The rise of the modern art market in London 1850-1939 [Paperback]

Now available in an affordable paperback edition, this investigation of the modern London art market establishes the central importance of London for the development of the modern retail market in fine art. Leading experts track the emergence and development of the structures and practices that have come to characterize the commercial art system, including the commercial art gallery, the professional dealer, the exhibition cycle and its accompanying rhetoric of press coverage and publicity, and an international network for the circulation of goods.

This new commercial system involved a massive transformation of the experience of viewing art; of the relationships between artists, dealers, collectors, art objects and audiences; and of the very criteria of aesthetic value itself. Its history is thus a vital part of the history of modern art, and this anthology will be of interest to art historians as well as scholars of Victorian Studies, Museum Studies, and Social History.

Introduction. The state of the field - Pamela Fletcher and Anne Helmreich

I. Structures

1. 'Florid-looking speculators in Art and Virtu': the London picture trade c.1850 - Mark Westgarth

2. Shopping for art: the rise of the commercial art gallery, 1850s-90s - Pamela Fletcher

3. The Goupil Gallery at the intersection between London, Continent and Empire - Anne Helmreich

4. Marketing Post-Impressionism: Roger Fry's commercial exhibitions - Anna Greutzner Robins

5. Strategies of display and modes of consumption in London art galleries in the Inter-war years - Andrew Stephenson

II. Intersections

6. The art press and the art market: the art of promotion - Julie F. Codell

7. 'The Call of Commerce': The Studio magazine in the 1920s - Ysanne Holt

8. Decorative politics and direct pictures: Hugh Lane and the global art market, 1900-15 - Morna O'Neill

9. Matthew Smith, the Tate Gallery and the London art market - AlexanlÃ.