# The House That Cannot Be Asked: Who Keeps the Price After the Sale > Half this archive's sale record sits with two firms you can still write to. The other half sits with houses that shut, and with bodies that were never houses at all. > The Study - 2026-09-24 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/study/the-house-that-cannot-be-asked/ ## Key points - The 293 published records carry 217 auction rows, of which 136 name a seller, spread across 56 different names. Sotheby's and Christie's account for 65 of those 136 under their own names, just under half the record. - The rest sits with firms that closed. Parke-Bernet holds three of the prices here and was bought by Sotheby's in 1964. Galerie Georges Petit holds two and shut in 1933, when its assets were sold. Dowell's of Edinburgh holds the two Caravaggio prices. - A closed house does not take its catalogues with it, but it does take the ability to answer a question. Where the printed catalogue gave a lot number and no price, as at the 1890 Seilliere sale, that hammer is now permanently unrecoverable. - Eleven of the entries in this column are not auction houses at all. Two are Acts of Parliament, one is the Commissioners of Longitude, and one is a payment of four silver ingots to the Daoist custodian of a cave at Dunhuang. - The rule that follows is simple and it is not about price. Record who recorded the figure, because the survival of that party decides whether the figure can ever be checked again. ## A price outlives its sale only if somebody keeps it ## Two firms hold just under half the record ## Eight guineas, then five, for a Caravaggio ## A lot number, and no price, from a house that closed in 1933 ## One hundred and sixty guilders, Amsterdam, October 1940 ## Eleven entries in this column were never auction houses ## What a surviving house is actually worth to a reader ## How to read a price whose house is gone ## Why this archive is free to read Half the prices in this archive were set in rooms that are still open for business, and the other half were set in rooms that closed. Dowell's of Edinburgh sold a Caravaggio twice inside eleven months, for eight guineas and then five, and there is no longer anybody to ask what the catalogue meant. Galerie Georges Petit left a lot number and an illustration and took the hammer with it in 1933. The lesson is not that old prices are unreliable. It is that a price is a record kept by somebody, and the first question to ask of any figure is who is still keeping it. ## Questions **How many of this archive's recorded sales name the house that held them?** 136 of 217 auction rows name a seller, across 56 distinct names. Most of the remaining 81 rows are entries recording that the object has never been offered at auction at all, which is a deliberate note rather than a missing value. **What happened to Parke-Bernet?** Sotheby's bought it in 1964, when it was the largest auction house in America, and the firm became Sotheby Parke Bernet. Because it was absorbed rather than wound up, its sale records passed to the buyer, which is why a 1964 lot number from Parke-Bernet is still traceable today. **Why can a price be lost when the catalogue survives?** Because a printed sale catalogue is written before the sale. It carries the lot number, the description and often an illustration, and it cannot carry the hammer, which only exists afterwards in the firm's own books. When the firm goes and its books are not deposited anywhere, the description survives and the price does not. **Which sales in this archive were not auctions at all?** Eleven entries, each labelled as such in words. They include two Acts of Parliament and an award by the Commissioners of Longitude for John Harrison's marine timekeepers, a payment of four silver ingots at Dunhuang in 1907, a direct purchase by the British government in 1816 and several private treaty sales. **Does a defunct auction house make a price wrong?** No. It makes the price unverifiable at source, which is a different and lesser problem. The right treatment is to record the figure, record who recorded it, note that the recording party no longer exists and treat later repetitions of the figure as citations of one piece of research rather than as independent confirmation. ## Sources - [1] Sotheby's, Sotheby's Crosses the Pond and Becomes the First International Auction House, by Christian House, 12 April 2019. The firm's own account of its 1964 purchase of Parke-Bernet, then America's largest auction house. Read 24 September 2026. - [2] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Leonard A. Lauder Research Center, Modern Art Index Project, entry for Galerie Georges Petit, active Paris 1846-1933. Read in the in-app browser on 24 September 2026 after HTTP 429 on the plain fetch. Source for the foundation, the 1877 succession, the Expositions internationales from 1882, the Degas estate sale, the 1932 Picasso retrospective and the 1933 closure and sale of assets. - [3] Antiques Trade Gazette, Rubens masterpiece joins the world record holders at 45m, reporting the Sotheby's sale of 10 July 2002. Read in the in-app browser on 24 September 2026 after HTTP 403 on the plain fetch with and without a browser user agent; the headline and opening paragraph are outside the paywall and give the 45 million pound figure and the buyer in the room. - [4] HENI, The Painting That Set Rubens' Auction Record After Years in the Shadows, 7 February 2025. Carries the sale as 69.69 million dollars for 10 July 2002 at Sotheby's London, a premium-inclusive figure converted to dollars, alongside a table of earlier Rubens auction records. Read 24 September 2026. - [5] Art Gallery of Ontario, The Massacre's triumphant return, 30 November 2018. The museum's own caption for the panel, giving oil on panel and 142 x 183 x 1.9 cm. Read in the in-app browser on 24 September 2026 after HTTP 403 on the plain fetch. - [6] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, object page and Open Access Collection API record for the mosque lamp of al-Malik al-Nasir, accession 17.190.987, object 447002, the gift of J. Pierpont Morgan in 1917. The API was queried directly on 24 September 2026 and returns the credit line and a date of about 1340 with no provenance field at all; the museum's published provenance cites a Galerie Georges Petit sale of the Mannheim estate in 1910 by house and lot without a price, a premium or a buyer. - [7] National Gallery of Ireland, Caravaggio's The Taking of Christ, the gallery's own display history for the picture. Read 24 September 2026. Confirms that the painting remained in the Hamilton family for 119 years until it was sold at auction by Dowell's in Edinburgh in 1921 and again in 1922, that it was catalogued under Honthorst's nickname throughout, and that it then passed to the Hon. Major Charles Hubert Francis Noel and in 1924 to Dr Marie Lea-Wilson.