Spaces of Connoisseurship

Download or read book Spaces of Connoisseurship written by Alison Clarke and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-07-18 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Spaces of Connoisseurship, Alison Clarke explores the ‘who’, ‘where’ and ‘how’ of judging Old Master paintings in the nineteenth-century British art trade. She describes how the staff at family art dealers Thomas Agnew & Sons (“Agnew’s”) and London’s National Gallery took advantage of emerging technologies such as the railways and photography. Through encounters with pictures in a range of locations, both private and public, these art market actors could build up the visual memory and necessary expertise to compare artworks and judge them in terms of attribution, condition and beauty. Also explored are the display tactics adopted by both commercial outfit and art museum to showcase pictures once acquired. In a time of ever-spiralling art prices, this book tackles the question of why some paintings are preferred over others, and exactly how art experts reach their judgements.