A collector’s mark is a mark on an artwork placed there by its owner to record its history of ownership. Each is unique, and can include a mix of signatures and initials, full annotations, and designed stamps. Imagery includes coats of arms, crowns, animals, crosses, among other symbols. The marks themselves can be handwritten in graphite or ink, stamped with ink, or blind stamped––impressed into the paper without ink. Collectors’ marks are usually on the back of the artwork, where engraver’s marks, dealer’s marks, or publisher’s marks may also be found.
Collectors’ marks can help to track down an artwork that has been lost or stolen. Rembrandt van Rijn’s The Angel Appearing to the Shepherds includes multiple collectors’ marks as well as a full signature from Robert Dighton, a notorious thief of Rembrandt prints from the British Museum. Some collectors did not stamp every piece they acquired, but only their most precious pieces, such as Clayton Mordaunt Cracherode, who possessed nearly five hundred Rembrandt prints but only marked around seventy. Notable dictionaries of collectors’ marks include Louis Fagan’s Collectors’ Marks and Frits Lugt’s Les marques de collections de dessins et d’estampes.
Written by Pearl Tulay, edited by Simone Edgar Holmes
Bibliography
Blok, Rhea Sylvia. “Frits Lugt’s ‘Les Marques De Collections De Dessins & D’estampes’ Online.” Master Drawings 48, no. 3 (2010): 368-73. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25767238.
Clarke, Michael. “Collector’s Mark.” The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms. Oxford University Press, 2010. https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199569922.001.0001/acref-9780199569922-e-472.
“Collectors’ Marks.” The American Magazine of Art 7, no. 4 (1916): 167. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20559340.
“Collectors’ Marks.” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 27, no. 150 (1915): 252. http://www.jstor.org/stable/859951.
Gilbert, Creighton. “Frits Lugt: Collector and connoisseur.” The New Criterion, Sep 01, 1929. http://ezproxy.middlebury.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/1300619877?accountid=12447.
Van Camp, An. “Robert Dighton and His Spurious Collectors’ Marks on Rembrandt Prints in the British Museum, London.” The Burlington Magazine 155, no. 1319 (2013): 88-94. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23395503.
