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Our Library & Archive
Welcome to one of the largest Library & Archive of factual 'primary source material' on European Impressionist & Modern Art available in one location. Over many years our researchers have been gathering and sourcing documentation internationally that support the historical record of significant works of art. Documentation vital to collectors that wish to establish early provenance to support authenticity and identify restitution risk.
Our Archive is built from internationally sourced material, collected together for the first time to be collated, compared and assessed. We gather material in a highly focused manner, specific to each artist at a particular time in their lives. We wish to understand not only what artists were producing and when but also, which dealers they operated through and how. This allows us to build an accurate contextual understanding of an artwork's journey, the network of dealers it passed through and the collectors that owned it.
Our Archive contains the following types of records:
Impressionist & Modern Art Dealer Administration Records; including stock books, sales books, commission books, client inventory cards, restoration reports, sales receipts, provenance records, artists letters, photographic indexes, photographs, authentication letters etc. We currently hold records on over 250 art dealers and their agents. We execute a complete holistic analysis of dealer's available records that we gather from multiple sources. Where possible we have achieved historically significant reconstructed 'lost' stock books from primary materials for the following galleries:
- Galerie Ambroise Vollard, (Paris)
- Modern Galerie Thannhauser, (Munich, Berlin, Luzern & New York)
- Galerie Rosenberg (Paris)
Institutional Exhibition Records; including insurance documents, inventory lists, request letters, shipping records, damage reports, exhibition catalogues, scholar notes, sales books etc.
The Archive holds records on over 1,300 Private collectors; including collection inventories, requests to dealers, condition reports, restoration receipts, collection catalogues.
Scholars Papers; including cataloguing notes, authentication certificates, photographic archives, collector letters & inventories.
International Newspaper Archives.
Art Market Index Databank – We are the only library in the world that has collated together the records of auction sales of European Impressionist & Modern Art between 1861 and 2019. The task was not straight forward, we had to find and gather complete sets of multiple indexes that were scattered throughout many international libraries. The "art sale indexes" were published mainly in France, Germany and England, translated into at least four different languages and issued, through translation, with confusing new titles. In Addition the Indexes changed publishers, titles were even swallowed by competing publishing houses over the years. Our interest is to be able to track the whole history of one artist's auction record to assist in the Risk Analysis of provenance.
Our library continues to bring together all known exhibition and literature publications on specific artists, with particular attention paid to publications preceding both World War II and the death dates of the artists. We are also continuing to develop a library of International Auction Catalogues. The earliest texts we hold are from 1880's to the present day. They are largely digitalised and available for the use by professional curators, art academics, Masters and Phd. students on request.
The Looted Art Claims Database Project has been developed as a critical resource for collectors of European Impressionist & Modern Artworks. Visit the projects page www.LootedArtClaims.com for more information.
Project News
The Library & Archive are being used to produce the first thoroughly 'record checked' catalogue of Georges Braque Fauve period paintings. So far we have assessed 113 paintings, click here to find out more.
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