The provenance of a work of art is a statement of where that object has resided in the past. With prints and drawings that information is sometimes inscribed on an old mat, but most often is indicated by specific marks on the front or back of the print: hand written or stamped, sometimes tiny, smudged or faded, signatures, monograms, coats of arms, mottos, natural or geometric figures and the like. Many of these marks have been researched, collected and published in a two volume work, by Frits Lugt, called “Marques de Collections.” Lugt’s pioneering work is being continued today on the website www.marquesdecollections.fr, though there are many marks still waiting to be identified.

 

Why is this important? Several reasons. First of all, the study of collectors and collections is in itself interesting. Just who was this man who owned this print? What in it spoke to him? He may have been documenting German or Dutch culture for its own sake, or he may have been an artist who had something to learn from the print. Kings, nobles, businessmen and artists all collected prints and drawings. That is to say, some of them did, and the fact that they did, while others did not, tells us something about them: essentially, that there was a cultured mind there, aware of religious themes, mythology, geography, history and distinguished figures of the past and present.

 

Second, while the statement that a print passed through such-and-such an auction house five years ago is of little or no significance, the fact that it belonged at one time to a nineteenth-century knowledgeable collector is, among other things, an indication of quality. Many prints that are rare today were not so rare one or two hundred years ago and, given that many collectors then were wealthy, or well connected, or both, the impressions they bought were generally the best available. One rarely finds a good collector’s mark on an inferior impression and, if one does, it may well be an indication of the extreme rarity of that print. The impression was the best one available.

 

So, an exhibit of works from earlier collections offers a window onto an earlier era, one in which the accumulation of prints and drawings was believed to be an accumulation of knowledge, for prints and drawings had intellectual content. It is so different today. The market is also different. But it is quite amazing that so many of these prints and drawings are purchasable today and many at prices – considering the devaluations of all currencies over the years – not much different from what they were then.