LibGuides: Richardson Memorial Library: Art Market

Auction Catalogues at the Richardson Memorial Library

The Richardson Memorial Library's auction catalogues comprise some 35 percent of its total collection. The roughly 50,000 catalogues (1800–present) are used on a regular basis for market valuations, provenance, and repatriation research.

Click to search RML auction catalogues

SEARCH TIP: From the catalog, select "ADVANCED" and enter: holdingsFullCallNumbers all "YYYY(space)MM/DD".

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Museum access only

Open access

SLAM login for remote access

Market databases

Artkhade
Provides auction sale (1920s-present) and provenance information with images for all types of fine art and other objects, as well as arms and armor, weapons, musical instruments and games. Its focus is on Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas.
Artnet Price Databases
Artnet includes two auction price databases, one for fine arts and design, and one for decorative arts. These include records from over 500 auction houses since 1985. Over half of the records are illustrated. Search options include artist (for fine arts and design), medium or object type, and auction house or gallery.
Resource functionality is best on-site.
AskArt
Information on over 270,000 artists; information varies in depth, but may include biographical, book, and periodical references, auction records, museums that own artwork, and images.
Artsy
Online contemporary art brokerage site that includes biographical information, gallery pricing, and images. Searchable by artist, gallery, theme, tag, etc.
Catawiki
Access to Europe's online auction marketplace. Catawiki hosts over 300 weekly auctions across 80 categories.

Auction Results

Christie's Auction Results This link opens in a new window
Access to the auction house's e-catalogues and corresponding auction results, 1998-present.
Sotheby's Auction Results This link opens in a new window
Access to the auction house's e-catalogues. In order to access auction results, users must create free individual accounts.
As an alternative for Sotheby's auction results, try consulting Artnet.

Digital Auction Catalogues

German Sales 1901–1945
Under the title "German Sales," almost 10,000 historical auction catalogues mainly published in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, are currently being made available online and in open access.
HathiTrust
HathiTrust Digital Library is a large-scale collaborative repository of digital content from research libraries including content digitized via Google Books and the Internet Archive digitization initiatives, as well as content digitized locally by libraries. SLAM has access to open access content. Select "Full Text" and "Full View" for open access content.
Internet Archive
Free public access to digitized auction catalogues, searchable by auction house and by words within text.
Jacques Doucet Collection, Bibliothèque de l'Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art
Very large digital collection of historic auction catalogues amassed by French collector Jacques-Antoine Doucet (1853-1929)
Metropolitan Museum/Watson Library Auction Catalogues, Internet Archive
Digitized copies of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Watson Library collection of over 6,000 auction catalogues.
Wildenstein Plattner Institute Sales Catalogues
Provides open access to 22,000+ digitized sales catalogues dating before 1945, and searchable by keyword, city, country, and/or date.