LibGuides: Richardson Memorial Library: Art Market

Auction Catalogs at the Richardson

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

Click to search RML auction catalogs

SEARCH TIP: From the catalog, select "BROWSE" and enter (in quotes) DATE of SALE [YYYY(space)MM/DD]

Icon Key

Museum access only

Open access

SLAM login for remote access

Market databases

Artkhade This link opens in a new window
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 This link opens in a new window
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 onsite.
AskArt This link opens in a new window
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 This link opens in a new window
Online contemporary art brokerage site that includes biographical information, gallery pricing, and images. Searchable by artist, gallery, theme, tag, etc.

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 and corresponding auction results.

Digital auction catalogues

German Sales 1901-1945 This link opens in a new window
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.
Hathi Trust This link opens in a new window
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 This link opens in a new window
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 This link opens in a new window
Very large digital collection of historic auction catalogues amassed by French collector Jacques-Antoine Doucet (1853-1929)
Metropolitan Museum/Watson Library Auction Catalogs, Internet Archive This link opens in a new window
Digitized copies of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Watson Library collection of over 6,000 auction catalogues.
Wildenstein Plattner Institute Sales Catalogues This link opens in a new window
Provides open access to 11,000+ digitized sales catalogues dating before 1945, and searchable by keyword, city, country, and/or date.