The Fine Arts Library holds an extensive collection of auction sales catalogs from the United States, Europe, and Asia. This collection of over 40,000 items includes catalogs from the 18th century to the present and are available for use in the library. The majority of our catalogs are represented in the SCIPIO database.
The Walther and Ellen Bernt collection includes significant and rare auction sales catalogs from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A checklist is available on request.
Following World War II, Walther Bernt (1900-1980), a civil engineer, worked at the U.S. Military Government's Munich Central Collecting Point assisting in the return of art works confiscated by the German Nazi government. He met Ellen Bernt (1913-2002) around 1942, and they married in 1957. Walther and Ellen Bernt became widely recognized experts of Dutch and Flemish artists of the 17th century. They researched and wrote expert opinions for art dealers and auction houses. Walther wrote the monograph, Niederländischen Maler des 17. Jahrhunderts (1948). In the course of their work the couple, based in Munich, compiled an extensive collection of photographic reproductions of paintings and related catalogs.
An encyclopedic research collection on 17th century Dutch and Flemish painters. It includes published and unpublished photographic and photomechanical reproductions, collected from many different sources, of paintings by more than 1,200 Dutch and Flemish artists of the 17th century. Hand-written annotations made by the collectors, clippings, and other textual materials supplement the pictures. The collection also includes related catalogs, chiefly from auctions in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Denmark, France, Belgium, and England, many of them published by Sotheby's and Christie's. Some of the catalogs come from gallery exhibitions and art dealers. Many include hand-written annotations and price lists.
Walther and Ellen Bernt collection Bernt, Walther [collector]
