The Getty Provenance Index currently contains more than 2.3 million records taken from source material such as archival inventories, auction catalogs, and dealer stock books. While most records relate to pre-1900, the Index includes German Sales Catalogs covering the period 1900–1945.
Researchers can access the Collectors Files database online in order to determine if a file exists for a specific collector's name or location. The database is searchable by keywords, including collector names. Please note that the records in the Collectors Files database do not describe the contents or the extent of the physical files.
The Collectors Files comprise about 20,000 folders with information on international collectors, dealers, auctioneers, and art institutions from the late Middle Ages to the present. The files are particularly strong in the history of collecting in Western Europe but also include information regarding collectors and collections located around the world.
The Collectors Files typically contain published and unpublished material, such as photocopies of inventories, sales catalogs, articles, genealogical references, scholars' notes, and similar resources.
The Sales Catalog Files are a physical repository for the photocopies of most of the documents indexed in the Getty Provenance Index® Sales Catalogs database. The copies represent more than 10,000 auction and private contract sales catalogs from dozens of European and American institutions, making this the most comprehensive collection of its kind for the periods covered. In many cases, the collection contains multiple versions of a catalog, each of which may have different hand annotations.
The time periods and countries covered reflect those of the Provenance Index Sales Catalogs database, listing sales that took place in Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, and the Netherlands between 1670 and 1870.
The most comprehensive coverage for each country is as follows:
Belgium: 1668–1840
Britain: 1751–1760, 1780–1850
Netherlands: 1801–1820
France: 1701–1800, 1808–1820
Germany: 1670–1800
Sections of the Sales Catalogs database that are not represented in the Sales Catalog Files include Scandinavian catalogs, 17th- and 18th-century Dutch catalogs, and French catalogs from 1801–7. However, many of these catalogs may be found in the Collectors Files or in the Library Catalog.