DALMI-
Containing Uncertainty: A dealer ring in 1780s Paris auctions
by Neil de Marchi & Hans van Miegroet in: Risk and Uncertainty in the Art World, edited by dempster. Bloomsbury Publishing, May 22, 2014.
Abstract:
Recent scholarship has established that a relatively small group of deal-ers in paintings seems to have exercised unusual control over art auctions in 1780s Paris. We are not aware of any documented accounts describing exactly how this control was exercised but, in terms of results, a recent study by Charlotte Guichard of fully annotated, surviv-ing catalogues from 31 sales in the 1780s of which we may be sure that they were organised by the prominent dealer Jean-Baptiste Pierre Lebrun (1748–1813), shows that 55 per cent of the winning bidders were dealers. Moreover, the same eight dealers attended more than 20 of these sales, and another 13 dealers more than 10. Only occasionally in a sale did private buyers predominate among the winning bidders. These fi ndings might point to a dealer ring, a possibility strengthened by evidence Guichard has found of a credit circuit among a sub-group of identifi ed dealers.
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