Art Dealers Research Articles

“How Our Heritage is Looted”: Legal Meaning-Making, Cultural Property, and Customs Enforcement in Nigeria, 1938–79

Abstract This article sets out to explain why Nigeria was unable to prevent the loss of heritage objects in the 1960s and 1970s. Obvious answers to this question would include the limited enforcement capacity of the African state and the complacency of European and North American art dealers. “How Our Heritage Is Looted” argues, however, that a colonial legal category, namely “antiquity,” played a key role in creating an ineffective enforcement regime for cultural property theft. The mismatch between the ordinary meaning of the term “antiquity,” denoting a remnant of an ancient civilization, and the kinds of modern crafts that the state wanted to protect ultimately resulted in the inability of Nigeria’s colonial preservation statute to convey clear rules to customs officers and museum curators about what exporters could take out of the country. Nigeria’s heritage law thus constituted a project of legal meaning-making whose failure facilitated illicit commerce.

Collecting before and after the October Revolution: the Archive of Nadezhda Dobychina

Abstract Dobychina’s name and her Art Bureau are mentioned in the bibliography dedicated to the history of modernism thanks to the “Last Futurist Exhibition. 0,10” which was held there in December, 1915–January, 1916. However, it should be noted though that Dobychina hardly belonged to the radical avant-gardists. Her interests as a collector and a curator in the pre-revolutionary years included artists of the World of Art and the Blue Rose groups, but she also had in her possession some artworks by Natal’ia Goncharova, Mikhail Larionov, David Burliuk, Natan Al’tman, Marc Chagall, Wassily Kandinsky. The documents from the Dobychina’s archive, kept at the State Russian library, prove that she played an important role in the art field and acted as an art dealer both before and after the October revolution. In the early 1920s, she was in charge of the exhibition departments of the several institutions in Petrograd (Leningrad), from 1932 to 1934 she worked as a senior researcher at the State Russian Museum; after that she moved to Moscow, where she headed the Art Department of the Revolution Museum. Throughout these turbulent years she tried to keep her art collection. The three collection inventories, compiled in 1919, 1924 and 1930, show that some artworks constituted the collection’s integral part and not intended for selling. The most striking paintings and graphics by Mikhail Vrubel’, Valentin Serov, Viktor Borisov-Musatov, Dmitriĭ Stelletsky, Alexandre Benois, Martiros Sar’ian, apparently, belonged to Dobychina for decades and were sold mostly after her death to the famous Soviet collectors – Solomon Shuster, Aram Abramian, Aleksandr Miasnikov, and Valeriĭ Dudakov.

Nadezhda Dobychina (1884–1950)

Abstract The opening of the first commercial art gallery in Russia by Nadezhda Dobychina (1884–1950) heralded surprising female dominance in the national art business sector, which appears even more remarkable considering that up until the early 1910s art dealers were virtually absent from the archaically pre-capitalistic Russian art market. On that account Dobychina’s Art Bureau, which opened in St. Petersburg in October 1911 was an entirely pioneering business project. Dobychina laid the groundwork for several innovative approaches which foreshadowed many aspects of modern gallery practice. Exhibitions in her Art Bureau were accompanied by talks, disputes, concerts and performances, bringing artists and public in a close contact with each other and thus providing a useful forum for the exchange of views and ideas. Dobychina’s Art Bureau aimed at showcasing the most original and distinctive artistic trends in Russia and abroad, ranging from realism, symbolism and post- impressionism to provocatively cutting-edge avant-garde. In a short span of less than a decade she organised the first exhibitions in Russia of Wassily Kandinsky and Marc Chagall and famously exhibited Malevich’s Black Square in the ground-breaking 0.10 exhibition, which was held at the Bureau in 1915. Over the years Dobychina has also assembled an important collection which included works of the World of Art and Avant-garde artists. The Art Bureau emerged as the most influential and ideologically independent centre of the contemporary art in Russia, which in turn secured artistic dialogue between Russia and Western Europe.

Art Market as a Factor in Shaping the Artistic Environment of Ukraine: Institutional Foundations and Development Prospects

The purpose of the article. The article is devoted to the influence of the leading persons and institutions of the Ukrainian art market on the formation of the circle of the most famous figures in the artistic environment, the dominant trends in the artistic life of the country, the tastes of the public, as well as the growing influence of representatives of the art business on the activities of state institutions in the field of culture. The methodology of the work is based on the application of methods of observation, analysis and generalisation, as well as the structural-functional method, considering the art market and the artistic environment as closely related social phenomena. A sociological approach to art as a collective activity is applied, in which not only artists are involved, but a large network of other participants in cultural life and the art market. The scientific novelty of the work consists in the study of the role of local art business in shaping the structure of the contemporary artistic environment of Ukraine. For the first time, the question of how decisive is the influence of the participants of the Ukrainian art market (primarily – art dealers, collectors and institutions related to them) on the formation of a certain hierarchical ranking of artists in the Ukrainian art environment on representatives of the mainstream and the rest of other, less well-known figures was highlighted, a significant part of which is, so to speak, on the periphery of cultural life; the impact of the art market on public tastes and the activities of state bodies in the field of culture is also outlined. Until now, the topic of close interdependence of the art world and the art market has been avoided in the Ukrainian art history discourse. Conclusions. The art market selects artists who become the most famous figures in Ukrainian artistic life and get the opportunity to represent the country at the international level. The art market shapes public tastes; the most successful participants of the art market (primarily art dealers and collectors) seek to participate in the formation of state cultural policy by integrating into state institutions. In accordance with world trends, the private sector will gain more and more influence in the modern cultural life of the country, which will have both a number of advantages for the development of the Ukrainian art market and artistic life, as well as certain, potentially possible, disadvantages.

Women Art Dealers: Creating markets for modern art, 1940–1990

Women Art Dealers: Creating markets for modern art, 1940–1990

Understanding the Guanxi Culture in Chinese Art Market: Okada Kosho and Shanghai Art World in the Late-nineteenth Century

Shanghai art market had developed a strong international trade system since China was forced to have her gate ajar in the late-nineteenth century. In 1873, a Nagasaki doctor Okada Kosho (1821-1903) travelled to Shanghai and Suzhou. Thanks to the development of stochastic models for the analysis of social networks in contemporary statistics, the structure of Okada’s guanxi (social connections) in Shanghai and Suzhou in the late nineteenth century can be represented by the model, which illustrated that Okada was connected with a few “bridges”, including the Japanese artist Yasuda Rozan, Japanese Consulate Shinagawa Tadamichi, an official dispatched at the end of 1860s to Shanghai, Kumashiro Encho, and the prominent art collector of the Guoyun Chamber, and Gu Cheng, all of whom helped Okada Kosho to explore the Shanghai and Suzhou art world. Through the bridging ties spanned by these individuals, Okada interacted closely with a particular cluster of Chinese artists, art collectors and art dealers. This proved that the Chinese art community heavily relied on social connections of the “bridges” in advertising itself and spreading its reputation. This paper first outlines the Shanghai art market in the late nineteenth century based on Okada Kosho’ s Diaries of Shanghai and Suzhou (1890). It then argues for the opportunity and limitation of building guanxi in the context of the Chinese art market. Finally, it suggests research approaches based on viewing the late-nineteenth-century Shanghai art market in this new way.

Painting the picture: why art dealers should be added to Australia’s designated non-financial businesses and professions definition

PurposeThis paper aims to demonstrate to lawmakers that the addition of art dealers to the designated non-financial businesses and professions (DNFBPs) definition would provide Australia with more comprehensive protection against money laundering within the art market.Design/methodology/approachThe paper opted for an exploratory study using doctrinal and jurisdictional comparative analysis that focused on arguments for and against the inclusion of art dealers in respective DNFBPs definitions. Evaluation of these arguments concludes that art dealers should be included in Australia’s DNFBPs definition and subject to anti-money laundering (AML) regulation.FindingsThe current omission of art dealers from Australia’s DNFBPs definition perpetuates AML vulnerabilities within the Australian art market.Originality/valueThis paper fulfils an identified need to study high-value dealers not included in Australia’s DNFBPs definition and provide arguments for and against the inclusion of Australian art dealers in the listed DNFBP.

Blake in the Marketplace, 2023

Readers will note the change of author for this iteration of the annual sales review. For just over half a century, Robert N. Essick provided this journal with an invaluable survey of Blake’s works, and those of his circle, as they appeared at the auction block and in the catalogues and print drawers of rare-book and art dealers. Drawing on both his scholarly appreciation of Blake and his instincts, honed by a lifetime of collecting, Essick marshaled a wealth of information from an inestimable number of diverse sources, recording and painstakingly cross-referencing Blake’s creative and professional productions as they were advertised, auctioned, bought, sold, or exchanged in any given year. In the following review, I have attempted to preserve his format and structure.

Milanese antique dealers and the international market

Abstract This article provides two concrete examples of the opening of the Milanese art market to the international stage at the time of Gian Giacomo Poldi Pezzoli. The main focus is on the career of Giuseppe Baslini (1817–1887), the most important art dealer in nineteenth-century Milan. A true self-made man, Baslini entertained close relations with the most eminent Milanese collectors of the time, including Poldi Pezzoli and the Bagatti Valsecchi brothers; his success was secured by the international market on three major axes – London, Paris and Berlin. The second example concerns the family company of the Grandi art dealers, during the same years. In 1877 Baslini’s brothers-in-law Carlo (1842–1914) and Antonio (1857–1923) Grandi inherited the company of their father, Antonio (1810–1877), which originally specialized in Old Master drawings and prints, but extended its interests to paintings and objets d’art soon after Baslini’s death. The Grandi correspondence, preserved by the heirs and recently donated to the Fondo per l’Ambiente Italiano, has provided the opportunity to reconstruct their business, which had an international dimension from its inception.

Paul Graupe, Arthur Goldschmidt and the dispute over an Adriaen van Ostade painting in wartime France

Abstract In 2023 the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the collectors Susan and Matthew Weatherbie, and the heirs of the Jewish art dealers Paul Graupe and Arthur Goldschmidt reached a financial settlement over Adriaen van Ostade’s Customers Conversing in a Tavern. The museum had been alerted to a potential claim on the painting in 2017 while conducting research on promised gifts from the Weatherbies’ collection. At that time, the van Ostade was registered as a Nazi-era loss by the heirs of Graupe. Research revealed that it was handled by Graupe and his associate Goldschmidt when they were trying to flee Nazi-occupied Europe. This article provides insight into the working relationship of Graupe and Goldschmidt, and offers clues to the fate of other works of art placed in their custody which heirs of Holocaust victims may be seeking. It also offers a roadmap for museums navigating similar provenance research, donor relations and collection management questions.

Colonial collections, restitution and issues of inequality

This contribution raises three questions about collections from colonial regions. One is about the division of the power over the provenance research into such collections between the Global North and the Global South. A second is about the silence of art dealers and private collectors in the Global North about their possessions and how they were acquired, which makes it hard for former colonies to know about them. The third is about how governments in the Global South on the one hand and traditional royal houses, communities of origin and other sub-statal actors on the other deal with collections after their return.

Canons and Networks. 19th-Century Danish Art in Paris

Collections of Danish Golden-Age art are quite rare outside of Scandinavia, especially when it comes to those developed in accordance with a well-thought-out strategy established through the international cooperation of scholars. An important exception is the large group of Danish drawings, oil sketches, and artists’ correspondence found in the Fondation Custodia – Collection Frits Lugt in Paris, gathered by art historian and longtime museum director Carlos van Hasselt (1929–2009). As director, van Hasselt provided an interesting model of collecting, as his pursuit was not motivated by a particular investment strategy. His collection may, in a sense, be viewed as the material result of a network, one which he established and which brought together Danish researchers and museologists, as well as international art dealers. The aim of this article is therefore to investigate how a network may inform and help determine a particular collection practice, to trace how van Hasselt became an agent of the Danish art establishment, and to provide a critical overview of this collection, which became a satellite representation of the canon of 19th-century Danish art in Paris. Analysis of Carlos van Hasselt’s archive will provide critical reflections on the ways in which the collection was built and developed, and how it may serve as an example of the international dissemination of canons.

Worlding China: Huo Mingzhi’s transnational dealership and global narrative of Chinese art in the early twentieth century

This article studies the multifaceted interactions between a Beijing-based art dealer Huo Mingzhi (霍明志, 1880-?) and the Euro-American art market in the early twentieth century. By delving into the circulations of both Huo’s stock of Chinese antiquities and his transcultural narrative, this article provides a sketch of Huo’s strategies to reify Chinese cultural identities through Chinese antiquities in the international arena and a glimpse into the cultural environment of collecting Chinese art at the time. Despite being an influential tastemaker and expert in Chinese antiques during his day, Huo has rarely been studied either in art history or general historical research. By tracing Huo’s contact with institutions and individuals within the changing context of the early twentieth century art market, I explore Huo’s self-presentation as a mercenary dealer and also as a transcultural scholar, whose monographs and collections re-trained the eyes of a broad range of connoisseurs and amateurs for Chinese art, domestically and internationally. Studying Huo’s bilingual writings: Bowu Huizhi 博物彚志 and Preuves des antiquités de Chine 達古齋古证录, I argue that Huo not only contributed to the transmission of Chinese material culture and the acceptance of Chinese art abroad, but also conjured a strategic vision for cosmopolitan Chineseness.

Surviving in the marketplace: The importance of network connectivity for art dealers

This paper investigates the relationship between a dealer’s network and their ability to survive in the market using a dataset of 19th-century English art transactions. We find that dealers who purchased artworks from central sellers, and thus developed high hub centralities, survived in the market longer compared to their counterparts. This effect persists even when controlling for the quantity of works purchased, suggesting that more than just higher activity was at play. The paper builds upon previous empirical work showing that art dealers use their network connections to obtain less noisy signals about artworks’ value, resulting in a competitive edge in the market. The findings have implications beyond the art market, adding to a body of literature that suggests network connections help firms long term sustainability surviving in an uncertain marketplace.

Art dealers as competitors and community builders: Understanding the overlapping social logics of the contemporary art world

AbstractArt dealers are often described as gatekeepers who are focused on their own position as well as the status of their artists and collectors. We argue that this is an incomplete account of art dealing. The goal of this article is to explain how art dealing is a “toolkit” that does not exclusively focus on status building and social capital, but also includes behavior associated with accessing the visual arts field and community development. First, art dealers often have a background that has strong social ties to art, which provides them with intimate knowledge of the art world and social connections with artists, collectors, and other art world actors. For that reason, entry into art dealing reflects intimate knowledge of art practices, what we call “proximate connoisseurship.” Second, art dealerships reflect both competitive and communal factors. Art dealers may choose to work with artists based on their ability to generate income, social capital, and prestige (“competitive logic”), but art dealers may also employ a “communal logic” focused on friendships and creating community. This theory of art dealers is illustrated with excerpts from interviews with 34 dealers randomly selected from the rosters of international art fairs such as Art Basel Miami, EXPO Chicago, Aqua, and the New Art Dealers Alliance show.

Collecting contemporary art in Rotterdam between 1870 and 1892: The international taste of Fop Smit Jr (1815-1892)

The extensive international art collection of the now virtually forgotten Rotterdam collector Fop Smit Jr (1815-1892) included as many as 240 contemporary European genre paintings and several works by renowned artists of the Barbizon School. After Smit’s death, his collection was divided among his family. The recent discovery of a two-part album containing photographs of the works of art he owned made it possible to reconstruct his collection for the first time. Based on extensive provenance and archival research, his collection is analysed and placed in the context of collecting contemporary art in Rotterdam and the Netherlands in the 1870s and 1890s. This reveals that Smit’s collection differed from the prevailing Dutch taste at that time. It was distinctly internationally oriented as well as larger than most other Dutch collections. Moreover, Smit did not combine paintings with works on paper or old master art, as was customary. Other Rotterdam collectors exhibit an international orientation similar to Smit’s. This is partly because, like him, they were advised by Rotterdam art dealers such as Jos de Kuyper, Jan van Mastenbroek and Willem Hendrik Köhler. In his collecting pursuits, Fop Smit was guided by his mercantile ethos. He was a shipowner and came from a successful family of shipbuilders. In addition, he owned stocks and bonds at home and abroad worth several million guilders. His collection and motives for collecting dovetailed with the development of the growing international art market, in which Smit can be considered as one of the new, upper-middle-class collectors in a position to compete with other industrialists and for whom money was no object.

The Amsterdam dealer Hans Le Thoor at the court of Emperor Rudolf II

Abstract Hans Le Thoor of Amsterdam is known as a versatile art dealer, who conducted business in the Netherlands. In 1620 he made an ill-fated attempt to sell Dutch paintings to the King of Denmark, Christian IV (1577–1648), with the help of the ‘painter and spy’ Pieter Isaacsz (1569–1625). This study draws attention to the fact that, before this interesting episode, Le Thoor had been active in Central Europe in dealings with Emperor Rudolf II (1552–1612). The inventories of the Rudolfine collections list exotic objects, naturalia and Chinese paintings delivered by Le Thoor to the court in Prague in 1609. His experience in Prague had a bearing on the later attempted sale to the Danish king, to whom Le Thoor also tried to sell Rudolfine paintings that he had acquired in Brussels between 1618 and 1620 at the partial sell-off of the collection of Rudolf’s brother Archduke Albrecht (1559–1621). New information on Le Thoor’s life and business strategies has come to light through study of archival sources relating to his activities with the Habsburgs. As presented here, these findings advance our knowledge of the mode of operation and scale of international dealer networks in Le Thoor’s time.

Authorship as a determinant of art prices and auction settings in eighteenth-century Paris

Abstract In the context of a booming art market in Paris, eighteenth-century art dealers began to exploit authorship as a value-enhancing strategy. Using Jean-Baptiste Pierre Lebrun’s business as a case study, we show that art dealers purposefully used a firm scale of authentication to create product differentiation and to boost auction dynamics and revenues by reordering the lots before the sale in leaflets known as feuilles de vacation. Our empirical findings support the hypothesis of the development of a market driven by the quest for the artist’s hand in pre-revolutionary Paris, with differential use of connoisseurial knowledge, depending on buyers’ profiles.

An interface to view collections of visual art

Art experts prefer being able to look at the individual images they are working on in the course of their research. However, if one were to look at digitally accessible images in the field of visual art, one would be dealing with billions of images; no one can handle visually examining such huge numbers of images one at a time. Therefore, art experts need special tools to examine and describe artworks in the context of other artworks. We used our experience from previous projects and interviews with members of the target group (art historians, curators, art dealers, and artists) to identify the central issues these experts encounter when working with large image collections and to determine the functionality and properties a system must offer to support their work. The results led to the customized interface LadeCA.View, which is now used in several projects. LadeCA.View enables experts to describe an exhibition or a collection of visual art in such a way that a user can obtain an overview of the intention, content, and structures of the exhibition or collection within a short period of time without looking at each image individually. LadeCA.View can also be used as an interface to probe more deeply into a collection or exhibition. In this paper we show the functions and visualizations of the interface and explain the design decisions. Furthermore, we outline LadeCA.View’s scope of applicability using three case studies

The Toulouse salons: a regional counterweight to the Parisian art scene? (1861–1939)

Abstract This paper analyses the functioning of the primary art market for living artists in the periphery of France, in a context where there was no secondary market nor intermediaries such as art dealers. It is based on a historical data set constituted manually, regarding the Toulouse Salons—the Union artistique de Toulouse (UAT) between 1861 and 1909, and the Société des Artistes méridionaux (SAM), between 1907 and 1939. These exhibitions, which were intended to give artists a regional alternative to the Parisian academic and dealer-critic systems, failed at emancipating the local artists from the domination of the capital.