Art Auctions and Dealers ─ The Dissemination of Netherlandish Art During the Ancien Regime

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw an explosion of art auctions as a means of trading in new and second-hand works. This study examines this phenomenon and the inception of the custom of public art auctions. Lyna (urban history, University of Antwerp) Vermeylen (cultural economics, Erasmus University, Rotterdam) and Vlieghe (art history, University of Leuven, emeritus) have selected essays that emphasize the positive and negative sides of the auctions, the actions of the dealers and the international nature of the operation. The lottery as a means for artists' guilds to raise funds is also looked at. The guild as a player in the selling of art is also part of an article on competition between it and art auctioneers. Prosopographical studies of individual dealers or families give a human face to the subject. Articles on the sale of art by or for royal houses point out the change in society from one in which art was commissioned to one in which it was something to be collected. The role of the printing press in disseminating pre-sale catalogue information is mentioned several times as a contributing factor in the popularity of the art auction. Distributed in North America by the David Brown Book Co. Annotation c2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)