Auction Houses
Auction Houses & Studios
From 1964, images were also acquired from third-party suppliers, but initially this activity was minimal. Before commissioning original photography of works passing through salerooms the Centre would first ascertain whether negatives already existed. The auction houses themselves would routinely create images in order to illustrate sales catalogues, to document temporary exhibitions, and for their own records. Staff at the Centre would scrutinise the relevant catalogues and identify objects/lots of interest either directly from these or from lists of negatives supplied by the auction houses. Prints would then be ordered from curatorial departments1 or from a commissioned photographer2 (such as A.C. Cooper). These practices continued until the mid-2000s3 at which point sales were illustrated online and auction houses stopped supplying prints. From this point forward the Centre cut all auction house images directly from the hard-copy catalogues.
Fig. 1
Christie's Sale Room, 1990s.
The Centre also collaborated with the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) to secure images of works passing through salerooms. In the mid-1970s, when the two institutions identified works of common interest a joint order for photography would be made. The NPG’s photographer was sent to take the images and the cost shared. In these cases, the negative was retained by the NPG and a print sent to the Centre “with the relevant copyright stamp and NPG neg no.”.4
