Week 7: The history of the art market (Western) - isaac...

SM 6322 The Art Market

City University of Hong Kong, School of Creative Media

Week 7: The history of the art market (Western)

Friday, 1 March 2013

In the Renaissance and the Baroque periods

14th–17th centuries.


The demand for works of art was contingent upon the availability of edifices to house such art.

With technological advances in construction and engineering, palaces and cathedrals were raised.Their vast walls created demand for decorative objects, including easel paintings and murals.


Carefully managed workshops instituted division of labor, which assigned

specialists for mixing and preparation of pigments, assistants for cleaning

and trimming of brushes, etc.

Bottega is a term used during the Renaissance and that is still used to describe a workshop. To give a historical frame of reference, the manner by which the great Master Leonardo Da Vinci acquired his skills as a young artist by working at the Bottega of Verrocchio, learning by doing.


The bright, deep blue produced had excellent lightfastness and was the most expensive pigment known to man. This high value was the reasoning behind the Madonna being graced in blue.

Lorenzo Monaco, Florence, c.1410


A complex apprentice system, open entry to the studios of masters and rising prices for art and decorative objects insured that the supply of artists and craftsmen did not become completely inelastic.

For example, murals which required more hours of work, were priced higher than

easel paintings (Vasari, 1970).

•An agreement between two or more parts that is legally binding

•Patron/Client – Painter

Renaissance Contracts


• Made to Order. Bespoke Paintings• Commissioned by: Princes, the Church or wealthy merchants

• Altarpieces • Frescoes

• By square foot • or For his materials and his time


St. Sebastian, 1480, by Andrea Mantegna was an Italian painter

In 1460, Mantegna was appointed court artist.

He resided at first from time to time at Goito, but, from December 1466 onwards, he moved with his family to Mantua.

His engagement was for a salary of 75 lire a month, a sum so large for that period as to mark conspicuously the high regard in which his art was held.

Monthly Salary


Francesco del Cossa (c. 1430 – c. 1477) was an Italian early-Renaissance (or Quattrocento) painter of the School of Ferrara.

The School of Ferrara was a group of painters which flourished in the Duchy (the territory of a duke) of Ferrara during the Renaissance. Ferrara was ruled by the Este family, well known for its patronage of the arts.

Borso d'Este, attributed to Vicino da Ferrara, Pinacoteca of the Sforza Castle in Milan, Italy.

Borso d'Este (1413 – August 20, 1471) was the first Duke of Ferrara

By size


Borso’s appraisers assigned a rate of ten bolonini per square foot - an appallingly low rate of pay considering the magnitude of the artist’s reputation

and the quality of his achievement.

Having completed his share of the work, Cosa felt that he deserved more money, and on March 25, 1470, he complained to Borso in a well-known letter.


Clients Motives

• Giovanni di Bernardo Rucellai (1475–1525), an Italian writer and poet:

– Serve the glory of God– Honor the city– Serve as commemoration of himself– Spending money well (Paintings where cheap compared to Bells, Marble

Paving)


Types of Clients and contracts

• Large entities (e.g. Cathedrals, Guilds - A guild is an association of artisans who control the practice of their craft in a particular town.)

• Individuals

• Sculptors usually worked for large entities (like Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi (circa 1386 – December 13, 1466), known as Donatello, an early Renaissance Italian painter and sculptor from Florence)

• More formal contracts drawn by Notaries (a lawyer or person with legal training )

• More casual “memoranda” contracts.

• Both are equally binding

• A few hundred of these contracts have survived


Adoration of the Magi (Ospedale degli Innocenti) 1485 by the Italian Renaissance master Domenico Ghirlandaio


The contract specified that the master himself had to paint it (to avoid the frequent use he made of his workshop), according to a drawing approved by the commissioner and using precious colors. The work should be completed within thirty months, in reward of 115 florins.

• What the painter has to paint• How and when the client is to pay• When is the painter to deliver• Details quality of colors• The painter should paint with his own hand


Shift in Contracts during 16th century

• Pigments become less important (p.16 Baxandall)

• Painter skills become more important. From Gold to Brush:

– Empty areas with landscapes

– Or “figures, buildings, castles, cities, mountains, hills, rocks, costumes, animals, birds and beasts of every kind”

– Master and assistants different pay


Rembrandtʼs studio

In 1625 the 19-year-old Rembrandt returned to Leiden and opened his own studio

The turning point in Rembrandt's further career was the visit to Leiden of Constantijn Huygens, the widely educated secretary of the governor Prince Frederick Hendrick, who developed great interest in Rembrandt and his art.

Huygens' patronage led to commissions and initial success: two works by Rembrandt were purchased by the English Crown.

After his father's death on 27th April 1630, Rembrandt moved to Amsterdam, where he settled in the house of the art-dealer, Hendrick van Uylenburgh. Prince Frederick Hendrick bought a number of his paintings and commissioned the Passion cycle, which he would finish in 1639.


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In 1634, Rembrandt became a member of the Guild of St. Luke, in order that he may train pupils and apprentices as a self-employed master.

The early guilds in Antwerp and Bruges, setting a model that would be followed in other cities, even had their own showroom or market stall from which members could sell their paintings directly to the public.The guild of Saint Luke not only represented painters, sculptors, and other visual artists, but also—especially in the seventeenth century—dealers, amateurs, and even art lovers (the so-called liefhebbers).

Rembrandt was popular as a teacher and had a very large and profitable workshop with many student followers


In 1635 Rembrandt and Saskia moved into their own house, renting in fashionable Nieuwe Doelenstraat. In 1639 they moved to a prominent newly built house (now the Rembrandt House Museum).

In 1634, married Hendrick's cousin, Saskia van Uylenburg.

The mortgage to finance the 13,000 guilder (the basic monetary unit of the Netherlands (until the introduction of the euro))purchase would be a primary cause for later financial difficulties.


Rembrandt should easily have been able to pay the house off with his large income, but it appears his spending always kept pace with his income, and he may have made some unsuccessful investments.

Despite numerous commissions, the fees from pupils and the proceeds from etchings, Rembrandt's debts continued to grow.

In 1656, Rembrandt was declared bankrupt. His house and collections were auctioned; however, the sum thereby raised was insufficient to cover the debts.


In the late 1640s Rembrandt began a relationship with the much younger Hendrickje Stoffels, who had initially been his maid. In 1654 they had a daughter, Cornelia, bringing Hendrickje a summons from the Reformed Church to answer the charge "that she had committed the acts of a whore with Rembrandt the painter".

Rembrandt lived beyond his means, buying art (including bidding up his own

work), prints (often used in his paintings), and rarities, which probably caused a court arrangement to avoid his bankruptcy in 1656, by selling most of his paintings and large collection of antiquities.

Rembrandt was forced to sell his house and his printing-press and move to more modest accommodation on the Rozengracht in 1660.


The industrial revolution and emergence of a large commercialmiddle class, along with an unprecedented expansion of living space,brought about a quantum jump in the demand for decorations and art.

18th / 19th century


Art was no longer deemed appropriate only for cathedrals and princely

mansions. Art was also demanded by ordinary citizens whose houses became increasingly more spacious. Initially, supply responded to the rise in demand by a proliferation of workshops in Holland, England, France and Italy, which produced large quantities of repetitive and uninspired work for undiscriminating clients (Montias,1981)


In the Renaissance one could rely for protection against infringement on the natural scarcity of talent as demonstrated by superior craftsmanship.

Clearly, this was no longer possible when almost anyone could produce perfect substitutes of minimalist, conceptual or other work. The preceding economic principles are best illustrated with reference to "Limited Editions".

Limited Editions became popular at the turn of the nineteenth century.

Limited Edition


Creation of the Modern Institutions:

Auction Houses (Sotheby’s 1744, Christie’s 1766)

London presents us with a rare instance of a perfect natural experiment. No art market existed in London prior to the last fifteen yeas of the seventeenth century, and the one that sprang up was unregulated until, in 1777, legislation was introduced proscribing “puffing” bids placed by agents. ("Term also describes secret bidding at an auction by or on behalf of a seller.)

Art dealer chose, and stuck with, the auction and for some decades into the eighteenth-century auctions dominated “shops” (dealerʼs gallery)

An extraordinary number of auctions of paintings - almost 3000 - were held between 1687 and 1695, and the auction of paintings itself became both an occasion for social mixing and for personal display.


Even though the English auction enjoyed an advantage over shops to both seller and buyers in the beginning, the number of dealers keeping shop rose from the 1740s, a shift that our explanatory hypothesis would predict, a better-informed

clientele having developed over the preceding decades.

The London art market came into existence as a byproduct of several conditions, which coalesced to produce a rapid change in consumption practices, linked to new wealth gained partly through domestic joint stock ventures and trading

their stocks.

There was a boom in the stocks and in the numbers of start-up joint-stock companies, fed in part by funds diverted away from by a reintroduction of the

Tudor land tax at the rate of 20 percent.


Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Portrait of Ambroise Vollard, 1908, 82 x 65 cm, Courtauld Institute Galleries, London

Ambroise Vollard (3 July 1866, Saint-Denis, La Réunion – 21 July 1939 in Versailles, France) is regarded as one of the most important dealers in French contemporary art at the beginning of the twentieth century.

He is credited with providing exposure and emotional support to numerous notable and unknown artists, including Paul Cézanne, Renoir, Pablo Picasso, Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh. He is also well known as an avid art collector and publisher.

Art Dealer


In 1930 Vollard commissioned Picaaso to produce a suite of 100 etchings which became known as the Vollard Suite.


Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Durand-Ruel, 1910

Paul Durand-Ruel (October 31, 1831, Paris – February 5, 1922) was a French art dealer who is associated with the Impressionists. He was one of the first modern art dealers who provided support to his painters with stipends and solo exhibitions.


During the final three decades of the 19th century Paul Durand-Ruel became the best known art dealer and most important commercial advocate of French Impressionism in the world.

He succeeded in establishing the market for Impressionism in the United States as well as in Europe. Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, are among the important Impressionist artists that Durand-Ruel helped to establish.

Regarding the Americansʼ open-mindedness towards impressionism, Durand-Ruel once said, "The American public does not laugh. It buys!"


The nineteenth or early twentieth century Limited Edition was usually produced by a dealer. The dealer selected the artist and controlled the size of the edition and often intervened in the market to maintain the value of the product.

Until established artists such as Picasso, Braque and Dali became entrepreneurs on their own account (Mourlot, 1970)

The dealer's selection of an artist extended to the prospective buyers the necessary information on quality. The dealer's guarantees of supply constraints furnished insurance against unexpected capital losses; in addition, dealers were often willing to buy back products or accept trade-ins.


Royal Academy of Arts (1768). Annual Selling Exhibition

The Royal Academy of Arts founding principle is to 'mount an annual selling exhibition open to all artists of distinguished merit' to finance the training of young artists in the RA Schools. The exhibition continues to play a significant part in fund raising to finance students at the Royal Academy, which receives no public funding.


Gallery“only came into existence in the mid-19th century. Before that, people mostly bought pictures directly from artists, or at annual academic exhibitions, and auctions.”

“Entrance to Strand from Charing Cross.” From Original Views of London As It Is. By Thomas Shotter Boys 1842. Courtesy Bliss Collection, Bowdoin College Library, Brunswick, Maine.


“because the gallery system – in its recognizably modern form – seems to have taken shape in London around 1855-1865, and been very quickly adopted by other urban centers.”

“At the end of the 19th century you have literally hundreds of galleries in London, each with a separate identity,” notes Fletcher. “As these galleries proliferate, they split the audience for art into niche markets. Galleries gather groups of artists, collectors, critics, and viewers. You start to see a kind of fashion in art that is connected to the way itʼs exhibited and where. Itʼs the beginnings of what you might call the ʻismsʼ of modern art history.”

These new venues also gave rise to a new class of merchant: the art dealer. Dealers and galleries alike initially struggled for legitimacy, says Fletcher, “straddling the fine line between acknowledging they were businesses and aspiring to be something else.”


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