Authorship as a determinant of art prices and auction settings in eighteenth-century Paris

Abstract

In the context of a booming art market in Paris, eighteenth-century art dealers began to exploit authorship as a value-enhancing strategy. Using Jean-Baptiste Pierre Lebrun’s business as a case study, we show that art dealers purposefully used a firm scale of authentication to create product differentiation and to boost auction dynamics and revenues by reordering the lots before the sale in leaflets known as feuilles de vacation. Our empirical findings support the hypothesis of the development of a market driven by the quest for the artist’s hand in pre-revolutionary Paris, with differential use of connoisseurial knowledge, depending on buyers’ profiles.

Art perception is affected by negative knowledge about famous and unknown artists

“…The resulting anonymity may have increased the perceived socio-emotional distance between artist and recipient, thereby facilitating a shift to the more detached appraisal necessary when evaluating formal qualities of an artwork “objectively” 17 . Supporting this perspective, the presence of an artist’s name can exert a top-down influence on various aesthetic judgments 60 , 61 and affects the valuations of paintings in the art market 62 , 63 . By providing names, the present study enhanced the credibility of the information, thereby also enhancing the chances to detect effects on outcomes related to authenticity 64 .…”