Giovanni Santi  191 Patch, Thomas  103–5, 108 Pellegrini, Carlo  69 Pembroke, Earl of  115 sale  218 Pereire, Isaac  203–5, 208 Perkins, Frederick Mason  269 Pforr, Franz  190, see also Nazarenes Picabia, Francis  256–9 Picasso, Pablo  258 Demoiselles d’Avignon  257 Young Woman Holding a Cigarette  272

Piccini, Gaetano  116 Pierre, Jean-Baptiste Marie  141–3 Piles, Roger de  139 Piombo, Sebastiano del: Portrait of a Young Roman Woman  230 Piranesi  104–7 Lettere di Giustificazione  106 Pitati, Bonifazio de  231 Pliny  118 Poland  121, 138, 140, 270, 316 Polignac, Cardinal Melchior de  116–17, 120, 139 Pollak, Ludwig  295, 299, 301, 302 Pomfrett, Sophia, Couness Grenville  103 Pontormo  40 Pooley Robert & Thomas  79 Poussin, Nicolas  78–9, 81 The Holy Family with St John and St Elizabeth  79–80 Massacre of the Innocents  187 Moses Sweetening the Waters of Marah  77 Tancred and Erminia  81 Triumph of Bacchus  312 Pozzo, Cassiano del  119 Pozzo, Giovanni Battista  120 Prandegg, Victor Jacob, Count (Baron)  63, 66–8 Preißler, Johann Justin  116, 121 Achilles Among the Daughters of Lycomedes  121 Prince Regent, see George IV Prior, Matthew  79 Prud’hon, Pierre-Paul  320 Prussia(n)  157, 174–9, 187, 193 Frederick II of  119 Frederick William I of  121 Purgstall, Johann Ernst, Count  63 Radeke, Eliza  319, 323 Raphael  109, 119, 121, 176, 178, 188, 190, 191 Ansidei Madonna  230 Cartoons  79 Fornarina (see Piombo, Sebastiano del) Madonna of the Candelabra  187

 Index 383 Sistine Madonna  179 Raphael, Oscar  246, 247 Ransonnet  191 Read, Katherine  107 Regency (Great Britain)  160, 164 Reghellini, Marziale  175 Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn  140, 141, 146, 156, 203, 204, 210, 308, 319 Christ Blessing the Children (see Maes) Hermit at Devotion  161 Polish Rider  270 Portrait of a Young Man  310–12 Self-Portrait [Cologne]  207 Self-Portrait [Frick]  273 The Shipbuilder and his Wife  164 Young Man in a Black Beret  311 Rémy, Pierre  5, 92 Renieri, Nicolò (Nicolas Regnier)  52–4 replicas  10, 50, 176, 233 reproductions  79, 254 Republic of Letters  93, 113–14 Richardson Jonathan, junior  77 Jonathan, senior  77 Richter, Jean Paul  231, 232 Ridolfi, Carlo  53, 132 Le meraviglie dell’arte  53, 130–1 Rigaud, Hyacinthe  137–41, 143, 146–7 Self-portrait with palette  140 Rock-crystal  36 Rockefeller, John D.  321 Rome  176, 233, 302, 313 Academy of S. Luke  192 the Cafe Anglais  104 Campo Marzio  106 Casa Guarnieri  108 French Academy in Rome  105 Palazzo Albertoni  299 Palazzo Frascara  109 Piazza Navona  104, 109 Pyramid of Cestius  109 Scottish Catholic Mission, College  104 vicolo del Merangolo  117

Villa Magnani  109 Rosenberg, Léonce and Paul  257, 260, 277 Rosicrucianism  120 Rossi, Girolamo  120 Rosso, Bernardino  33 Rothschild Baron Ferdinand de  219 Baron James de  203, 204 Baron Maurice de  280 Charlotte de  221 Lionel Nathan  221 Salomon de  204, 218 Rothschild collection  323 Royal Naval College (Greenwich)  77 Rubens, Peter Paul  27, 67, 121, 130 Andromeda  230 A River  141 Centaurs  163 Landscape with St. Hubertus (Eustachius)  67 Pan and Syrinx  63, 64 Rumohr, Carl Friedrich von  186, 187, 190 Rutter, Edward  220 Sachs, Paul  319, 321, 323 Saint-Germain, Gault de  157 Salvini, Francesco Maria  115 Sandrart, Joachim von  121 Sangallo, Giovanni Battista da  119 Sanquirico Alessandro  179 Sanssouci  119, 158 Santi, Giovanni  178–9, 191 Saracchi, Giovanni Ambrogio  36 Sasso, Giovanni Maria  94, 95, 129, 131–2 Memorie  129 Pittura veneta, Venezia Pittrice  129–33 Savoldo, Mary Magdalene  234 Savoy Prince Eugene of  60, 115 Victor-Amedee, Prince de Carignan  139–41 Saxony Augustus II (“the Strong”)  116, 121, 141

384 Augustus III  138–41, 157 Scaligero, Bartolommeo  53 Schoor, Lodewijk van  296 Scott and Fowles  316, 318, 322 Sedelmayer, Charles  170 Seligman, Charles and Brenda  246, 247 Seligmann & Cie  223, 277, 318 Jacques  222 Sera, Paolo Del  49 Seville  24, 28 Sèvres porcelain  216 Shanghai  242 Sirleti, Flavio  119 Sittinghausen, Adrian von  34 Sloane, Sir Hans  115 Slovenia  60 Smith John (British consul)  93 John (dealer)  7 Snayers, Louis  67 Solario, Andrea: A Man with a Pink  234 Somaglia, Giulio Cavazzi della  176 Somers, Lord John  95 Sotheby’s  152, 297 Soupault, Philippe  253 Soutine, Chaïm: Dead Fowl  82 Sparks, John  242 Shanghai office  242 Zie Soey Koo  242 Spence, William Blundell  234 Spinoza  120 Spitzer, Frédéric  220 Sprinzenstein Hans Albrecht von  23, 33–41 Hieronymus von  34 Städel Museum, see Frankfurt Stevens, George and Nina  282 Stockholm, Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities  246 Stosch, Philipp von  91, 92, 113–14, 116, 121 collection  118–19, 122 and florence  113, 117, 118 as patron  120 and Rome  115, 116, 122 Strange, John  92, 129–32 Strange, Robert  106

Index Strong, Eugénie Sellers  298–302 Stuart(s) Court  102, 109, 116, 122 Henry Benedict, Cardinal York  103 James, Pretender  102, 116 Styria(n)  60, 62–4, 66–9 Sublerass, Gioseppi  109 Suermondt, Bartholdt  207, 208, 209 Symonds, John  109 Tabula Peutingeriana  116 Talman, John  93 Tapissiers  96, 222 Tassaert, Philippe Joseph  95 Tassie, James  119 Teniers, David the Younger Gambling Scene at an Inn  161 Theatrum Pictorum (Theatre of Painting)  52, 61 Texier, Peter  153 Thierriat, Florentin  144 Thoré, Théophile (also known as W. Bürger)  170, 202–10 Alliance des Arts  202 Gazette des Beaux Arts (see Gazette des Beaux Arts) Paris-Guide  202 publication on Dutch museums  203 Thornhill, James  28, 77–82 Thurn, Count Franz von  33, 61 Tijou, Jean  81 Toledo Museum of Art (Ohio)  279, 281, 282 Tintoretto, Jacopo  54 Nativity  130 Titian  27, 130, 191, 308, 312 St. Peter Martyr  56 Tonagello, Johann  66, 69 Tonying  242 Toorenvliet, Jacob  62 Tooth, Arthur & Sons  170, 318 Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de  283 Trauttmansdorff, Sigmund Friedrich, Count  63, 68 Trevisani  140 Triva, Antonio  51–3 Trublet, Abbot  147 Tuscher, Markus  116, 120

 Index 385 Uhde, Wilhelm  257 unicorn horns  33 Universal Exhibitions, see Paris, Expositions universelles Utrecht, Adriaen van  63 Vanderbilt The Breakers, Newport Rhode Island  223 Cornelius  222 William Henry  208, 222 William Kissam  223, 291 Vasterhavons, Frans  64 Vecchia, Pietro della  52–3 vedutisti  132 Velazquez  27 Velde, Van de  63, 204 vendeurs d’estampes  96 Venice  26, 33, 40, 50, 52–6, 61, 69, 92, 95, 127, 129–33, 180, 230, 232, 234, 316 Biennale  316 Pisani collection  229 San Rocco  55 Santi Giovanni e Paolo  56 Scuola di San Girolamo (demolished)  132 Verci, Giambattista  131 Vermeer, Johannes  172, 179, 203, 205, 207–10 The Astronomer  207 Geographer  205 Officer and Laughing Girl  203, 206 Young Woman with a Pearl Necklace (Femme à la Toilette)  208 Vernon, James  79 Veronese  121, 130 Family of Darius before Alexander  229 Lot and his Daughters  140 Susanna Bathing  140 Versailles palace  3, 81, 121, 161, 296 Vienna  26, 40, 60–3, 68, 114–15, 117, 190 Vigna, Pietro della  116 Virtuoso  36, 94 Vitelli Alessandro  38

Chiappino  37 Savelli-Vitelli, Virginia  37 Vivarini, Alvise: St. Jerome  132 Vogtberg, Leopold von  66 Vos, De (Simon?) Triumphal Entry of Christ  67 Vrancx, Sebastian  66 Waagen, Gustav Friedrich  178, 189, 190 Wagensperg, Johann Balthasar and Sigmund  63 Waldegrave, James, 2nd Earl of  79–80 Wales, Prince of Frederick  119 George see George IV Walker, Thomas  81 Wallace, Sir Richard  216 Walpole Horace  117, 122 Robert  80 Walters Henry  321 William T.  269, 286–90, 321 Warren Ned  306–8 Sam  306 Watteau, Antoine  203 Gilles  203 Webb, John  220 Wechelen, Hans van Last Supper  64 Weimar  154 Duchess Anna Amalia  154 Weiß, Gasparo  178, 180 Whistler, James McNeil  170, 321, 323 Whiston, William  115 White, Herbert Silva  278, 279 White, William C.  244, 245, 248 Widmann  69 Wildens, Jan  63, 64 Wille, Johann Georg (Jean Georges)  137, 144–5 Wilton, Joseph  107 Winckelmann, Johann Joachim  114, 118–19 Winstanley, Thomas  87 Winthrop, Grenville  318–23

386 Wisselingh, Elbert Jan  7, 170 Wouwermans, Phillip  140, 145, 208 Wren, Christopher  81 Wright, James  129 Wunderkammer  94 Yamanaka, Sadajiro  170, 312 Yarmouth, see Hertford, 3rd Marquess Yunt Art Galleries  312

Index Zanetti, Antonio Maria Della pittura veneziana  132 Varie Pitture a fresco  131 Zanetti Collection  130 Zedler, Johann Heinrich: UniversalLexicon  155 Zie Soey Koo, see Sparks Zompini, Gaetano  131 Zucatto, Sebastiano  129

                         

Plate 1 Francesco Terzio (?), Archduke Ferdinand II of Tyrol, after 1557. Oil on canvas, 11 × 95 cm. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Photo Credit: KHMMuseumsverband.

Plate 2 Sigmund Elsässer, Hans Albrecht von Sprinzenstein on Horseback in the Kolowrat Wedding Codex, 1580. Coloured copperplate engraving, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Kunstkammer. Photo Credit: KHM-Museumsverband.

Plate 3  Jan Brueghel the Elder, Triumph of Death. c. 1597 Oil on canvas, 119 × 164 cm. Alte Galerie of the Universamuseum Joanneum, Graz. Courtesy Alte Galerie, Graz.

Plate 4  Godfried Maes, Allegory of Hope before 1700. Oil on canvas, 168.5 × 119 cm. Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Ljubljana. Courtesy SAZU, Ljubljana.

Plate 5  Nicolas Poussin, Tancred and Erminia. c. 1634 Oil on canvas, 75.5 × 99.7 cm. The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham. ©The Henry Barber Trust.

Plate 6  Allan Ramsay, Half-length portrait of Abbé Peter Grant c.1755. Black chalk, heightened with white on grey paper. 44.7 × 35.3 cm. Scottish National Gallery. © Scottish National Gallery.

Plate 7  Pier Leone Ghezzi, Il congresso dei migliori antiquari di Roma, 1725. Pen and chalk on paper, 27 × 39.5 cm. Albertina, Vienna. ©Albertina, Vienna. Used by kind permission.

Plate 8  Athlete, Roman engraved garnet gem signed by Gnaios, 30–20 BCE. Walters Art Museum Baltimore. ©The Walters Art Museum.

Plate 9  Giovanni Battista Foggini, The Flaying of Marsyas, before 1716. Bronze, 79.7 × 39.4 × 29.2 cm. Victoria and Albert Museum, London, A.2-1967. ©Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Plate 10  Elisabeth-Louise Vigée-Lebrun. La Paix ramenant l’Abondance. 1780. Oil on canvas, 103 × 133 cm. Paris, Musée du Louvre. ©Réunion des musées nationaux, Paris.

Plate 11  David Teniers the Younger, Gambling Scene at an Inn, late 1640s. Oil on panel, 40.2 × 57.9 cm. Wallace Collection, London. Courtesy The Trustees of The Wallace Collection.

Plate 12  Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn, ‘The Shipbuilder and his Wife’: Jan Rijcksen and his Wife, Griet Jans, 1633. Oil on canvas, 113.8 × 169.8 cm. Royal Collection Trust. © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, 2020.

Plate 13  Agnolo Gaddi, triptych, 1388. Oil on poplar, 186 × 72 cm, 189 × 70 cm, 186 × 170 cm. Gemäldegalerie, Berlin ©. Staatliche Museen Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Christian Schwarz.

Plate 14  Alessandro Bonvicino, known as Moretto da Brescia, Madonna with Child and the four Latin Church Fathers c. 1540–1550. Oil on canvas, 290.4 × 195.8 cm. Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main. © Städel Museum, Frankfurt.

Plate 15  Nicolaes Maes, Christ Blessing the Children, 1652–1653. Oil on canvas, 218 × 154 cm. National Gallery, London. © National Gallery.

Plate 16 Project of Candelabras for The Breakers by Alfred Beurdeley, c. 1895. Graphite, ink and wash on paper. Courtesy of the author.

Plate 17  Giovanni Battista Moroni, Knight with his Jousting Helmet, 1554–1558. Oil on canvas, 202.3 × 106.5 cm. National Gallery, London. © National Gallery.

Plate 18  Niccolò di Buonaccorso, Marriage of the Virgin, c. 1380. Egg tempera on poplar, 50.9 × 33 cm. National Gallery, London. © National Gallery.

Plate 19  Porcelain dish with monochrome cobalt blue glaze. Ming dynasty, mark and reign of Wanli (1573–1620). Part of a consignment to Bluett’s by W. F. Collins in 1926 and sold to Francis Edward Howard Paget. © British Museum.

Plate 20 Sir William Orpen, R.H.A., R.A., Portrait of Roland Knoedler. Signed, dedicated and dated upper right: ‘TO ROLAND KNOEDLER/WITH REGARDS AND THANKS/WILLIAM ORPEN/1922.’ Oil on canvas. 91.4 × 76.8 cm. Sold at Christie’s, London, The 10th Anniversary Irish Sale, 12 May 2006, lot 62. Private collection. Photo © Christie’s Images/Bridgeman Images.

Plate 21  Paul Helleu, Portrait of Belle da Costa Greene. 1913. Black and white chalk on paper, 675 × 534 mm. Inscribed and signed in black chalk at left, ‘Helleu’. The Morgan Library & Museum. Bequest of Belle da Costa Greene. Photographic credit: The Morgan Library & Museum, New York.

Plate 22  Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Marcelle Lender Dancing the Bolero in ‘Chilpéric’. 1895–6. Oil on canvas, 145 × 149 cm. National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, HayWhitney Collection.

Plate 23  Ignacio Leon y Escosura, Auction Sale in Clinton Hall, New York, 1876. Oil on canvas 22 3/8 × 31 5/8”. Gift of the artist. Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Plate 24 Rosalba Carriera, Personification of America, c. 1720. Pastel on paper mounted on canvas, 43.5 × 34 cm. Photo credit. Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum/Art Resource NY.

Plate 25  Nicolas Poussin, The Triumph of Bacchus, 1635–1636. Oil on canvas, 50 3/8 × 59 3/4 inches (128 × 151.8 cm). The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri. Purchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust. © John Lamberton.