Lugt's Répertoire Online

Abstract

Lugt's Répertoire Online, created by IDC Publishers in close co-operation with the Netherlands Institute for Art History RKD in The Hague, is an impressive resource tool and welcome addition for researchers who require information located within the complex arena of auction house art sales catalogs. Also referred to as art sales catalogs, auction catalogs are valuable sources of information on the provenance of art objects, the history of collecting, and historical market trends. Locating auction sales information can be one of the more challenging tasks for a researcher. There are literally thousands of auction house sales catalogs produced worldwide each year, and it is often difficult for a researcher to pinpoint which catalog holds the desired information. Researchers usually turn to union lists of sales catalogs, such as Frits Lugt's Répertoire des catalogues de ventes publiques. Lugt's Répertoire Online, the first volume of which was released by IDC in January 2003, is the electronic version of Lugt's Répertoire, a union list of sales catalogs that has been critical to researchers for more than half a century. This immense printed work in 4 volumes appeared between 1938 and 1987, and although it has been out of print for years, Lugt's Répertoire is still one of the most widely consulted art historical reference works as it essentially functions as a finding aid for art sales catalogs. In the print version of the Répertoire, which covers the period 1600 to 1925, Lugt lists more than 100,000 art sales catalogs from libraries in Europe and the United States. He not only describes the collections of the larger libraries, such as the Paris Bibliothèque de l'Art et de l'Archéologie, but also catalogs the contents of minor collections. Volume 1 of the Lugt's Répertoire Online lists catalogs from the period 1600 to 1825. Volume 2 (1826–1860) has recently been added and therefore more than doubling the current number of records, and the additional volumes will follow sometime soon thereafter.