1 - Amateurs and the Art Market in Transition (c.1780–1830)

Summary

Chapter 1 traces the transformation of the art market across the revolutionary era, drawing on recent scholarship to consider how the French Revolution changed the availability of artworks and the cultural meanings attached to their preservation. These processes are observed through the writings of Pierre-Marie Gault de Saint-Germain, whose manuscripts and publications documented the demise of the old regime of curiosity he knew in his youth. The introduction argues that the eclipse of corporate institutions and the attack on the privileged orders changed the meaning of collecting by opening the title of amateur to much wider social constituency whilst nonetheless retaining the idea that the correct exercise of taste was even more important in the disorderly new circumstances. The chapter traces the emergence of dealers in art and curiosities across post-revolutionary Paris and argues that the revamped category of the amateur was simultaneously dependent upon but hostile to these new commercial forces.