Revolutionary Paris and the Market for Netherlandish Art

Darius A. Spieth, Ph.D. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaigna, is Professor of Art History at Louisiana State University. He is the editor of the Grove Guide to Art Markets and Collecting (expected 2017), and author of Napoleon’s Sorcerers: The Sophisians (2007).

• AcknowledgementsForewordMarc FumaroliList of IllustrationsA Note on Currencies1 From Eyesores to Blue Chip ArtOrigins of the Parisian Marketplace for Netherlandish PaintingArt Publications and the Dissemination of InformationFrance as International Tastemaker for Golden Age Art After 1740Royal Collections and Northern Masters, 1777–1792The Twilight of the Auction Business, 1775–1825The Fate of Golden Age Art Under Terror and InflationThe Louvre and the “Artistic Conquests” in Belgium and the NetherlandsThe Post-Revolutionary Market for Netherlandish ArtThe Expanding Mass Market for Copies and the Rise of the BourgeoisieGolden Age Art and Popular CultureNetherlandish versus Italian ArtThe Parisian Apartment – a Bourgeois Space for Art2 On the Art of Surviving the Revolution: Jean-Baptiste Pierre LebrunArt Dealer to the Ancien Régime’s Elite, 1776–1789Painful Adjustments, 1789–1795Co-Conspirator of Jacques-Louis David, 1792–1794From The Ministry of Finance to the Louvre, 1794–1799A Long Good-Bye from the Louvre, 1799–1803A Difficult Comeback as Dealer-Expert, 1801–1804Deceptions of the Napoleonic Age, 1807–18133 A Long Good Bye to the Palais Royal: The Northern Pictures in the Orléans CollectionThe Art Collections in the Palais Royal until 1780Inside the Art Deal of the CenturyThe Netherlandish Pictures of the Palais Royal CollectionA Look Inside the Galeries De Bois4 Liberty’s Toll on Beauty’s PriceMyths and Realities of the Parisian Auction Market in the 1790sTurnover of the Parisian Art Auction Market and its Economic Context, ca. 1775–1850The Evolution of Prices for Netherlandish Art in Revolutionary ParisBidding Wars: The Picture Trade with Great BritainThe “Guilty Industry” and Netherlandish Art5 Netherlandish Art in France: A History of Taste and Money across Three CenturiesPoussinists versus RubenistsThe Marquis D’argens and Academic Prejudices Against Northern ArtThe Re-Evaluation of Netherlandish Aesthetics from David to ThoréThe Politicization of Nehterlandish Art in the Nineteenth CenturyClass, Taste, and the First Art Price RankingsAppendixBibliographyPhotograph CreditsIndex

"This is an important addition to the literature on the art market in Paris, covering a new area of the subject and linking the taste for Dutch and Flemish paintings of the eighteenth century to that of the later-nineteenth."Adriana Turpin, The Society for the History of Collecting, July 2018