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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 December 2016
Over the course of the eighteenth century the Austrian Netherlands witnessed the emergence of specialised art auctions. In this article we argue that both the evolution of the auctions and of the prices paid for works of art at the auctions can only be understood as a response to changes in consumer culture during the eighteenth century. Although auctions rapidly gained in importance as a commercial arena through which Old Masters could be resold in Antwerp and Brussels, the prices paid for art saw only modest movement during the 1700s, but then collapsed at the end of the century. By analysing both how local demand for art in Austrian Netherlands failed to absorb the abundant supply of paintings during this period, and how this created a flourishing export market, the study reported here maps the mechanisms that ensured the – often permanent – movement of Flanders’ artistic legacy to collections and museums abroad.
Aux Pays-Bas autrichiens, au cours du dix-huitième siècle, les ventes aux enchères se développent et un marché spécialisé de l'art apparaît. Dans cet article, les auteurs soutiennent que l’évolution des ventes et celle des prix payés pour acheter les œuvres d'art aux enchères ne peuvent être comprises que comme réponse à l’évolution de la culture de consommation au long du XVIIIe siècle. Bien que les ventes aux enchères aient rapidement gagné en importance comme arène commerciale permettant aux tableaux de maîtres d’être revendus à Anvers et à Bruxelles, les prix payés pour les œuvres d'art ne connurent qu'un mouvement modeste au cours des années 1700, puis ils s'effondrèrent à la fin du dix-huitième siècle. En analysant à la fois comment la demande locale pour l'art aux Pays-Bas autrichiens échoua à absorber une offre abondante de toiles de maîtres à cette époque, et comment cela créa un marché d'exportation florissant, les auteurs démontent les mécanismes qui ont généré un mouvement quasi permanent d'alimentation des collections et musées à l’étranger, en œuvres d'art appartenant au patrimoine des Flandres.
Im Laufe des 18. Jahrhunderts entwickelten sich in den österreichischen Niederlanden spezialisierte Kunstauktionen. In diesem Aufsatz vertreten wir die These, dass sich sowohl die Entwicklung der Auktionen als auch die Preise, die bei diesen Auktionen für Kunstwerke gezahlt wurden, nur als Antwort auf Veränderungen in der Konsumentenkultur des 18. Jahrhunderts verstehen lassen. Obwohl die Auktionen als kommerzielle Arena für den Wiederverkauf von Alten Meistern in Antwerpen und Brüssel rasch an Bedeutung zunahmen, bewegten sich die Preise, die für Kunst gezahlt wurden, im 18. Jahrhundert zunächst nur wenig, brachen aber am Ende des Jahrhunderts ein. Wir analysieren zum einen, wieso die lokale Nachfrage nach Kunst in den österreichischen Niederlanden das reichhaltige Angebot in diesem Zeitraum nicht absorbieren konnte, zum andern, wie daraus ein blühender Exportmarkt entstand, und können auf diese Weise die Mechanismen aufzeigen, die dafür sorgten, dass das künstlerische Erbe Flanderns – oft für immer – in ausländische Sammlungen und Museen verschoben wurde.
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13 For example in 1695 the Antwerp noblewoman Anna Maria De Neuf, wife of renowned printer Balthasar Moretus III, bought large amounts of fabric and clothing on the Friday Market. Sorber, F., ‘Kledij in Antwerpse archieven in de zeventiende eeuw’, Antwerpen in de XVIIde eeuw (Antwerp, 1989), 479Google Scholar.
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15 The four Antwerp auctions included in our database were held in the houses of deceased art owners and averaged 289 lots of paintings, in contrast to an average of 127 lots sold at sales held in public auction halls. The average price of 68 guilders per painting raised at auctions held in the deceased owners’ houses was not statistically different from the average price of 67 guilders obtained per artwork in the auction halls (t-test for independent samples 0.06, p = 0.955).
16 Of the 61 Antwerp sales with a surviving catalogue, 20 (33 per cent) took place in the house of the deceased owner of the paintings, whereas in Brussels 56 out of 107 (52 per cent) of auctions took place in the deceased owners’ houses. There were considerably more auctions in Brussels than in Antwerp when the location of the auction was not mentioned in the catalogue: 14 catalogues (13 per cent) versus 2 catalogues (3 per cent). In Antwerp art auctions were more likely to take place in public sales spaces.
17 In Brussels, where the average collection in our database is smaller than in Antwerp, the collections auctioned in public do not appear to have been smaller than the collections sold ‘at home’. The average price of paintings offered for purchase in the house of a deceased owner was much higher (101 guilders) than the 36 guilders paid, on average, for a painting sold in an auction hall (t-test for independent samples = 2.73, p = 0.013). The average price differed in Antwerp, where there were no significant price discrepancies between auction places (see endnote 16).
18 On the Vrijdagmarkt, Van Lemens obtained a median yield of 189 guilders per sale from 22 sales held in public, from 14 sales held in other locations his yield was 489 guilders. City of Antwerp Archives (hereafter CAA), Ancien Régime, Lawsuits 7 #560: Oudekleerkopersambacht – Van Lemens, 1746.
19 CAA, Notary Archives, Notary J. B. Gerardi, N 1665/13: Nalatenschap Jean Francois van Soest.
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21 The auction catalogues dating from before 1758 used, on average, 38 words to describe each lot up for auction. From 1758 to 1767, descriptions were still relatively modest at 44 words. Between 1768 and 1777, the average number of words used grew spectacularly to 172, and from 1778 to 1787 more than 220 words per lot were used. At the end of the eighteenth century the extent of the catalogue information dropped considerably to an average of 89 words, though still more than twice as extensive as pre-1758.
22 This painting by Rubens was described as lot 118 in the Brussels catalogue of Joseph Sansot's art collection. The piece was sold for 40 guilders to Mr Regaus. An annotated copy of this catalogue can be found at the Netherlands Institute of Art History in The Hague.
23 The collection of Mme Regaus (or that of her father or spouse) came on the market in 1775, and the painting by Rubens was described as lot A0003. De Angeli eventually purchased the work for 34 guilders. An annotated copy of the catalogue can be found in the library of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels. In view of the fact that authentic paintings by Rubens usually changed owners for 1,000 guilders or more in local auction markets, the catalogue information was probably inaccurate.
24 Wall, ‘The English auction’, 4. A lesser-known but equally important London auctioneer active in the 1730s was Christopher Cock, who specialised in public sales of real estate. Learmount, B., A history of the auction (Iver, 1985), 22Google Scholar.
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26 C. Guichard, ‘From social event to urban spectacle: auctions in late eighteenth-century Paris’, in B. Blondé et al. eds., Fashioning old and new, 203–18.
27 In view of the fact that we wished to research the prices of the artworks and the demand for paintings, the presence of handwritten annotations of buyers and prices was an important initial criterion when selecting our corpus of sources. Only art auctions with one or more extant catalogues that contained the names of all, or nearly all, the buyers and the prices they paid were chosen.
28 Our database contains data on all the sales made at 26 auctions in Brussels and 15 auctions in Antwerp. At 106 guilders, the average price of paintings from the Brussels collections was significantly higher than those in Antwerp, where a painting was, on average, auctioned for 71 guilders. The difference in price is statistically significant (p = 0.000). The average total value of the collections sold in Antwerp, 11,548 guilders, was not statistically different, however, from the average total value of 11,916 guilders from collections sold in Brussels (p = 0.94). See Appendix 1.
29 Where, for the sake of readability, the following sections refer to ‘paintings’, the reader needs to be aware that actually ‘lots’ are being discussed. Of the 5,500 sales transactions in our database 389 refer to paintings that were sold as a pair. There were only 36 transactions where the lot was composed of more than two paintings.
30 Regarding the size of the collections offered, the first quartile lies at 52 lots of paintings, the median at 94, and the third quartile at 209. At the largest auction more than 500 lots were auctioned off. The bias in the selection of auction catalogues is demonstrated by comparing the number of paintings in the auctioned collections to the average number of paintings per private owner in both cities: 25 to 28 paintings for the more wealthy leaving an estate in Antwerp, and at 28 pieces in well-to-do households in Brussels. Blondé, ‘Art and economy’, 379–91; De Laet, Brussel binnenskamers, 274.
31 The sample includes 26 catalogues from Brussels and 15 catalogues from Antwerp (64 per cent vs. 36 per cent), whereas a total of 107 eighteenth-century catalogues survive from Brussels, vs. 61 for Antwerp (65 per cent: 35 per cent).
32 Blondé, B., Een economie met verschillende snelheden: Ongelijkheden in de opbouw en ontwikkeling van het Brabantse stedelijke netwerk (c. 1750–c. 1790) (Brussels, 1999)Google Scholar; De Laet, Brussel binnenskamers.
33 An average Antwerp auction yielded 11,548 guilders in prices of 1739 with a median value of 8,769 guilders. In Brussels the average auction yielded 11,916 guilders, and the median value was 5,223, although the Wilcoxon rank sum test did not yield a statistically significant difference (Ws = 504; p = 256). There is a similar picture in regard to the median prices fetched for the items within each collection. Paintings in a median Antwerp collection reached a median price of 20.5 guilders, while the median Brussels collection yielded a median price for paintings of 26.0. This difference, again, was not statistically significant (Ws = 298.5; p = 0.655).
34 Michel, P., Le commerce du tableau à Paris dans la seconde moitié du 18e siècle: acteurs et pratiques (Villeneuve d'Ascq, 2007), 280–1Google Scholar.
35 We succeeded in tracking down the artist's date of death for 3,525 lots.
36 In total, our sample consisted of 5,557 paintings for sale, out of which some 1,235 (c. 20 per cent) were anonymous works (1,135). For a further 813 (c. 15 per cent), it was not possible to decipher the eighteenth-century attribution, as the descriptions given were vague, giving simple family names such as ‘Breughel’ or ‘Wouwerman’, which could have referred to any one of several individual artists.
37 Concerning the limited presence of Italian art in the Southern and Northern Netherlands, see Veen, H. T., ‘Uitzonderlijke verzamelingen: Italiaanse kunst en sculptuur in Nederland’, in Bergvelt, E. and Kistemaker, R. eds., De wereld binnen handbereik: Nederlandse kunst- en rariteitenverzamelingen, 1585–1735 (Zwolle, 1992), 102–16Google Scholar; Mijnlieff, E., ‘Ik weet niet wat te zeggen … Italiaanse kunst in de Nederlanden 1680–1795’, Incontri 8 (1993), 159–62Google Scholar.
38 For more on dubious attributions in auction catalogues see: K. Jonckheere, ‘Supply and demand: some notes on the economy of seventeenth-century connoisseurship’, in A. Tummers and K. Jonckheere eds., Art market and connoisseurship, 69–95; Altes, E. Korthals and Ketelsen, T., ‘Die Gemälde von Baburen, Ter Brugghen und Honthorst auf dem deutschen Kunstmarkt im 18. Jahrhundert: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Kennerschaft’, in Sander, J. et al. eds., Caravaggio in Holland (Frankfurt am Main, 2009), 95–102 Google Scholar.
39 Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library Antwerp (hereafter HCHLA), Gazette van Antwerpen, 6 July 1784.
40 Library of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (hereafter LRMFAA), Catalogue, anonymous sale [Charlé, etc.], 8 July 1784, Kolveniershof.
41 When the paintings’ subject categories were cross-tabulated against the sub-periods of this research project, the χ² was statistically significant (p = 0.000), although the Cramér's V obtained was an extremely small 0.107. In other words there were no significant changes in the distribution of the subject matter of the paintings being offered for sale at the auctions studied.
42 To identify patterns that might indicate a shift in taste, the median price per time period and per topic was calculated as a percentage of the median price for all paintings in our database. The median price was used because extreme values sometimes had a large impact on the average value.
43 Montias raised a similar concern when he noted the conspicuous absence of portraits in sales of the Amsterdam Orphan Chamber in the early seventeenth century. See Montias, J. M., Art at auction in 17th-century Amsterdam (Amsterdam, 2002), 88Google Scholar.
44 These eight themes were carefully chosen on the basis of categories devised in the course of earlier research on the Low Countries; see Bourgeois, I., ‘Dekoratieve voorwerpen en binnenhuisversiering te Gent in de 18de eeuw: Vloer- en wandbekleding, gordijen, schilderijn, spiegels’, Oostvlaamse zanten 63, 2 (1988), 93Google Scholar; Blondé, ‘Art and economy’, 388; De Laet, Brussels binnenskamers, 284. The ‘scapes’ category is comprised of paintings in which the background prevails over any activity, human or otherwise, which is depicted; it therefore includes seascapes, cityscapes, landscapes, etc.
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46 Perhaps this question should be posed the other way around. What is intriguing, after all, is that religious pieces continued to hold a relatively good position in the price hierarchy until the end of the eighteenth century.
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48 For this segment we have derived methodological inspiration from among others: Montias, Art at auction; Van Miegroet, ‘The market for Netherlandish paintings’.
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51 We have already demonstrated that the supply of paintings remained constant in terms of content. The stability of prices does not, therefore, hide any qualitative shifts in the supply.
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55 In our database all buyers known to have purchased 14 or more lots of paintings turn out to have been particularly active in the auction market in their place of residence. We reject the null hypothesis (p = 0.000), and Cramér's V (0.77) points to a pronounced connection between place of residence and auction.
56 H0 is rejected (p = 0.000), and Cramér's V is very large at 0.65. Even amongst the 6 top buyers who each purchased 75 or more paintings, a geographical divide was still very marked: for example, Huibregts and Lauriolle bought all their paintings exclusively in Antwerp and Brussels, respectively. H0 is rejected (p = 0.000); Cramér's V 0.59.
57 This is the case even when the number of purchases rather than the number of auctions attended is included in the analysis. Even when the 12 buyers who attended 10 or more auctions are excluded, H0 is still convincingly rejected (p = 0.000), and it is evident there was a clear connection between the place where the dealers and collectors were based and the place where they bought the most paintings (Cramér's V 0.48). If we expand our selection to include individuals who were active as buyers at more than one auction, then Cramér's V even rises to 0.74.
58 Blondé and De Laet, ‘Owning paintings’, 68–84.
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65 Scheelen, W., ‘Het lot van de schilderijencollecties van de Zuidnederlandse Jezuïetencolleges na de opheffing van de Orde in 1773’, Jaarboek van het Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen (1988), 261–341 Google Scholar.
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70 Guichard reaches the same conclusion for the Parisian auction scene of the 1780s, which she labelled a local dealer's market, in contrast to the buyer's market of auctions in the 1760s and 1770s. C. Guichard, ‘Small worlds: the auction economy in the late eighteenth-century Paris art market’, in De Marchi and Raux, Moving Pictures, 236–56.
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73 E. Hauser, ‘The Amsterdam auctions market and resale in Paris recycling’, in De Marchi and Van Miegroet eds., Mapping markets, 402–4. A recent analytical exercise by De Marchi and Van Miegroet showed that there was a marked difference between the moving averages of prices per sale in Amsterdam and Paris during the 1750s to 1770s, with higher average prices in the French capital. Although this earlier analysis relates to our own hypothesis, the authors’ use of average auction prices instead of the individual price histories of paintings means that we cannot yet draw viable conclusions. See: De Marchi and Van Miegroet, ‘Containing uncertainty’, 139.