Chair

Alison Inglis (University of Melbourne)

Panellists

Julie Codell (Arizona State University,Tempe), Michael Moignard (La Trobe University, Melbourne), Jenny Beatriz Quijano Martinez (University of Melbourne), Xiang Wang (Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing)

The Parallel Market: Art Agents, Owners, and Clients

Julie Codell (Arizona State University,Tempe)

While dealers and collectors oLen used insMtuMonal venues to purchase art—aucMons, sale rooms, galleries—some dealers, like Nathan Wildenstein and Joseph Duveen, oLen bought works directly from owners and worked through vast social and professional networks to do so. Aggressively pursuing owners, these dealers then purchased works without assigned market values, their worth undetermined by sales or aucMons but negoMated instead behind-the- scenes in a parallel or para-market where dealers and owners privately determined artworks’ intertwined economic and cultural values. Many of these works were then donated to museums, and thus never publicly valued on the open art market.

Duveen’s tacMcs and payments are well-documented and in many ways unique. Duveen was a dealer willing to pay large sums for works he wanted, and he oLen then had to convince his clients to buy works he had already purchased. But the para-market worked in other ways, as well. Freelancing art agents fulfilling clients’ explicit wishes used a para-market approach in order to fulfill clients’ wishes while limiMng costs and thus currying clients’ favor to remain their agents. MarMn Birnbaum, a protégé of Duveen’s and an art dealer (1916-26) and art agent (1926 to 1950) for prominent US collectors (e.g., Grenville Winthrop, Henry McIlhenny, Eliza Radeke, Charles and Anna TaL, James Parmelee, Stephen Clark), purchased almost exclusively from private owners for his clients who sought foremost 18th-and-19th-century French and BriMsh art (e.g., by Ingres, David, Gericault, Degas, Rossee). Birnbaum eschewed aucMons whenever he could and he detailed his successful and unsuccessful private negoMaMons in his correspondence and his autobiography.

Artworks he sought, largely owned by arMsts’ families and friends to whom arMsts had giLed these works, remained in private hands and manifested owners’ emoMonal and social Mes.  Birnbaum’s voluminous Smithsonian archive and autobiography contain invoices, bills, correspondence with collectors, notes on prices and details of negoMaMons with owners. Summarizing Birnbaum’s methods, his arguments to encourage owners to part with their hearfelt possessions and prices he paid (oLen underpaid) in these private sales, I will analyze his communicaMons with clients and with owners and compare his prices with prices for those same arMsts’ works and in the same Mme period as recorded by Gerald Reitlinger. Since his prominent clients’ donaMons to major US urban museums kept these works’ values outside public market venues, we are leL with important market quesMons: Did these para-market negoMaMonsaffect these artworks’ ulMmatecultural and economic values? What does this para- market reveal about such 20th-century private negoMaMonsin relaMonto the art market and to museum assessments?

Collaboration between artists and collectors in Twentieth century Australian art

Michael Moignard (La Trobe University, Melbourne)

The collaboration of artists and collectors in Australian art is not well studied. A dedicated group of collectors is often the difference between success and failure for an emerging artist, especially in a changing art market. Collectors may act as advisers, patrons, dealers and marketing agents for artists of their choice.  This paper considers the role of collectors’ support of artists in two major disruptions in the Australian art market which took place in the first half of the twentieth century, between 1900 and 1950.

In the first years of the twentieth century the underlying market for art produced by Australian artists moved from one paradigm to another. The work of the Australian Impressionists produced in the 1890s changed as several of the key protagonists moved to Europe to expand their vision away from the Australian landscape to views of Britain and the continent.  Expatriate artists needed support in Australia for their European work, when art dealers were in short supply. Collectors such as Baldwin Spencer and Howard Hinton supported these artists by not only acquiring their work but organising exhibitions in Melbourne and Sydney. A pivotal exhibition of Arthur Streeton’s very recent paintings of the English countryside took place in Melbourne in 1906. Spencer organised the exhibition and purchased several of Streeton’s new paintings.

A major shift in the art market also occurred between 1940 19 and 1950. Young artists beginning their careers in the late 1930s were learning about modern art through art journals, visits to Europe, and examples of works exhibited in Australia through exhibitions such as the Herald Exhibition of French and British Contemporary Art of 1939. They were encouraged to experiment and were supported by modern art collectors such as Sunday and John Reed, Bert and Mary Alice Evatt, and Maie Casey, who merits special mention. She enrolled as an artist in George Bell’s art school, which was devoted to teaching post-impressionism technique. She purchased the early work of her student friends Russell Drysdale and Peter Purves Smith, and she was instrumental in having their work added to the collections of major art museums in the United States in the early 1940s. Following diplomatic appointments of her husband, Richard Casey, in Washington, Cairo and Kolkata, Casey returned to Australia in 1946. The Caseys provided encouragement and support to Sidney Nolan following his breakup with the Reeds in 1947. They purchased key new works by Nolan and wrote introductions to his exhibitions.  Casey used her network of contacts in the art world to build a collector base for Nolan, especially in Great Britain.

These examples of collaboration indicate the symbiotic nature of the artist and their collectors and show how an influential collector can increase the potential for success of an emerging artist or one who is in the process of re-inventing themselves.

The acquisition of Spanish paintings by Australian Galleries: Sydney and Adelaide, 1885-1910

Jenny Beatriz Quijano Martinez (University of Melbourne)

At the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, Australian art galleries familiarised the general public with examples of ‘great artworks’. It was based on European traditions, especially derived from the old masters. A solid collection of European masters included works by British, French, Italian, German, but also Spanish artists. Due to their immense popularity and corresponding high price tags, opportunities for purchasing artworks by Spanish masters from the denominated Golden Age were very limited. While some Australian public galleries relied on copies of the great masters, other galleries took the lead in purchasing works by more contemporary Spanish representatives.

Spanish art was popular within the French and British market at the turn of the twentieth century. The work of renowned Spanish artists such as Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (1863–1923) and Ignacio Zuloaga y Zabaleta (1870–1945) favourably predominated the European terrenes and the United States, being strong advocates of Spanish art. However, Spanish artists, such as Gonzalo Bilbao Martínez (1860–1938), also forged their path towards successful global distinction. Several Spanish artists and their distinguished position in the international art market correlated with promoting a modern Spanish expression mixed with tradition.

This paper examines the acquisition of Spanish artworks in the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Art Gallery of South Australia, purchased and displayed between 1885 and 1910. It analyses the work of José Gallegos y Arnosa (1875-1917), Enrique Mélida y Alinari (1838- 1892), Manuel Benedito Vives (1875–1963) and Gonzalo Bilbao Martínez. It details the provenance of their artworks acquired by the Australian galleries. It focuses on the immersion of Australian representatives in European markets, searching for examples that best represented the Spanish school for the Australian collections. My particular aim is to question if the acquisition of the Spanish artworks demonstrated only the guidance of the British and French market or was also a product of a broader cultural interaction between Australia and Spain.

A Chinese antiques dealer in a changing art world: Paul Houo-Ming-Tse and his Preuves des antiquites de Chine

Xiang Wang (Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing)

For a long time, antiques dealers were considered to be fraudsters and speculators in China. As globalization deepened in the twentieth century, the blueprint of the Western art market expanded, encountering Chinese traditions, which created a new market practice that changed the situation. This paper examines the publishing activities of Chinese antique dealer, Paul Houo-Ming-Tse, owner of Ta-Kou-Tchai, in an attempt to understand the onset and formation of this change.

Paul was raised by Lazaristes in Peking, which gave him a cross-cultural background. This helped him became one of the most important Chinese art dealers operating between Peking and France in the early 20th century. At the peak of his career as an antiquities dealer, Paul published Preuves des antiquités de Chine, it's a 700-page Chinese-French bilingual book. In this book, Paul studied various types of Chinese antiques that he had found and attached collotype photographs to them. The book showed the methods of forgery and the experience of authentication of Chinese antiquities. Despite being a dealer, Paul intentionally downplayed his business intentions and instead reflects a strong intellectual approach in this book. He also actively introduced the book to academic institutions studying Chinese antiquities, making his publication widely circulated, and even many important Western scholars wrote book reviews for it. It can be said that Paul established himself as a professional Chinese art collector and connoisseur through this book.

In fact, Preuves des antiquités de Chine was a testimonial by Paul and an illustrated sales catalogue of Ta-Kou-Tchai, for most of the objects studied in the book were taken by Paul to France for auction a few years later. Therefore, this paper raises some questions: why did Paul choose to publish the book? How did he create value through publishing? What was the relationship between publishing and the market practices of that time?

To answer these questions, this paper examines the material form of Preuves des antiquités de Chine, the editing of its images and texts, narratives in Paul's publications at different periods, and the situation of Chinese antiques at that time. It is found that, through this book, Paul skillfully intervened in the value-generating system of early twentieth-century Chinese antiquities, which was a transnational public sphere. Paul modified the Western practice based on the Chinese tradition and developed a "dealer-connoisseur" system from the "dealer-critic system" to reduce the uncertainty of artistic value for Chinese antiques. By answering these questions, this paper also responds to the theme of this conference.