The Role of Art & Antique Dealers An Added Value
1540, the trade in paintings in Antwerp was centred in a permanent year-round market known as the “Schilderspand”, similar in many respects to a modern art fair, but with a permanent nature that allowed early art merchants (which included many former painters) to concentrate on dealing on a full-time basis.2
The development of these early markets and dealers meant
that, for the first time, painters no longer had to depend solely on commissions, but could produce speculative works for an open and anonymous art market.
Early art dealers became essential conduits not only for sales, but also for information, guiding buyers to works in their galleries and relaying advice back to artists about which types of paintings were most in demand. Through their own correspondence and travel, dealers also moved beyond being key players in local markets to become the main instigators of the international trade in art. This both expanded the realms of commerce in the market and brought local cultures outside their immediate locations, with dealers becoming important mediators of tastes and styles between different geographical centres in the process.
Wars, revolutions and changing power elites, the extension of trading links, and the rise in the popularity of the Grand Tour all influenced the location of the centres of the art trade over the next centuries within Europe. In the 17th
century, Amsterdam and London were the key global
centres for the art trade. The foundation of the English and Dutch East India Companies in 1600 and 1602 respectively brought a huge increase in trade between Europe and Asia. Dealers in Amsterdam began buying porcelain and other precious artefacts from China to meet European and global demand. When the Dutch market collapsed around 1680, London began to establish itself as the new centre of the art market, and art dealers gradually emerged to meet growing local supply and demand. By the 18th
century, there were around ten key dealers set
up in London and auctions of art and antiques were occurring up to 20 times per year. In the latter half of the 18th
century, Britain and France emerged as the main buying nations in
the art market, with countries such as Italy important for sourcing. British painter and art dealer Gavin Hamilton was among the powerful dealers of that era and helped spur the development of an antiquities market, sourcing works from Italy and Greece. With colleagues Thomas Jenkins and James Byres, these British dealers controlled the market in Italy, selling many important pieces from there to collectors in Britain and elsewhere.
Important dealers at the time in Paris included the likes of Edme-François Gersaint, who is credited as pioneering the auction catalogue. This was part of a more scholarly approach being taken by dealers generally including others such as Pierre-Jean Mariette and Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Le Brun, who became an art advisor to Napoleon I. Dealers such as Gersaint often used the auction channel to buy and sell art. Gersaint regularly purchased a number of paintings from Amsterdam and brought them to Paris where he sold them via auction. However, rather than acting as an agent on behalf of sellers, he used auctions as a trading tool, buying collections of works, often financed by collectors and bankers who were the early speculators in this market.
10 Historical & Future Perspectives
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