Research Guides: Art Provenance Research: Objects, Artists, Dealers, & Collectors Resources

Objects, Artists, Dealers, & Collectors - Overview

There are several ways to identify biographical resources. In this section, you will find references to whom an object is attributed as well as previous attributions. Click on the additional links to find more information on catalogues raisonnés, artists signatures, dealer records & collector marks, photo archives, and object marks.

Electronic Resources

Art and Architecture Source
Art & Architecture Source is an essential research database for peer-reviewed, full-text art and architecture journals with coverage dating back to 1914. Subjects include fine, decorative, and commercial art, as well as architecture, landscape, urban planning, and architectural design. With strong international coverage, including periodicals published in French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Dutch, it offers hundreds of full-text art journals, magazines, and books, plus detailed indexing and abstracts, and thousands of images. It also includes the contents of Art Index Retrospective (1929-1984), formerly called Art Source.
Bibliography of the History of Art
As a single database combining Répertoire international de la littérature de l'art (RILA) (International repertory of the literature of art),1975-1989, and Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA), 1990-2007, it covers scholarship on European and American visual arts from late antiquity to the present. It includes indexes and abstracts of art-related books, conference proceedings and dissertations, exhibition and dealer's catalogs, and articles from more than 1,600 journals. BHA was produced jointly by the Getty Research Institute (GRI) and the Institut de l’Information Scientifique et Technique (INIST) until 2007, when it continued as the International Bibliography of Art (IBA), provided through the art, design, and architecture collection of ProQuest.

CAMEO
The Conservation and Art Materials Encyclopedia Online (CAMEO) is a database that compiles, defines, and disseminates technical information on the distinct collection of terms, materials, and techniques used in the fields of art conservation and historic preservation. First developed as a materials database in 1997 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston it has expanded with the cooperation of multiple institutions to include several reference collections.

OpenBibArt
OpenBibArt - A century of western bibliography on art history aggregates the records of four related databases:
- The Répertoire d’Art et d’Archéologie – RAA – a bibliographic publication, published from 1910 to 1972 under the direction of INHA’s Library of the National Institute of Art History and subsequently by the CNRS, providing descriptions of articles, monographs and sales catalogs from many countries,
- The Répertoire d’Art et d’Archéologie – RAA – containing all records for the same publications as above, and managed by Inist-CNRS from 1973 to 1990,
- The Répertoire International de la littérature de l’art / International Repertory of the Literature of Art – RILA – an abstracting and indexing service for the literature of art history created in 1975 by the Clark Art Institute and co-sponsored from 1982 to 1989 by the Getty Trust, which assumed full sponsorship in 1990,
- The Bibliography of the History of Art – BHA – a cooperative venture of Inist-CNRS and the Getty Research Institute, from 1990 to 2007.
Oxford Art Online
Oxford Art Online allows searching across both the Benezit Dictionary of Artists and Grove Art Online. The Benezit Dictionary of Artists is a standard reference collection of artists' biographies. It is international in scope, and covers all periods and styles. In addition to biographies, many entries include bibliographies, auction sales data, and images of signatures, monograms, or other marks of identification. Grove Art Online is composed of signed, scholarly encyclopedia entries on all aspects of global art, design and architecture. Individual articles are updated periodically, and new articles reflecting contemporary developments in the arts are added on a regular basis.