# The Auction Catalogue as a Historical Document > Printed sale catalogues were written to sell and became the spine of provenance research. Where the digitised runs are, why the annotated copy is the real record, and how to cite one. > The Study - 2026-08-02 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/study/the-auction-catalogue-as-a-historical-document/ ## Key points - Samuel Baker held his first sale under his own name on 11 March 1744 and James Christie his first on 5 December 1766, but the printed sale catalogue predates both, appearing as simple leaflets in the early seventeenth-century Netherlands. - The annotated hand copy, carrying prices and buyers' names in manuscript, is a different and better document than the printed catalogue, and two annotated copies of one sale can disagree. - More than 15,500 catalogues are free and full-text searchable through Heidelberg's German Sales, and over 22,000 more, many of them annotated, through the Wildenstein Plattner Institute. - Christie's closed external access to its own archive in February 2021, which makes library-held and digitised runs the working record rather than a convenience. ## The catalogue was written to sell, and it records only what selling required ## The annotated copy is the document; the printed catalogue is the advertisement ## What is digitised, where it lives, and what it costs ## Lugt numbers are how the field agrees which sale it is discussing ## The 2021 Christie's closure is the argument for working from libraries ## A method for using a catalogue as evidence rather than as a price list A sale catalogue is the only class of art-historical document produced in quantity, on a fixed date, by people with a commercial reason to be precise about size and a commercial reason to be imprecise about authorship. That asymmetry is what makes it evidence. Read the measurements and the support as fact and the attribution as a claim by an interested party, work from the annotated copy wherever one survives, name the institution that holds it, and put the Lugt number in the note rather than the link. Sales end, websites are retired and archives close their doors to outsiders. The catalogue is what remains, and it is enough to work with. ## Questions **Is a price written in the margin of a catalogue the hammer price?** Usually, but not reliably. Annotations were made by dealers, agents, clerks and auctioneers for their own purposes and follow no standard, so a marginal figure may be hammer, a total including charges, a reserve or an estimate. State which institution's copy you are quoting and what the annotation literally reads, and let the reader see the ambiguity. **How should I cite a sale catalogue?** Give the auction house, city, sale title where the sale is named, the sale date and the lot number, and add the Lugt number for any sale between 1600 and 1925. If you used a digitised or annotated copy, name the holding institution as well, because annotated copies differ from one another. The identifiers will outlive the URL. **Where can a student reach annotated copies without a subscription?** The Wildenstein Plattner Institute offers more than 22,000 sales catalogues free and searchable, many of them annotated with prices, buyers' names and occasional sketches. Heidelberg's German Sales adds over 15,500 open-access catalogues with full-text search, including a project dedicated to annotated hand and protocol copies covering 1860 to 1950. **Do I still need Lugt now that so much is online?** Yes. Lugt lists more than 100,000 catalogues for 1600 to 1925 across European and American libraries, far more than has been digitised, and Brill's online edition covers only volumes one to three, ending in 1900. It is also the shared identifier by which two researchers confirm they mean the same sale, which no scan URL can be. ## Sources - [1] Getty Research Institute Library, 'Auction and Sales Catalog Research Guide: Getty Provenance Index Resources Relating to Sales and Auctions' (2.3 million records; 10,000 photocopied catalogues 1670-1870; 20,000 collectors files). - [2] Getty Research Institute Library, 'Auction and Sales Catalogs (Online Full-Text)' (Art Sales Catalogues Online: 32,000+ catalogues 1600-1900, 65,000+ Lugt records; Getty Research Portal; Wildenstein Plattner Institute 22,000+ catalogues). - [3] Heidelberg University Library, 'German Sales: Source Material for Art Market and Provenance Research' (15,500+ digitised catalogues, open access, full-text searchable). - [4] Heidelberg University Library, 'Auction Catalogues, digitized' (holdings of over 20,000 auction and sales catalogues; digitisation of 1901-1929 and 1930-1945 runs). - [5] Heidelberg University Library, German Sales project page on hand and protocol copies of auction and inventory catalogues, 1860-1950. - [6] Wildenstein Plattner Institute, 'The WPI Sales Catalogues Database: A Valuable Resource for Art Historical Research' (annotations, prices, buyers' names, differing copies between institutions). - [7] Wildenstein Plattner Institute, 'Announcing the WPI Digital Library' (25,000+ digitised publications, including 972 Wildenstein Galleries exhibition catalogues). - [8] Sotheby's Institute of Art Library, 'Historic catalogues online' (free and subscription resources compared, including the Met's ~1,400 uploaded catalogues as of 2025). - [9] Yale University Library, 'Auction catalogues: Collecting and Provenance Research' (Lugt as the standard work; SCIPIO's ~300,000 records; Getty Provenance Index coverage 1650-1945). - [10] Brill, 'Lugt's Repertoire Online' (100,000+ catalogues 1600-1925; only volumes covering 1600-1900 digitised). - [11] Artnet News, 'Christie's Has Closed Off Public Access to Its 255-Year-Old Auction Archive, a Major Resource for Scholars, Citing Budget Concerns' (February 2021). - [12] The Art Newspaper, 'Christie's auction house closes access to historic archive due to staff cuts', 11 February 2021. - [13] Sotheby's, 'Our History' (Samuel Baker's first sale under his own name, 11 March 1744). - [14] History Today, 'The first Christie's auction' (5 December 1766). - [15] Metropolitan Museum of Art, Watson Library digital collections: auction catalogs.