Bénédicte Miyamoto | Université Paris III - Sorbonne Nouvelle (original) (raw)

Publications by Bénédicte Miyamoto

Art and Migration: Revisioning the Borders of Community , 2021

How can we rethink art history to uproot its expectations of ‘tidy definitions of otherness’? The... more How can we rethink art history to uproot its expectations of ‘tidy definitions of otherness’? The borders of cultural identity are often drawn according to a ‘fiction of authenticity’.¹ Plural art histories help us challenge the discipline’s geographical subfields. They tap into the artistic communities’ experiences of ‘transcultural or hybrid forms of subject formation and construction of cultural identities, … the multi-directional processes of migration [affecting] migrating individuals as much as it does the receiving communities’ (Chikukwa, 2016: 80). Transnational artistic influences and the migration of artistic communities have long challenged national definitions of identity and heritage - this collection offers a response to the view that migration disrupts national heritage. Investigating the mediation provided by migrant art, it asks how we can rethink art history in a way that uproots its reliance on space and place as stable definitions of style. Beginning with an invaluable overview of migration studies terminology and concepts, Art and migration opens dialogues between academics of art history and migrations studies through a series of essays and interviews. It also re-evaluates the cultural understanding of borders and revisits the contours of the art world - a supposedly globalised community re-assessed here as structurally bordered by art market dynamics, career constraints, gatekeeping and patronage networks.

Forms, Formats and the Circulation of Knowledge British Printscape’s Innovations, 1688-1832 Editors: Louisiane Ferlier and Benedicte Miyamoto, 2020

Forms, Formats and the Circulation of Knowledge explores the printscape – the mental mapping of k... more Forms, Formats and the Circulation of Knowledge explores the printscape – the mental mapping of knowledge in all its printed shapes – to chart the British networks of publishers, printers, copyright-holders, readers and authors.
The transdisciplinary volume edited by Louisiane Ferlier and Bénédicte Miyamoto skilfully recovers innovations and practices in the book trade between 1688 and 1832. It investigates how print circulated information in a multitude of sizes and media, through an evolving framework of transactions. The authority of print is demonstrated by studies of prospectuses, blank forms, periodicals, pamphlets, globes, games and ephemera, uniquely gathered in 11 essays engaging in legal, economic, literary, and historical methodologies. The tight focus on material format reappraises a disorderly market accommodating a widening audience consumption.

Fancy in Eighteenth-Century European Visual Culture, 2020

Fancy in the eighteenth century was part of a rich semantic network, connecting wit, whimsicality... more Fancy in the eighteenth century was part of a rich semantic network, connecting wit, whimsicality, erotic desire, spontaneity, deviation from norms and triviality. It was also a contentious term, signifying excess, oddness and irrationality, liable to offend taste, reason and morals. This chapter on fancy in drawing manuals is part of the Voltaire Foundation - Liverpool University Press - Oxford University Studies in The Enlightenment book Fancy in Eighteenth-Century European Visual Culture edited by Melissa Percival and Muriel Adrien

Folger Collation Post , 2020

This article is a blog post presenting my fellowship results at the Folger Shakespeare Library: h... more This article is a blog post presenting my fellowship results at the Folger Shakespeare Library: https://collation.folger.edu/2020/04/marks-in-manuals/. It devises a classification of visual marks for reading archeology purposes. How can we interpret visual marks, which marks should we pay special attention too, and how can they help us reconstruct the reading practices and professionally-specific gestures of artisans and manual users.

Art Crossing Borders, edited by Jan Dirk Baetens and Dries Lyna, 2019

The artistic hierarchy of national “schools” in the eighteenth century operated on multiple level... more The artistic hierarchy of national “schools” in the eighteenth century operated on multiple levels—the adoration of favourite masters, the selection of paramount aesthetic qualities and the ranking of periods and genres. In Britain, the audience experienced specific challenges in shaping and reshaping the highbrow European canon. While it progressively mastered modern standards of connoisseurship, which heightened the importance of purely aesthetic values, school labels held fast in sales documents. This paper proposes to explore the curtailed descriptions of continental schools in British picture catalogues from the 1680s to the 1800s. It will also study how these descriptions affected the organisation of catalogues, in order to determine what their presence and role can tell us about the development of art-historical knowledge in Britain. It would be inaccurate to deduce that the vocabulary and strategies of the British art market lagged behind the connoisseurship of British writers and collectors. This paper posits that the hierarchy of schools was used as a marketing tool, which operated under a standardised and trusted format to successfully attract a larger audience.

London and the Emergence of a European Art Market, 1780-1800, 2019

Did the influx of European art have an impact on the British public's preferences? This article f... more Did the influx of European art have an impact on the British public's preferences? This article focuses in particular on tracing the changes in the buying patterns of the British bidders at auction after the French Revolution, to assess whether the massive changes in the British art market's volume of trade and the increasing proportion of French imports that were being put up for sale did indeed profoundly disrupt the British buyer's preferences. The data accumulated in auction catalog indicate a robust and confident consumption choice, rather than a market swayed and disrupted by the foreign collections gathered according to rules of tastes formerly extraneous to the British market. A profound change of taste had still not taken place in 1800, and Dutch genres, Flemish portraits and British landscape continued to be highly valued and sought after.

XVII-XVIII Revue de la Société d’études anglo-américaines des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, 2018

The use of watercolour red proved especially disconcerting for seventeenth-and eighteenth-century... more The use of watercolour red proved especially disconcerting for seventeenth-and eighteenth-century artists – it came in a wide range of costs, and with a dizzying list of names and shades according to the pigments used. On the economic and aesthetic choice the painter made also depended the staying power of the finished product. The cause of significant anxieties, it was nonetheless the reigning colour, not only because of the modern discovery of its primary status, but also because of traditional significance attached to it in the book industry, as well as in conventional architectural and military representations. This paper investigates what red signified, how its elusive powers were slowly tamed by modern standardization, and what its conventional uses meant for the European-wide dissemination of uninventive watercolour practices. Red pigments of vermilion, carmine, minium or madder, when mixed with linseed or safflower oil become durable on many counts. As oil paints, the amount of time the painter has to work them on the canvas is extended, their hue once dried lasts longer, their resistance to light or humidity is enhanced. But the same red pigments, mixed with a gum-arabic and water medium, prove more fickle. To apply watercolour in the early modern and modern period, the artist used the flick of an ente – a stick composed of two brush ends with one side for pigment, and one side for water, and which permitted little more than one attempt to get the gesture right before the paint dried on the paper. Watercolours rubbed off, faded in light and were degraded by humidity. However, what proved durable was the set of conventions that framed its practise, restrained experimentation, and reined in the rise of more creative and freer uses than those defined by its largely military and architectural uses. " Colour functions within semiotic codes that were developed by socio-cultural agents in response to the exigencies of specific times and places. Such exigencies – the Kairos of color – make color both a tremendous source of visual pleasure and of visual anxiety " (Feeser et al, 1). How exactly were the development, dissemination, and functions of watercolour practices influenced by this tension between visual pleasure and visual anxiety? As a medium primarily directed towards paper, and often used to colour what came out of the printing press, the history of watercolour use is inextricably linked to the circulation of information and knowledge. Who got to " define [colour], give it its meaning, construct its codes and values, establish its use " also got to define the level of objectivity that was ascribed to the information circulated in watercolour (Pastoureau, 10). The dizzying amount of shades available in the modern period meant that red was materially elusive. But for all its semiotic rebelliousness, the perception of watercolour red was greatly constrained by the tightly-knit conventions that had been created for military and architectural drawing. However, as a recently established primary colour, red also gained recognition as the colour with the strongest claim to symbolize importance and strategic use. And even when all other colours were scorned, red often remained as the pulsating heart of architectural and military drawings.

Neil de Marchi and Sophie Raux (eds.), Moving Pictures Intra-European Trade in Images, 16th-18th Centuries, Studies in European Urban History (1100-1800), Brepols, 2014

By the first quarter of the nineteenth century, critics and arbiters of taste criticized the tast... more By the first quarter of the nineteenth century, critics and arbiters of taste criticized the taste of the previous British generation. Eighteenth-century British preferences in their opinion, had not only directed money away from living artists, but had spend it on Dutch and Flemish low-life pictures, and weak mannerist Italians. This chapter underlines the cultural bias of such judgements, and compiles data to re-assess eighteenth-century visual preferences. The central figure of this alleged mismanagement of cultural consumption was the auctioneer, and his network of art professionals - to what extent did the auctioneer exercice selection in the course of the auction, and can this be deemed a systematic manipulation of an less than transparent market? The first part of the chapter focuses on the development of the auctioneering profession in London, especially on the internal policing that auctioneers effected, especially through the "conditions of sale" proclaimed in their sale catalogues, and the legal disclaimers they represented. The chapter also highlights how the auctioneer did not position himself as a connoisseur, but rather as an honest merchant who often recommended the advice of knowledgeable middlemen before bidding. The chapter as a whole reconstructs the networks of trust and interaction in the secondary art market.

The President of the Royal Academy’s embarrassed circumlocutions in his 1768 inaugural discourse ... more The President of the Royal Academy’s embarrassed circumlocutions in his 1768 inaugural discourse testify to the awkward relationship between art and commerce in Georgian England. Whereas the Académie Royale jealously protected its monopoly on exhibitions in the whole French kingdom, innumerable art exhibitions with an overtly commercial goal took place in England, and auction houses opened their doors to an ever growing public for the arts. The art object – a relative novelty in England – burst on the scene of an already very developed market culture. How therefore did the links between commercial valuation and artistic expertise articulate themselves? Nowhere else did the art cause such an escalation of prices that led some to predict a continued price-increase, thus creating a specific and properly speculative fascination for art in England. This paper investigates the nature of the public's and the auctioneer's connoisseurship through the analysis of the price trends of London auction results at Christie's for the second-half of the eighteenth century.

Marketing Art in the British Isles, 1700 to the Present. A Cultural History, 2012

This is the complete published version. A cultural history of the first truly modern art market, ... more This is the complete published version. A cultural history of the first truly modern art market, Marketing Art in the British Isles, 1700 to thePresent furthers the burgeoning exploration of Britain's struggle to carve a niche for itself on theinternational art scene. This essay crunches auction catalog data to look at eighteenth-century auctions in London, their process, conditions, conventions, culture and sociability. Particularly touched upon are information transparency, the influence of the auctioneer in the rostrum, and staging of the sale thanks to the increasing expected price and value of lots for sale from first to last lot.

Early-modern and Modern Art History compilations nurtured the art lover’s phantasm - one could ... more Early-modern and Modern Art History compilations nurtured the art lover’s phantasm - one could through these vicariously possess the best in art, an ideal that had been inherited from the kunstkammer collections, but which also materialized the hierarchical efforts of art history, in a time of encyclopaedia writing. However, the bookish compilation of prints taken from the highest achievements in paintings was increasingly rivalled by the diffusion on the British soil of considerably more mediocre but at least real oils on canvas — and therefore, arguably, more enjoyable. Joseph Addison’s early definition of the nature of taste, in the 409th Spectator issue of 1712, as "that faculty of the soul, which discerns the beauties of an author with pleasure, and the imperfection with dislike" was largely consensual. But pleasure as the discerning faculty of taste was bound to become a definition fraught with difficulty in an increasingly commercial leisure society that ultimately unsettled the carefully arranged classification of connoisseurship.

Si la peinture envahit petit à petit l'espace privé au dix-huitième siècle, elle brille toujours ... more Si la peinture envahit petit à petit l'espace privé au dix-huitième siècle, elle brille toujours par son absence en Angleterre lorsque l'on franchit le seuil des lieux de culte anglicans. Pour nombre de commentateurs de l'époque, la moralité de l'art, outil civilisateur, ne fait pourtant aucun doute - et cependant, force est de constater que le malaise face aux images au début du dix-huitième siècle n'était pas seulement un vestige de l'époque puritaine et iconoclaste. En effet les murs des lieux religieux, nus si ce n'est agrémentés de versets, proclamaient depuis longtemps la supériorité du verbe sur l'image. Or, l'acceptation progressive de la peinture religieuse que cet article décrit au long du dix-huitième siècle ne changera pas radicalement la donne sociale dans le discours sur la valeur de l'art. L'idée d'un peuple aveugle et impropre au commerce avec l'art que l’on décelait déjà dans le discours paternaliste des Trente-neuf articles persistera aussi dans le débat plus résolument esthétique. Et c'est peut-être là, avec la méfiance face à la sensualité des images, l'héritage offert par l'anglicanisme au rapport anglais à l'image.

Call for Papers by Bénédicte Miyamoto

Recent EU laws (such as the 2018 Fifth Directive and the 2019 Money Laundering Regulations) have ... more Recent EU laws (such as the 2018 Fifth Directive and the 2019 Money Laundering Regulations) have seen European countries implement national laws on the transparency of transactions in cultural markets. This has put buyer-dealer relationships, as well as dealers and agents' practices, in the spotlight. Reflecting on the backstage sociability of the book and art market, from the early modern period onwards, helps us historicize issues of due diligence and confidence in these markets. This conference aims to explore how the encounters of practitioners in complex social networks enable the mobility of art objects and books along global, transnational, and local trajectories. The awards and collections made highly visible on the stage of literary prizes and art auctions are curated by the extensive networking behind closed doors between agents and writers, between art dealers and artists or owners, and between professional partners themselves. These ties can be studied as a professional sociability-the historical concept of sociability throwing a helpful light on matters of disclosure and transparency, as well as confidentiality and discretion, which structure the backstage of these markets and their decisionmaking processes.

EC/ASECS Panel, 2019

In the eighteenth-century circulation of knowledge, the octavo was the crossroads towards which a... more In the eighteenth-century circulation of knowledge, the octavo was the crossroads towards which all formats converged. This at least would be the conclusion of a quantitative analysis. But the innovative and competitive book trade also thrived on divergence, and a vast variety of print was in circulation. While some researchers assert that the century was that of the luxury folio book, the format under which knowledge travelled with most authority, others underline that smaller, cheaper, and portable formats ensured that knowledge travelled farther and faster – literally flying off the library shelves. Increasingly, book historians are including in the bookscape a larger variety of folds and genres than the bibliographic list of formats makes room for, recognizing that printed knowledge carried by paper came in many shapes and guise.
How did authors, printers, engravers or booksellers experiment with new forms and folds of publication and with what results? How and why were editions replicated under different formats? Was content and format so closely intertwined? How did changes in printing formats and increasingly crammed fold-outs alter the experiences of readers and reveal the modifications of the book trade?
rbonne-nouvelle.fr
Papers may examine a specific text or image as it appeared across different formats, or consider a particular category (the monthly magazine, the advertisement, the abridged novel, etc.) in relation to its material forms. Whether focusing on the evolution of techniques and materials or the changing habits of readers, papers are especially encouraged to look at non-European book trades, reading habits and circulation routes.

The discipline of collecting studies has long focused on the acquisition of objects and the devel... more The discipline of collecting studies has long focused on the acquisition of objects and the development of prestigious European collections in a period when collectors often represented their collections as perennial documents of family history and unfaltering taste. In honor of ASECS' 50th anniversary, this panel is intended to take stock of the state of collecting studies and look forward to the new avenues opened up by considering the circulation of art, antiquities and furniture due to personal, political or social upheaval, and to intensifying art market dynamics shaped by war, revolution, and empire. As dealers, auctioneers, and collectors took advantage of such opportunities, modern practices of collecting and displaying art were shaped. What strategies of classification, attribution, provenance and display did an increasingly international art market foster, and what professional or institutional ethos informed these new models? We invite the studies of local to transnational circulation of artefacts from any disciplinary perspective (including material culture, art history, visual studies, museum studies, art market studies, and social history). This panel is designed to continue the 2017 panel " Art Markets: Agents, Dealers, Auctions, Collectors " by Wendy Wassyng Roworth (University of Rhode Island).

New combinations of technology, culture, and business practice are transforming relationships amo... more New combinations of technology, culture, and business practice are transforming relationships among authors, publishers, and audiences in many fields of knowledge, including journalism, science research, and academia. Self-publishing, open-access, open source, creative commons, crowd sourcing and copy left: these are a few of the key words associated with recent changes in how knowledge is produced and circulated. While being celebrated for their potential to democratize knowledge, many of these changes have been accompanied by heated debates on such questions as the appropriate role of experts and ‘gatekeepers’; how to ensure that such projects are both trustworthy and economically viable; and how best to balance the interests of authors, publishers, and the general public. Copyright is often at the centre of these discussions.

Though the technologies involved have changed dramatically since the eighteenth century, similar questions were debated in the decades following the first British copyright statute (1710). Indeed, today’s discussions of piracy and copyright sometimes echo the eighteenth-century ‘battle of the booksellers' that pitted advocates of a limited-term copyright (and the creation of a public domain) against proponents of authors’ natural (and perpetual) rights over their works. Then as now, many felt that the law was not always in step with cultural norms or trade practices. While some denounced all unauthorized republications as piracies, others experimented with new ways of disseminating knowledge through translations, abridgements, compilations (including the first magazines), and cheap reprints. During the nineteenth century, technological and cultural changes and the increasingly international market for books led to more debates over the legitimacy and public utility of various forms of reprinting, as well as new strategies for combatting piracy.

This conference seeks to bring together specialists of Great Britain from the eighteenth century to the present to explore the complex relationship between copyright and the circulation of knowledge. We welcome case studies that focus on a particular time period as well as papers that show how attitudes and practices have changed over time. Papers that bring past and present concerns into dialogue are especially welcome.

Conference and Workshops Organisation by Bénédicte Miyamoto

In the eighteenth-century circulation of knowledge, the octavo was the crossroads towards which a... more In the eighteenth-century circulation of knowledge, the octavo was the crossroads towards which all formats converged. This at least would be the conclusion of a quantitative analysis. But the innovative and competitive book trade also thrived on divergence, and a vast variety of print was in circulation. While some researchers assert that the century was that of the luxury folio book, the format under which knowledge was distributed with most authority, others underline that smaller, cheaper, and portable formats ensured that knowledge travelled farther and faster-literally flying off the library shelves. Increasingly, book historians are including in the bookscape a larger variety of folds and genres than the bibliographic list of formats makes room for, recognizing that printed knowledge carried by paper came in many shapes and guise. How did authors, printers, engravers or booksellers experiment with new forms and folds of publication and with what results? How and why were editions replicated under different formats? Was content and format so closely intertwined? How did changes in printing formats and increasingly crammed fold-outs alter the experiences of readers and reveal the modifications of the book trade?

Thursday 21st of March, 2019, 2019

The discipline of collecting studies has long focused on the acquisition of objects and the devel... more The discipline of collecting studies has long focused on the acquisition of objects and the development of prestigious European collections in a period when collectors often represented their collections as perennial documents of family history and unfaltering taste. In honor of ASECS’ 50th anniversary, this panel is intended to take stock of the state of collecting studies and look forward to the new avenues opened up by considering the circulation of art, antiquities and furniture due to personal, political or social upheaval, and to intensifying art market dynamics shaped by war, revolution, and empire. As dealers, auctioneers, and collectors took advantage of such opportunities, modern practices of collecting and displaying art were shaped. What strategies of classification, attribution, provenance and display did an increasingly international art market foster, and what professional or institutional ethos informed these new models? We invite the studies of local to transnational circulation of artefacts from any disciplinary perspective (including material culture, art history, visual studies, museum studies, art market studies, and social history). This panel is designed to continue the 2017 panel “Art Markets: Agents, Dealers, Auctions, Collectors” by Wendy Wassyng Roworth (University of Rhode Island).

Art and Migration: Revisioning the Borders of Community , 2021

Forms, Formats and the Circulation of Knowledge British Printscape’s Innovations, 1688-1832 Editors: Louisiane Ferlier and Benedicte Miyamoto, 2020

Fancy in Eighteenth-Century European Visual Culture, 2020

Folger Collation Post , 2020

Art Crossing Borders, edited by Jan Dirk Baetens and Dries Lyna, 2019

London and the Emergence of a European Art Market, 1780-1800, 2019

XVII-XVIII Revue de la Société d’études anglo-américaines des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, 2018

Neil de Marchi and Sophie Raux (eds.), Moving Pictures Intra-European Trade in Images, 16th-18th Centuries, Studies in European Urban History (1100-1800), Brepols, 2014

Marketing Art in the British Isles, 1700 to the Present. A Cultural History, 2012

EC/ASECS Panel, 2019

In the eighteenth-century circulation of knowledge, the octavo was the crossroads towards which a... more In the eighteenth-century circulation of knowledge, the octavo was the crossroads towards which all formats converged. This at least would be the conclusion of a quantitative analysis. But the innovative and competitive book trade also thrived on divergence, and a vast variety of print was in circulation. While some researchers assert that the century was that of the luxury folio book, the format under which knowledge was distributed with most authority, others underline that smaller, cheaper, and portable formats ensured that knowledge travelled farther and faster-literally flying off the library shelves. Increasingly, book historians are including in the bookscape a larger variety of folds and genres than the bibliographic list of formats makes room for, recognizing that printed knowledge carried by paper came in many shapes and guise. How did authors, printers, engravers or booksellers experiment with new forms and folds of publication and with what results? How and why were editions replicated under different formats? Was content and format so closely intertwined? How did changes in printing formats and increasingly crammed fold-outs alter the experiences of readers and reveal the modifications of the book trade?

Thursday 21st of March, 2019, 2019

The discipline of collecting studies has long focused on the acquisition of objects and the devel... more The discipline of collecting studies has long focused on the acquisition of objects and the development of prestigious European collections in a period when collectors often represented their collections as perennial documents of family history and unfaltering taste. In honor of ASECS’ 50th anniversary, this panel is intended to take stock of the state of collecting studies and look forward to the new avenues opened up by considering the circulation of art, antiquities and furniture due to personal, political or social upheaval, and to intensifying art market dynamics shaped by war, revolution, and empire. As dealers, auctioneers, and collectors took advantage of such opportunities, modern practices of collecting and displaying art were shaped. What strategies of classification, attribution, provenance and display did an increasingly international art market foster, and what professional or institutional ethos informed these new models? We invite the studies of local to transnational circulation of artefacts from any disciplinary perspective (including material culture, art history, visual studies, museum studies, art market studies, and social history). This panel is designed to continue the 2017 panel “Art Markets: Agents, Dealers, Auctions, Collectors” by Wendy Wassyng Roworth (University of Rhode Island).

In September 8-9 2014, the Centre for the Study of the Book of the Bodleian Library and Oriel Col... more In September 8-9 2014, the Centre for the Study of the Book of the Bodleian Library and Oriel College, Oxford will hold a conference dedicated to innovations in the eighteenth-century book trade, supported by the Bibliographical Society and the University Sorbonne-Nouvelle (CREC). In a series of workshops, plenary lectures and in situ examinations of books and libraries, it will investigate the newly developed forms of publication, as well as the diverse formats rendered possible by technical headway between 1695 and 1815. The aim of the conference is to trace physical evidence, in the books themselves, of their journey from the author’s study, via the printer’s and bookseller’s shops to the readers. By doing so, it challenges this orthodox linear process from creative birth to paper production. The conference’s papers will draw upon a rich archive of materials and documents that illuminates the processes and activities that lie behind the making of books: prospectus, advertisements, newspapers, supplements, clandestine prints, or interactive books, as well as globes held by the host libraries – The Bodleian Library, Jesus College Fellows’ Library, and Oriel College Senior Library. Copies of relevant works will be displayed during this material culture conference, and each paper will thus become an interactive object lesson between curators, librarians and historians.

Audience and speakers will not only visit the different host libraries but will also be taken through the different steps of the printing process on antique presses at the Story Museum, taste edibles made following eighteenth-century recipe books, and be transported in the sanctuary of an eighteenth-century gentleman’s library.

How far and how fast did the ripples of disruption travel from the Paris enchères to the London a... more How far and how fast did the ripples of disruption travel from the Paris enchères to the London auctions at the time of the French Revolution? Our investigation starts with a question similar to that of Klaus Herding when he reflected on the French Revolution's impact on the art world, and its influence on production, reception and scope of subjects. "Was the upset of the art scene analogous in point of fact to the political disruption?" Starobinski's already mused on the absence of a clear 1789-related break in artistic styles -indeed, the art world proved slow off the mark in its adaptation, and resilient to political upheaval. Likewise, our investigation into changing buying preferences and business practices requires a time frame in accordance with la longue durée. Supply, demand and resulting prices on the British art market were closely correlated to economic disruptions. But the London art market was still in its infancy, with supply being a time-consuming process, hampered as it was by travel difficulties, war blockades and the upsets of Napoleonic wars until 1815. The question is not addressed here as provenance research, and we do not propose to trace which pictures specifically made it across the channel, and how fast. Rather, this paper investigates if strong cross-border partnerships were

Over the 60-year period (from the creation of Christie’s auction house to the end the the Napoleo... more Over the 60-year period (from the creation of Christie’s auction house to the end the the Napoleonic wars), the London art market had internationalized, at least to the extent that foreign art increasingly crossed the borders to the delight of local collectors and bidding customers. The period 1767 to 1815, although a pre-history of today’s globalized art market, did not involve the development of international frameworks or internationally harmonized infrastructures in London. London’s professional settings remained reliably dissimilar from that of its European counterparts. This meant on the one hand that the flow of pictures was in fact more easily managed than the cross-border operations of agents or the setting up of reliable cross-border partnerships, since London did not share the institutional or organisational set up of the continent. The London art market dealt in international items but was mainly manned by local professionals according to home-grown conditions and procedures of sale. On the other hand, our study will evidence that the London auction market also relied on an increasingly buoyant artistic scene and a buying public increasingly less influenced by consumption patterns abroad.
1/ BUSINESS AS USUAL - the auctioneering profession was largely unregulated and un-apprenticed, and it developed early on with perceivably different transaction rules from those of the continent. This local embeddedness came from an unapologetic merchant profession imposing stringent transaction rules that displaced the connoisseurship debate outside of the auction arena. This meant that transnational partnership remained impractical and that the British market was not yet fully integrated; but this professional culture did not impede the flow of art across borders, on the contrary.
2/ INCREASING FLOW OF ART TO LONDON – the protection of the seller’s interests and the relative security offered to the auctioneer by the English system of auction transformed London into a magnet for pictures, with huge quantities coming under the English hammers. The difficulties of the French art market in the wake of the French Revolution saw a related growth of the London market, which by the end of the Napoleonic Wars had sealed its position as the major city for auctions, at least quantitatively.
3/ A BRITISH SCHOOL OF ART THRIVING ON THE SECONDARY MARKET - This section studies the nationality of lots put up for sale at Christie’s London auctions during the period, to chronicle the changes brought about by the increasing internationalization of the art market. The success of a developing British School of art is evidenced by the fact that the supply of British pictures to auctions managed to match the increased transnational flow of art, and by the fact that the British contemporary paintings at auctions differed from simple import substitution.

Bénédicte Miyamoto: ‘“As Whimsical and Chimearical as their forms are” – ornamental and fanciful ... more Bénédicte Miyamoto: ‘“As Whimsical and Chimearical as their forms are” – ornamental and fanciful motives in English drawing books. »

In 1715, Jonathan Richardson recommended in his Essay on the Theory of Painting “that all creatures of the Imagination ought to have Airs and Actions given ‘em as Whimsical and Chimaerical as their Forms are,” and his personal collection of drawing dispersed upon his death had many an example of such “Grotesques.” This collection advertised what his writings on art had recommended – that lovers of art should train their connoisseurship by becoming familiar with drawing, and the fruitful comparison between ancient and modern master’s drawings. The production of drawing books and drawing manuals in England was not entirely devoted to the reproduction of European norms – and indeed, the translations of Lomazzo or de Lairesse’s works in England were transformed, purged and English’d sometimes with considerable freedom. Increasingly, such manuals become repositories of patterns and “Whimsical and Chimearical“ forms, distancing themselves from repetitive anatomical sketches to present variations of figures and creatures to be freely associated in amateur composition or in decorative motives. Creativity thus engaged the readers of such manuals to diverge from the norms and rules offered by the translated texts, and to focus instead on the increasingly abounding picture plates, and their seemingly never-ending narrative possibilities. My study will engage with the recurring motives that criss-cross British drawing manuals and fancy pictures. Advertisements for drawing academies and trade cards for drawing masters –
which could not display the wealth of examples a full drawing manual could – often chose the chimerical, ornamental or fanciful motives to best advertise their talents. Thus it indicated a certain formalisation of amateur draughtsmanship, of its methods and of its appropriate and most popular subjects – a formalisation that was also reflected in the limited scope of cheap drawing books.

Festial d'histoire de l'art - Talk followed by a round table with Patrick Michel, Guillaume Glori... more Festial d'histoire de l'art - Talk followed by a round table with Patrick Michel, Guillaume Glorieux and Michael Szanto (Salon d'Honneur Mairie de Fontainebleau) June 1, 2012

The paper presents a price table established on a sample of around 3600 paintings which have been... more The paper presents a price table established on a sample of around 3600 paintings which have been classified according to genres and schools, and which were auctioned by James Christie in London, spanning the years from the birth of his auction house to the year before the break up of continental collections by the French Revolution, and the subsequent upheaval of the continental picture market.

The information was extracted from the auctioneer’s master copy catalogues, which are fully annotated with prices and buyers. We have identified that English auction, for Christie’s auctions as well as for all the major auctioneers of London in the second half of the century, were not simply characterised by ascending bids, but by an ascending curve of prices from the first to the last lot, continually soaring with the overall quality and/or desirability of the works on sale, making for a particularly exciting performance. We can therefore coherently isolate tastes – as well as substitution purchases – corresponding to different levels of revenues in the percentage of pictures sold according to schools and genres. We would like to present a comparison between the sales as forecasted by the auctioneer in his preparation of the lot sequence, and the actual bidding results that reveal the public’s taste.

Thus we see that the auctioneer’s curatorship of the catalogue, in its forecast of soaring prices, closely followed the academic hierarchy of genres and schools, as well as the rarity of some pictures (this intervenes especially for Schools). The taste of the audience on the other hand, showed a marked preference for Genre paintings (the genre that met with the highest average price) and Landscape paintings (the genre that made the overwhelming bulk of the sales). The table also shows a surprising percentage of British paintings on the London market, whilst underlining that the nationality of the artists had surprisingly little impact on the average price of a painting, unlike its subject matter, or genre category.

The results indicate that greater attention must be paid to the method of sale and the usual ordering of the lots in London when assessing the knowledge and the transparency level contained in catalogues.

"The frequency of London picture sales increased from 1780 to 1800, largely due to the disruption... more "The frequency of London picture sales increased from 1780 to 1800, largely due to the disruption of European collections by the French Revolution. However, the London market remained relatively unperturbed in its modes of operating, both auctions and private sales having previously been in practice. The major disruption was said to be one of buying patterns, with commentators such as William Buchanan, and later Gustaav Waagen, discerning that the collecting practices of the British public came of age when first-rate Italian masterpieces appeared on the British market. But how ready was the London public for the
absorption of large European collections such as the Orléans sale, for example?

A study of the three prior decades shows that the British public was more receptive to the quality and the state of preservation of the paintings offered than to any traditional connoisseurial concerns such as schools or genre. Further evidence for the period 1790-1800 was gathered from fully annotated master catalogues from the Christie’s archives, joined to data available through the Getty Provenance Index®, so as to compare the proportions of sold pictures according to schools or genre, depending on their lot order. A virtual British preference for paintings can thus be reconstructed through auction results. We will also insist on the transparency of the English sales catalogues – and James Christie’s fair degree of expertise – by demonstrating how knowledge of the auction mechanisms yielded more information to the public than meets the eye in the catalogue.
"

Open research Europe, Jun 4, 2024

Eighteenth-century life, 2024

BRILL eBooks, Jul 11, 2020

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

Last summer, a group of participants in ABO’s #WriteWithAphra program joined a co-writing group t... more Last summer, a group of participants in ABO’s #WriteWithAphra program joined a co-writing group that continues to meet each weekday. When presented with ABO’s call for reflections in early 2020, we wanted to reflect as we have worked this past year: together. We share here our conversation from June 4, 2021 (edited for clarity) that addresses why we joined the writing group, as well as what we have gained, the challenges we have encountered, and why we are still here. We frame the conversation with a brief introduction that explores the feminist nature of co-writing.

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Feb 4, 2021

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2019

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Aug 6, 2019

Did the influx of European art have an impact on the British public's preferences? This a... more Did the influx of European art have an impact on the British public's preferences? This article focuses in particular on tracing the changes in the buying patterns of the British bidders at auction after the French Revolution, to assess whether the massive changes in the British art market's volume of trade and the increasing proportion of French imports that were being put up for sale did indeed profoundly disrupt the British buyer's preferences. The data accumulated in auction catalog indicate a robust and confident consumption choice, rather than a market swayed and disrupted by the foreign collections gathered according to rules of tastes formerly extraneous to the British market. A profound change of taste had still not taken place in 1800, and Dutch genres, Flemish portraits and British landscape continued to be highly valued and sought after.

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Mar 9, 2021

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), May 31, 2020

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Aug 6, 2019

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2012

Imprint: Ashgate Illustrations: includes up to 35 b&w illustrations.

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2021