On the Relevance and Potential of Auction Catalogues as Sources for Art Market Research on Asian Art

As all twenty-seven Asian auctions until 1917 were held at Rudolf Bangel’s in Frankfurt, this city is confirmed as the centre of the trade in Asian art from 1907 to 1914, when the volume of auction sales was high.17 However, from 1926 to 1929 Berlin saw fifty percent more Asian auctions than Frankfurt, with twelve sales in Berlin and eight in Frankfurt. While Frankfurt was leading in the field of Asian sales before World War I, when Berlin played no part at all, the tables were turned after the war years and Berlin now rivalled Frankfurt. Between 1926 and 1929 only Cologne had some relevance otherwise, with four auctions.

Qualitative analysis of Auction catalogue introductory essays

Not every auction catalogue was published with an introductory text. The content evaluation made here is therefore based on forty-eight introductions out of the above-mentioned body of ninety-seven auction catalogues of Asian art dating from 1901 to 1929. The focus was on extracting information about collecting and art market trends, specialist networks and provenance. In addition, the catalogues offered an overview over those staff members of public institutions who were active in the art trade as experts, cataloguers or author of introductory essays. A selection of the resulting findings will be presented below in order to demonstrate examples of the type of information held in auction catalogue introductions and their relevance for art market research of the period in question. In the limited space of this article, it will however not be possible to present a full critical analysis and appreciation of the results in the context of national and international trade in Asian art.

Collecting and Art Market Trends 1901-1929

From the introductory essays, it becomes clear that until 1910, collectors and buyers are described as widely knowledgeable on Asian art, leading to increased demand for the “real early pieces”. Publications like Justus Brinkmann’s and Shinkishi Hara’s Die Meister der Japanischen Schwertzierathen of 1902,18 or Woldemar von Seidlitz’s Geschichte des Japanischen Farbholzschnitts of 189719 had for example fostered a greater level of expertise in Japanese art. Export wares, which used to feed previous demand, was now recognised as such and rejected. To quote from an introduction to the 1906 auction catalogue for the collection of Count Gaston Pöttickh von Pettenegg at the Dorotheum: “Only a few years ago did a large number of European art lovers begin to look in greater detail at Japanese art, museums completed their collections, rejected the inferior and replaced it with pieces of great artistic merit; the inferior export ware was recognised and scorned and the price of those few genuine old pieces available in Europe rose exponentially.”20 The same introduction states that “The early and artistically interesting objects in Japan had long been in collections which were owned either by museums or by outstanding Japanese aristocratic families; …. The result is a scarcity of certain pieces in the trade, even at a high price and in spite of great efforts.”

Rudolf Bangel’s introduction to the 1908 auction catalogue of the collection of Japanese and Chinese art assembled by the former Imperial German Consul in China, Dr Schmidt-Leda,21 states that foreign and American collectors had recognised the value of Asian art early and bought important pieces. It implies that Germany had been remiss at doing the same: “Truly excellent, early objects of Japanese and Chinese art become rarer by the day, even in the Far East as such the best pieces can hardly or only very rarely be found in the trade. The main reason is that as the appreciation of the subtleties and the intricate charms of East Asian art increased, foreign buyers, especially from Europe and America, have absorbed a large part of the stock in China and Japan, which had seemed inexhaustible to begin with.”22 Bangel also mentions that the Japanese and Chinese had started to value their own heritage and preserve it: “Years ago, people in the East watched more or less dispassionately as one art object after the other was whisked out of the country through export, but suddenly especially the Japanese had an epiphany; they realised the danger to their own country through reducing its holdings of early artworks and started to defend this heritage, a testament to an old and highly developed culture. Museums and private collectors began to compete with foreign collectors, dealers and agents, and prices were often paid over there for particularly high quality examples of early art which we would find extraordinary.”

When the imperial government in China collapsed in 1911 and Japan experienced a period of uncertainty after Meiji’s death and the subsequent change of government in 1912, the consequences were an increased offering of Asian art on European markets. The political upheavals also led the Shanghai resident K. Blickle to put his collection up for sale in 1913. This is the only representative auction catalogue for Asian art in the selection which dates from the second decade of the twentieth century. In the introduction, Rudolf Bangel wrote that “The revolutionary upheavals in Cathay have not been without effect on our local cultural scene. We owe the recent influx of superior early Chinese objects to these radical political changes … .”23

From 1920, as in the previous decade, there are repeated references to an increase in expertise and knowledge of Asian art and a decrease of supply. Furthermore, a clear trend is identified towards collecting artworks from the “very early archaic China”.24 Major US-American art institutions launched highly successful expeditions to China in a comprehensive search for art treasures from the past.25 In the introduction to the auction catalogue of the Walter Bondy26 collection in 1927, written by William Cohn27 from the Berlin State Museums, the situation is described as follows: “China seems almost stripped bare. What there is on the market is usually from earlier Western collections, which circulate while the earth gives up more and more cultural goods from an earlier age, never seen before. America makes an effort to grab the most valuable pieces and has succeeded to a great extent. Today, impoverished Europe can only be a feeble competitor in this heated competition.”28

A number of introductory essays refer to the fact that, as demand for early Chinese art grew, so did the number of fakes and copies. This exponential increase is a dominant subject for the period between 1920 and 1929. “NO art form is more disputed than the Chinese”,29 as William Cohn wrote, this time in his introduction to the auction catalogue for the Franz Lissa collection in 1926. “Already, there are taunts about the admirers and researchers of an art whose very existence appears to be in doubt”, he continued. For Cohn, the widespread uncertainty about the authenticity of early Asian art objects is a welcome incentive to buy more recent and unquestionable art. “For some time, it seemed that more recent Chinese art was about to be displaced or upstaged by the discovery of early art. But on reflection, it was recognised that attractive and trustworthy works from recent times were more satisfying than dubious works dating from a dark and ancient time.”30

Overall, the auction catalogue introductions concur that wider knowledge of Asian art led to an increase in demand for authentic pieces which could no longer be fed by export ware. Furthermore, the supply of Asian art was declared to be limited by the extensive earlier purchases by the British, the French and the Americans. Finally, Asian peoples had begun to value their own cultural heritage, leading to a significant reduction in exports. The only catalogue reference to a short-term increase in the Asian art offering can be found in 1912/1913 as a result of political upheaval in Asia.

After World War I, collecting early Chinese art was explicitly referred to as fashionable. An increased demand for such rarities led to a rise in forgeries which caused a general sense of misgiving. This was used as an argument in favour of returning attention to the broader offering of Asian art from more recent times. Many auctions are advertised with a reference to collectors who had either lived in Asia, or frequently worked or at least regularly travelled there. They were deemed to be familiar with the art and the culture of the country and to have bought the objects in their place of origin. One such example was the Sproesser collection: “The AUGUST G. SPROESSER collection was created in China. With rare taste and nuanced understanding, the owner gathered a collection of high artistic merit during his long stay in Shanghai. His reports confirm that this was not always easy, as his agents often returned from the interior of the country empty-handed.”31

Even though the spread of connoisseurship in Asian art was frequently referred to, a comprehensive overview of all characterisations of the collections offered at auction results in the verdict that they were predominantly assembled in line with purely subjective criteria of taste, making these rather amateurs’ collections. Objects were collected not so much for their art historical merit but rather for their beauty.32 The joy of collecting was not to be adulterated by considering academic interests or changes in fashion.33 In his introduction to the Franz Lissa catalogue, William Cohn even went so far as to say that “dreary export ware (…) had formed the core of most collections offered to the German market to date.”34 Important collections formed on the basis of connoisseurship and academic criteria had been sold around the turn of the century to Paris, London and Tokyo. In particular, these were the collections of “S. Bing, Paris, editor of the Japon Artistique, T. Hayashi in Paris and Tokyo and E. Hart in London, whose Lectures on Japanese Art Work are still appreciated today”.35

Specialist networks and Provenance

One example for an outstanding and very valuable collection auctioned in German-speaking areas between 1901 and 1929 was the Tony Straus-Negbaur36 collection, also distinguished by its focus on Japanese colour woodcuts from the seventeenth to the nineteeth century (fig. 5). The introduction to this catalogue demonstrates that auction catalogues can offer revealing information about expert networks and provenance of collections. The objects assembled by Tony Strauss-Negbaur between 1908 and 1913 were auctioned by Paul Cassirer and Hugo Helbing in 1928. A measure of its importance were the catalogue introduction written by Curt Glaser,37 then director of the Berlin Kunstbibliothek and East Asian art expert, and the cataloguing by the Japanese art specialist Fritz Rumpf,38 who worked in the library of the Berlin Japanese Institute. The introduction refers to an exhibition of loans from the Straus-Negbaur collection in Dresden which had been curated by the Japan specialist Woldemar von Seidlitz.39 Naturally, the participation in such exhibitions was seen as evidence of the high quality of these works on paper, while also highlighting the saleability of the works on offer.

Of particular interest for art market research is the following passage in the introduction, where Glaser mentions some of the sources for the prints in the collection: “… frequently prints from famous collections eventually came into her possession. We find numerous examples of prints formerly owned by a connoisseur as great as Hayashi. Other collections which contributed their share were those of Wakai, Gillot,40 Bing, Barbouteau,41 Haviland in Paris,42 the Germans Jaekel – Greifswald,43 Vautier – Düsseldorf,44 Herman Smidt – Bremen,45 Julius Kurth46 and Succo.47 Some of the most valuable series up to and including the hexaptychs which are rarely found complete were purchased from the collections of Happer – London, Thornicraft – sold at Sotheby’s in 1909,48 as well as American collections like those of Clarence Buckingham – Chicago, Francis Lathrop – New York, Hamilton Field, Brooklyn, and from Samborn, Kerfoot.”49 In addition, Straus-Negbaur is mentioned to have been in close contact with eminent scholars such as William Gookin in Chicago and the German Julius Kurth.50 Detailed information about provenance from private collections can only be found in three further auction catalogues. The auction catalogue for Dr. A. Breuer51 included a painting from the collection of the Freiburg private lecturer Ernst Grosse.52 The Japanese art objects of the Munich architect V. Oppenheimer53 were mostly acquired from the collection of the connoisseur of Japanese art G. Iguchi in Tokyo, with additions from the collections of Count Bourbon Bardi (1851-1906) in Venice and Count Pettenegg in Vienna.54 The Japanese pottery and the tobacco containers from the collection “Alexander D.” came from the large Paris collection of A. Huc, the soapstone figures from the sold duplicates of the Johanneum55 and the lacquerware from the former collection of Queen Caroline of Saxony.56

Museum Sales

Six further important auctions are notable during the period and for the region covered in this article, as they consisted of museum deaccessions. In 1923, part of the so-called World Travel Collection of the Austro-Hungarian heir to the throne Arch-Duke Franz-Ferdinand was auctioned at the Dorotheum.57 Originally, it had been purchased for the ethnographic collection of the Natural History Museum in Vienna.58 In 1917, 1926 and 1927, the Cologne Museum for East Asian Art parted with some of its holdings,59 while the Berlin State Museums deaccessioned part of its collection in 1920.60 A further fifty-five lots were offered with the general information “property of a German museum” in a mixed consignor sale at Paul Cassirer and Hugo Helbing’s in 1926.

Some of the introductory essays to these catalogues reveal information about the sale selection or their motivation. For example, the head of the ethnographical collection of the Natural History museum in Vienna, Viktor Christian61 wrote about the merger of the World Travel Collection with the existing museum collection: “The Indian and Japanese sections of the collection are particularly rich, and it is understandable that in uniting these with the existing museum collection a number of duplicates would emerge. However, the term duplicate cannot be used in the same narrow sense as in paintings or sculptures. For ethnographical collections, shape, material and decoration are most relevant, and smaller differences in execution are of secondary importance. In this wider sense, the present auction will offer duplicate from existing collection holdings, which would incur greater costs than could be justified under the present circumstances, were they retained. Since the entire proceeds of the sale will benefit the expansion of the collection, its components will remain undiminished, and the acquisitions funded by the duplicates will close notable gaps.”62 Worth noting in this explanation are the definition of duplicates in ethnographic collections and the cost-benefit analysis with view to deaccessioning them.

In his introduction, the director of the Berlin Museum for East Asian Art, Otto Kümmel,63 touches on the same subjects. “Strictly speaking, there are no duplicates in East Asian art, since even the art forms with multiple reproductions have such a variety of results that each print becomes a new entity. Nevertheless, German museums must take into account their wide collection area over a long period of time and forego any attempt to collect all of these variations. They have enough to do when trying to obtain even major versions of significant examples, and they need to sort out what is expendable at regular intervals in order to generate the necessary space and means, whenever donations or acquisitions permit the replacement of good things with better.”64 Clearly, the subject of museum deaccessioning was already virulent at the beginning of the twentieth century, due to limited spatial resources, personnel capacities and financial means. Museum sales were therefore no exception even in other categories between 1901 and 1929. However, the museums generally did not provide reasons or strategies in the catalogue.

Another example of a programmatic approach can be found in the introduction to the 1917 auction from the collection of the Museum for East Asian Art in Cologne. The director Adolf Fischer65 explains the reasons for the sale as follows: “When the museum was developed, a principle was established not to tire the visitor by repetitions of artworks of the same type or even duplicates. These were therefore excluded from the beginning, as well as objects of purely ethnographical relevance which would not fit in with the concept of the art museum.”

As catalogue entries or introductions were often written by museum directors or curators, the latter’s involvement in the art market was clearly a matter of course in the first three decades of the twentieth century. For Asian art, apart from the above-mentioned protagonists66 one of the main actors was William Cohn from the Berlin museums, who cooperated with the auctioneers Paul Cassirer and Hugo Helbing from 1926 to 1929 and contributed the introductions for five auction catalogues.67 This survey’s overview of the participation of museum employees in the art market provides new insights into the network between museums, academics and the art trade. In addition, university lecturers and scholars who published on Asian culture also wrote entries in auction catalogues.

Conclusion

The completion of the research and digitalisation project “German Sales”, funded by the German Research Association (DFG), will make the entire corpus of more than 5,800 auction catalogues from German-speaking areas between 1901 and 1929 available online. This simplified access will offer new perspectives on the research of the auction trade in Asian art. In the context of the present article, an initial quantitative analysis could be undertaken which concluded that Asian art took up a relatively small portion of the auction market. Based on auction catalogues allocated to this category, only two percent of auctions were dedicated to it. For these Asian sales, the two centres for auctions were Frankfurt am Main and Berlin, where the dealers who dominated the market were also based – Rudolf Bangel, and the duo Hugo Helbing and Paul Cassirer.

However, since Asian works of art were also offered at other auctions, where they were not the predominant category, future art market research should focus on an analysis based on all auctioned Asian works of art. This would allow conclusions about which type of Asian objects from which period were consigned to auction when and where. With this background information, a more informed perspective on art market trends as mentioned in the catalogue introductions could be gained, as well as a characterisation of many collections which neither met art historical standards nor were apparently considered competitive at an international level.

In a second step, it would be worthwhile to compare the market offering at auction with that in the retail section of the art trade, based on both exhibition and stock catalogues. The findings could then also be analysed in the context of the international trade. Both the relevance of auction catalogues as a source for art market research and their potential should by now be clear. Auction catalogues not only contain descriptions of works and information about their material value. Above and beyond these, they offer insights about collection profiles, sources, networks between museums, academics and the art trade, and questions of deaccessioning.

Britta Bommert has been a research associate with the project “German Sales” since 2014.

Translation: Susanne Meyer-Abich

---