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9 The Southern Netherlands were under Habsburg control from 1714 to 1794, and are thus often referred to as the ‘Austrian Netherlands’.

10 The decade 1735–1744 is represented by five auctions, comprised of two in Antwerp and three in Brussels, leaving a single copy of their catalogues in the public domain. In contrast, no fewer than 48 art auctions held between 1785 and 1794 left a printed catalogue behind; 17 in Antwerp, but 31 in Brussels. Antwerp 17, Brussels 31). See: D. Lyna, ‘The cultural construction of value: art auctions in Antwerp and Brussels (1700–1794)’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Universiteit Antwerpen, 2010), 39.

11 On Zomer: van Heel, S. A. C. Dudok, ‘Jan Pietersz. Zomer (1641–1724): makelaar in schilderijen’, Jaarboek Amstelodamum 69 (1977), 89–122 Google Scholar and Jonckheere, K., The auction of King William's paintings, 1713: elite international art trade at the end of the Dutch Golden Age (Amsterdam, 2008), 56–7Google Scholar. On Gersaint: McClellan, A., ‘Watteau's dealer: Gersaint and the marketing of art’, Art Bulletin 78, 3 (1996), 439–53Google Scholar; Glorieux, G., A l'Enseigne de Gersaint: Edme-François Gersaint, marchand d'art sur le pont Notre-Dame (1694–1750) (Seyssel, 2002)Google Scholar; Miegroet, H. J. Van, ‘Recycling Netherlandish paintings on the Paris market in the early eighteenth century’, in Raux, S. ed., Collectionner dans les Flandres et la France du Nord au XVIIIe siècle (Lille, 2003), 251–87Google Scholar; N. De Marchi and H. J. Van Miegroet, ‘Transforming the Paris art market, 1718–1750’, in De Marchi and Van Miegroet eds., Mapping markets, 391–402; Van Miegroet, H. J., ‘The market for Netherlandish paintings in Paris, 1750–1815’, in Warren, J. and Turpin, A. eds., Auctions, agents and dealers: the mechanisms of the art market 1660–1830 (Oxford, 2007), 41–51 Google Scholar. On Christie: B. Miyamoto-Pavot, ‘“A pretty general taste for pictures”: the social construction of artistic value in eighteenth-century London (1685–1805)’ (unpublished thesis, Université Paris Diderot, 2011); Wall, C., ‘The English auction: narratives of dismantlings’, Eighteenth-Century Studies 31, 2 (1997), 1–25 Google Scholar. For an analysis of the power shift in the Austrian Netherlands, see Lyna, D., ‘Power to the broker: shifting authorities over public sales in eighteenth-century Antwerp’, in Stobart, J. and Van Damme, I. eds., Modernity and the second-hand trade: European consumption cultures and practices, 1700–1900 (Basingstoke, 2010), 158–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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13 For example in 1695 the Antwerp noblewoman Anna Maria De Neuf, wife of renowned printer Balthasar Moretus III, bought large amounts of fabric and clothing on the Friday Market. Sorber, F., ‘Kledij in Antwerpse archieven in de zeventiende eeuw’, Antwerpen in de XVIIde eeuw (Antwerp, 1989), 479Google Scholar.

14 D. Lyna, ‘Changing geographies and the rise of the modern auction: transformations on the second-hand markets of eighteenth-century Antwerp’, in B. Blondé et al. eds., Fashioning old and new, 169–84.

15 The four Antwerp auctions included in our database were held in the houses of deceased art owners and averaged 289 lots of paintings, in contrast to an average of 127 lots sold at sales held in public auction halls. The average price of 68 guilders per painting raised at auctions held in the deceased owners’ houses was not statistically different from the average price of 67 guilders obtained per artwork in the auction halls (t-test for independent samples 0.06, p = 0.955).

16 Of the 61 Antwerp sales with a surviving catalogue, 20 (33 per cent) took place in the house of the deceased owner of the paintings, whereas in Brussels 56 out of 107 (52 per cent) of auctions took place in the deceased owners’ houses. There were considerably more auctions in Brussels than in Antwerp when the location of the auction was not mentioned in the catalogue: 14 catalogues (13 per cent) versus 2 catalogues (3 per cent). In Antwerp art auctions were more likely to take place in public sales spaces.

17 In Brussels, where the average collection in our database is smaller than in Antwerp, the collections auctioned in public do not appear to have been smaller than the collections sold ‘at home’. The average price of paintings offered for purchase in the house of a deceased owner was much higher (101 guilders) than the 36 guilders paid, on average, for a painting sold in an auction hall (t-test for independent samples = 2.73, p = 0.013). The average price differed in Antwerp, where there were no significant price discrepancies between auction places (see endnote 16).

18 On the Vrijdagmarkt, Van Lemens obtained a median yield of 189 guilders per sale from 22 sales held in public, from 14 sales held in other locations his yield was 489 guilders. City of Antwerp Archives (hereafter CAA), Ancien Régime, Lawsuits 7 #560: Oudekleerkopersambacht – Van Lemens, 1746.

19 CAA, Notary Archives, Notary J. B. Gerardi, N 1665/13: Nalatenschap Jean Francois van Soest.

20 Multiple authors, The emperor's claims: being a description of the city of Antwerp and the River Schelde (London, 1785), 35Google Scholar.

21 The auction catalogues dating from before 1758 used, on average, 38 words to describe each lot up for auction. From 1758 to 1767, descriptions were still relatively modest at 44 words. Between 1768 and 1777, the average number of words used grew spectacularly to 172, and from 1778 to 1787 more than 220 words per lot were used. At the end of the eighteenth century the extent of the catalogue information dropped considerably to an average of 89 words, though still more than twice as extensive as pre-1758.

22 This painting by Rubens was described as lot 118 in the Brussels catalogue of Joseph Sansot's art collection. The piece was sold for 40 guilders to Mr Regaus. An annotated copy of this catalogue can be found at the Netherlands Institute of Art History in The Hague.

23 The collection of Mme Regaus (or that of her father or spouse) came on the market in 1775, and the painting by Rubens was described as lot A0003. De Angeli eventually purchased the work for 34 guilders. An annotated copy of the catalogue can be found in the library of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels. In view of the fact that authentic paintings by Rubens usually changed owners for 1,000 guilders or more in local auction markets, the catalogue information was probably inaccurate.

24 Wall, ‘The English auction’, 4. A lesser-known but equally important London auctioneer active in the 1730s was Christopher Cock, who specialised in public sales of real estate. Learmount, B., A history of the auction (Iver, 1985), 22Google Scholar.

25 Pomian, K., ‘Marchands, connaisseurs, curieux à Paris au XVIII siècle’, Revue de l'art 43 (1979), 23–36 Google Scholar; Edwards, J.-L., Alexandre-Joseph Paillet, expert et marchand de tableaux à la fin du XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1996)Google Scholar; de, N. and Van Miegroet, H., ‘The rise of the dealer-auctioneer in Paris: information and transparency in a market for Netherlandish paintings’, in Tummers, A. and Jonckheere, K. eds., Art market and connoisseurship: a closer look at paintings by Rembrandt, Rubens and their contemporaries (Amsterdam, 2008), 149–74Google Scholar.

26 C. Guichard, ‘From social event to urban spectacle: auctions in late eighteenth-century Paris’, in B. Blondé et al. eds., Fashioning old and new, 203–18.

27 In view of the fact that we wished to research the prices of the artworks and the demand for paintings, the presence of handwritten annotations of buyers and prices was an important initial criterion when selecting our corpus of sources. Only art auctions with one or more extant catalogues that contained the names of all, or nearly all, the buyers and the prices they paid were chosen.

28 Our database contains data on all the sales made at 26 auctions in Brussels and 15 auctions in Antwerp. At 106 guilders, the average price of paintings from the Brussels collections was significantly higher than those in Antwerp, where a painting was, on average, auctioned for 71 guilders. The difference in price is statistically significant (p = 0.000). The average total value of the collections sold in Antwerp, 11,548 guilders, was not statistically different, however, from the average total value of 11,916 guilders from collections sold in Brussels (p = 0.94). See Appendix 1.

29 Where, for the sake of readability, the following sections refer to ‘paintings’, the reader needs to be aware that actually ‘lots’ are being discussed. Of the 5,500 sales transactions in our database 389 refer to paintings that were sold as a pair. There were only 36 transactions where the lot was composed of more than two paintings.

30 Regarding the size of the collections offered, the first quartile lies at 52 lots of paintings, the median at 94, and the third quartile at 209. At the largest auction more than 500 lots were auctioned off. The bias in the selection of auction catalogues is demonstrated by comparing the number of paintings in the auctioned collections to the average number of paintings per private owner in both cities: 25 to 28 paintings for the more wealthy leaving an estate in Antwerp, and at 28 pieces in well-to-do households in Brussels. Blondé, ‘Art and economy’, 379–91; De Laet, Brussel binnenskamers, 274.

31 The sample includes 26 catalogues from Brussels and 15 catalogues from Antwerp (64 per cent vs. 36 per cent), whereas a total of 107 eighteenth-century catalogues survive from Brussels, vs. 61 for Antwerp (65 per cent: 35 per cent).

32 Blondé, B., Een economie met verschillende snelheden: Ongelijkheden in de opbouw en ontwikkeling van het Brabantse stedelijke netwerk (c. 1750–c. 1790) (Brussels, 1999)Google Scholar; De Laet, Brussel binnenskamers.

33 An average Antwerp auction yielded 11,548 guilders in prices of 1739 with a median value of 8,769 guilders. In Brussels the average auction yielded 11,916 guilders, and the median value was 5,223, although the Wilcoxon rank sum test did not yield a statistically significant difference (W_s = 504; p = 256). There is a similar picture in regard to the median prices fetched for the items within each collection. Paintings in a median Antwerp collection reached a median price of 20.5 guilders, while the median Brussels collection yielded a median price for paintings of 26.0. This difference, again, was not statistically significant (W_s = 298.5; p = 0.655).

34 Michel, P., Le commerce du tableau à Paris dans la seconde moitié du 18e siècle: acteurs et pratiques (Villeneuve d'Ascq, 2007), 280–1Google Scholar.

35 We succeeded in tracking down the artist's date of death for 3,525 lots.

36 In total, our sample consisted of 5,557 paintings for sale, out of which some 1,235 (c. 20 per cent) were anonymous works (1,135). For a further 813 (c. 15 per cent), it was not possible to decipher the eighteenth-century attribution, as the descriptions given were vague, giving simple family names such as ‘Breughel’ or ‘Wouwerman’, which could have referred to any one of several individual artists.

37 Concerning the limited presence of Italian art in the Southern and Northern Netherlands, see Veen, H. T., ‘Uitzonderlijke verzamelingen: Italiaanse kunst en sculptuur in Nederland’, in Bergvelt, E. and Kistemaker, R. eds., De wereld binnen handbereik: Nederlandse kunst- en rariteitenverzamelingen, 1585–1735 (Zwolle, 1992), 102–16Google Scholar; Mijnlieff, E., ‘Ik weet niet wat te zeggen … Italiaanse kunst in de Nederlanden 1680–1795’, Incontri 8 (1993), 159–62Google Scholar.

38 For more on dubious attributions in auction catalogues see: K. Jonckheere, ‘Supply and demand: some notes on the economy of seventeenth-century connoisseurship’, in A. Tummers and K. Jonckheere eds., Art market and connoisseurship, 69–95; Altes, E. Korthals and Ketelsen, T., ‘Die Gemälde von Baburen, Ter Brugghen und Honthorst auf dem deutschen Kunstmarkt im 18. Jahrhundert: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Kennerschaft’, in Sander, J. et al. eds., Caravaggio in Holland (Frankfurt am Main, 2009), 95–102 Google Scholar.

39 Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library Antwerp (hereafter HCHLA), Gazette van Antwerpen, 6 July 1784.

40 Library of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (hereafter LRMFAA), Catalogue, anonymous sale [Charlé, etc.], 8 July 1784, Kolveniershof.

41 When the paintings’ subject categories were cross-tabulated against the sub-periods of this research project, the χ² was statistically significant (p = 0.000), although the Cramér's V obtained was an extremely small 0.107. In other words there were no significant changes in the distribution of the subject matter of the paintings being offered for sale at the auctions studied.

42 To identify patterns that might indicate a shift in taste, the median price per time period and per topic was calculated as a percentage of the median price for all paintings in our database. The median price was used because extreme values sometimes had a large impact on the average value.

43 Montias raised a similar concern when he noted the conspicuous absence of portraits in sales of the Amsterdam Orphan Chamber in the early seventeenth century. See Montias, J. M., Art at auction in 17th-century Amsterdam (Amsterdam, 2002), 88Google Scholar.

44 These eight themes were carefully chosen on the basis of categories devised in the course of earlier research on the Low Countries; see Bourgeois, I., ‘Dekoratieve voorwerpen en binnenhuisversiering te Gent in de 18^de eeuw: Vloer- en wandbekleding, gordijen, schilderijn, spiegels’, Oostvlaamse zanten 63, 2 (1988), 93Google Scholar; Blondé, ‘Art and economy’, 388; De Laet, Brussels binnenskamers, 284. The ‘scapes’ category is comprised of paintings in which the background prevails over any activity, human or otherwise, which is depicted; it therefore includes seascapes, cityscapes, landscapes, etc.

45 Loir, C., La sécularisation des oeuvres d'art dans le Brabant (1773–1842): la création du Musée de Bruxelles (Brussels, 1998)Google Scholar.

46 Perhaps this question should be posed the other way around. What is intriguing, after all, is that religious pieces continued to hold a relatively good position in the price hierarchy until the end of the eighteenth century.

47 Jansen, G., ‘“On the lowest level”: the status of the still life in Netherlandish art literature of the seventeenth century’, in Chong, A. and Kloek, W. eds., Still-life paintings from the Netherlands 1550–1720 (Amsterdam 1997), 53–4Google Scholar.

48 For this segment we have derived methodological inspiration from among others: Montias, Art at auction; Van Miegroet, ‘The market for Netherlandish paintings’.

49 Degryse, K., De Antwerpse fortuinen: Kapitaalsaccumulatie, -investering en rendement te Antwerpen in de 18de eeuw (Antwerp, 2005), 389Google Scholar.

50 B. Blondé, ‘Conflicting consumption models? The symbolic meaning of possession and consumption amongst the Antwerp nobility at the end of the eighteenth century', in Blondé et al. eds., Fashioning old and new, 61–79.

51 We have already demonstrated that the supply of paintings remained constant in terms of content. The stability of prices does not, therefore, hide any qualitative shifts in the supply.

52 Blondé, B., ‘At the cradle of the transport revolution? Paved roads, traffic flows and economic development in eighteenth-century Brabant’, Journal of Transportation History 31, 1 (2010), 89–111 Google Scholar.

53 Duverger, E., Documents concernant le commerce d'art de Francisco-Jacomo van den Berghe et Gillis van der Vennen de Gand avec la Hollande et la France pendant les premières décades du XVIIIe siècle (Wetteren, 2004), 40Google Scholar.

54 CAA, Notary Archives, Notary Masquar, N 2336/35: Nalatenschap van Petrus Joannes Snyers.

55 In our database all buyers known to have purchased 14 or more lots of paintings turn out to have been particularly active in the auction market in their place of residence. We reject the null hypothesis (p =  0.000), and Cramér's V (0.77) points to a pronounced connection between place of residence and auction.

56 H₀ is rejected (p = 0.000), and Cramér's V is very large at 0.65. Even amongst the 6 top buyers who each purchased 75 or more paintings, a geographical divide was still very marked: for example, Huibregts and Lauriolle bought all their paintings exclusively in Antwerp and Brussels, respectively. H₀ is rejected (p =  0.000); Cramér's V 0.59.

57 This is the case even when the number of purchases rather than the number of auctions attended is included in the analysis. Even when the 12 buyers who attended 10 or more auctions are excluded, H₀ is still convincingly rejected (p = 0.000), and it is evident there was a clear connection between the place where the dealers and collectors were based and the place where they bought the most paintings (Cramér's V 0.48). If we expand our selection to include individuals who were active as buyers at more than one auction, then Cramér's V even rises to 0.74.

58 Blondé and De Laet, ‘Owning paintings’, 68–84.

59 Mensaert, G. P., Le peintre amateur et curieux, ou: description générale des tableaux des plus habiles maîtres qui sont l'ornement des églises, couvents, abbayes, prieurés & cabinets particuliers dans l'étendue des Pays-Bas autrichiens (Brussels, 1763), 53Google Scholar.

60 Blondé, ‘Art and economy’; Blondé and De Laet, ‘Owning paintings’; De Laet, Brussel binnenskamers, 274.

61 Lyna, D., ‘“La peinture ne flattoit plus les personnes”: private collections of paintings in eighteenth-century Brussels’, in Brosens, K., Kelchtermans, L. and Van der Stighelen, K. eds., Embracing Brussels: art and culture in the Court City, 1600–1800 (Turnhout, 2013), 181–96Google Scholar.

62 Loir, La secularisation des oeuvres d'art.

63 The Antwerp catalogues of De Proli (1785) and Bruyninckx (1791) referred to measures for attracting étrangers, while those of M. J. F. Beschey (1787), Anonymous (1788) and an anonymous sale in Brussels (1793) mentioned the use of local agents (all HCHLA and LRMFAA).

64 See Percy, E. S., A short tour made in the year one thousand seven hundred and seventy one (London, 1775), 77–86 Google Scholar; Reynolds, J. and Mount, H. ed., A journey to Flanders and Holland (Cambridge, 1996), 207Google Scholar. Among his other destinations, the renowned Parisian art dealer Lebrun reportedly made 43 buying trips to Brussels and Antwerp in the latter decades of the eighteenth century, but he is not mentioned as a buyer at any of the sales in our database. It is most likely that he bought his stock via private transactions. De Marchi, N. and Van Miegroet, H. J., ‘Containing uncertainty: a dealer ring in 1780s Paris auctions’, in Dempster, A. M. ed., Risk and uncertainty in the art market (London, 2014), 139Google Scholar. Recent research has indicated that local art dealers in the Austrian Netherlands – with Brussels as their hub – were personally active in connecting the Dutch, French, British and emerging German markets. D. Lyna, ‘Towards an integrated market? The Austrian Netherlands and the Western European trade in pre-owned paintings’, in De Marchi and Raux eds., Moving pictures, 277–88.

65 Scheelen, W., ‘Het lot van de schilderijencollecties van de Zuidnederlandse Jezuïetencolleges na de opheffing van de Orde in 1773’, Jaarboek van het Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen (1988), 261–341 Google Scholar.

66 For more background information on the role of customs see: Coenen, A., Carriers of growth? International trade and economic development in the Austrian Netherlands (Leiden, 2014)Google Scholar.

67 These figures do not differentiate between paintings by old masters and paintings by new, contemporary artists, but it is plausible to assume that the portion made up of new art remained rather limited in the late eighteenth century, as at that time artists from the Austrian Netherlands were proving far from successful in the European context. The statistics, moreover, do not provide information about the provenance or the destination of paintings, but it is clear that the export of paintings was considerable, with nearly 60,000 paintings leaving the Austrian Netherlands between 1766 and 1791. State Archives of Belgium Brussels, Conseil des Finances, 5748–5805.

68 Piraux, C. and Dorban, M., Douane, commerce et fraude dans le sud de l'espace belge et grand-ducal au XVIIIe siècle (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1998)Google Scholar.

69 Loir, C., ‘L'exportation de l'art flamand dans la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle: collections, marché de l'art et musées dans les Pays-Bas autrichiens’, in Raux, S. ed., Collectionner dans les Flandres et la France du Nord au XVIIIe siècle (Lille, 2003), 307–20Google Scholar.

70 Guichard reaches the same conclusion for the Parisian auction scene of the 1780s, which she labelled a local dealer's market, in contrast to the buyer's market of auctions in the 1760s and 1770s. C. Guichard, ‘Small worlds: the auction economy in the late eighteenth-century Paris art market’, in De Marchi and Raux, Moving Pictures, 236–56.

71 Michel, Le commerce du tableau, 267–9; Edwards, J.-L., ‘The Conti sales of 1777 and 1779 and their impact on the Parisian Art Market’, Studies in Eighteenth Century Culture, 39 (2010), 77–100 Google Scholar.

72 Raupp, Hans-Joachim, ‘Ansätze zu einer Theorie der Genremalerei in den Niederlanden im 17. Jahrhundert’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 46 (1983), 401–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

73 E. Hauser, ‘The Amsterdam auctions market and resale in Paris recycling’, in De Marchi and Van Miegroet eds., Mapping markets, 402–4. A recent analytical exercise by De Marchi and Van Miegroet showed that there was a marked difference between the moving averages of prices per sale in Amsterdam and Paris during the 1750s to 1770s, with higher average prices in the French capital. Although this earlier analysis relates to our own hypothesis, the authors’ use of average auction prices instead of the individual price histories of paintings means that we cannot yet draw viable conclusions. See: De Marchi and Van Miegroet, ‘Containing uncertainty’, 139.