# The Name in the Buyer's Column Is Often an Employee > Across 126 years of sales in this archive the winning bidder is repeatedly not the owner. One record still reads two initials after 133 years, and in 1970 a scholarly journal named the wrong museum as the principal. > The Study - 2026-09-25 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/study/the-name-in-the-buyers-column-is-an-agent/ ## Key points - In seven records here the winning bidder at a public sale was acting for somebody else, and the sales run from 1893 to 2019. The practice is not a modern anonymity device and it has not changed in 126 years. - The Metropolitan's own provenance for Juan de Pareja reads 'sale, Christie's, London, November 27, 1970, no. 110, to Wildenstein for The Met'. The buyer of record is a dealer and the Museum states the principal in the same clause, which is the best case and is rare. - The British Museum's catalogue for the Palmer Cup still records the 1893 buyer as 'A.W.', identified as probably the dealer Asher Wertheimer. After 133 years the buyer's column is two letters and a qualifier. - Contemporaries guess the principal and get it wrong. The Museum's own bibliography for Juan de Pareja flags a 1970 article in Antichita viva as reporting, erroneously, that Wildenstein had bought the picture for the National Gallery in Washington. - An agency claim can also be the fiction that launders an object. Robert Hecht told the Metropolitan he was acting on ten per cent commission for the Lebanese dealer Dikran Sarrafian, and the Museum's own later investigation found 909,000 dollars paid to Sarrafian in October 1971, before the excavation the vase is said to have come from. ## A saleroom records who bid, and that is not the same as who bought ## The Metropolitan states the principal in the same clause, and that is unusual ## In 1970 a journal printed the wrong principal, and the Museum's own bibliography says so ## One buyer's column has read two letters since 1893 ## One agency was reconstructed by a scholar decades later ## The modern cases differ only in how fast the principal is named ## Seven sales, and how long the principal stayed hidden ## The claimed agency can be the thing that is false ## How to read a buyer's column ## Land the point ## Why this archive is free to read Across 126 years of sales in this archive the pattern holds without a single exception: the name printed as the buyer is the name of whoever was liable for the invoice. Six times that concealed an owner and once it manufactured a seller. The auction houses record their counterparty correctly, so the error belongs to everybody who has read that column as a statement of ownership, and the repair is a cataloguing habit rather than a disclosure rule. Name the bidder as the bidder, and leave the principal an open field until someone can fill it with evidence. ## Questions **Why does an auction record name a dealer instead of the owner?** Because the house records its counterparty. A dealer bidding on commission is buying as agent for an undisclosed principal, which is ordinary commercial practice and puts no obligation on anyone to publish the principal's name, so the public record stops at the agent. **Who bought Velazquez's Juan de Pareja in 1970?** Wildenstein made the winning bid at Christie's in London on 27 November 1970, lot 110, at 2,200,000 guineas, which is GBP 2,310,000, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art was the principal. The Museum's own provenance states it directly as to Wildenstein for The Met, which is why this case is unusually clean. **Is the buyer of the Palmer Cup known?** Not with certainty. The British Museum records the 1893 buyer as A.W., probably the dealer and collector Asher Wertheimer, and states separately that the cup then entered Baron Ferdinand Rothschild's collection. The principal is an inference from that sequence rather than a documented fact. **How was the Beauvais Missal's real buyer identified?** By later scholarship. The 1926 Sotheby's record names the dealer William Permain, and Permain's role as agent for William Randolph Hearst was established by the manuscripts scholar Peter Kidd, not by anything the sale published. **Can a claim of acting as an agent itself be false?** Yes, and the Euphronios krater is the case. Robert Hecht said he was acting on ten per cent commission for the Lebanese dealer Dikran Sarrafian, supported by letters of 1971 and 1972, and the Metropolitan's own later investigation produced a payment to Sarrafian dated 25 October 1971, before the excavation the vase is said to have come from. ## Sources - [1] Metropolitan Museum of Art, object record for Velazquez, Juan de Pareja (ca. 1608-1670), accession 1971.86, Provenance and References panels. Read in the in-app browser on 25 September 2026 after plain fetches with and without a browser user agent both returned HTTP 429 from the site's rate limiting. Source for the verbatim provenance line 'sale, Christie's, London, November 27, 1970, no. 110, to Wildenstein for The Met', for the 1801 Hamilton sale line naming Parker, for the Radnor descent, and for the bibliography entry recording Luisa Vertova, Antichita viva 9 (September-October 1970), pp. 62-63, 'erroneously as purchased by Wildenstein for the National Gallery, Washington'. - [2] British Museum, Waddesdon Bequest online catalogue, the Palmer Cup, WB.53, Detailed Curatorial Notes. Read in full on 25 September 2026; the page serves over plain HTTP with a certificate chain that WebFetch refuses, and was read with curl instead. Source for the July 1893 Christie's sale at GBP 1,732 10s to 'A.W.', for the identification as probably the dealer and collector Asher Wertheimer, for the Palmer-Morewood consignment from Ladbroke in Warwickshire, and for the statement that the cup entered Baron Ferdinand Rothschild's collection after the sale. - [3] Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection API, object 437869. Read 25 September 2026. Source for the accession number 1971.86, the credit line, the dimensions of 81.3 by 69.9 cm, the date of 1650 and gallery 625, independently of the rate-limited public page.