This article explores the role of the auction in the formation and dispersal of collections of ancient art in late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century Britain. I demonstrate that competitive collecting, as well as the culture of acquiring and fragmenting collections at auction, had a profound effect on the way in which British buyers collected and displayed antiquities within their private collections. I argue that through an exploration of two textual sites, the auction and collection catalogue, we can observe that collectors carefully curated their collections, visually as well as textually, in order to craft specific narratives centred on the act of collecting at auctions, shaping and shifting the ways in which collectors understood and curated the art of antiquity.

中文翻译：

---

古代艺术与十八世纪拍卖：收藏、编目与竞赛

本文探讨了拍卖在 18 世纪晚期和 19 世纪早期英国古代艺术收藏品的形成和传播中的作用。我证明了竞争性收藏，以及在拍卖中获取和分割收藏品的文化，对英国买家在其私人收藏中收集和展示古物的方式产生了深远的影响。我认为，通过对拍卖和收藏目录这两个文本站点的探索，我们可以观察到收藏家在视觉和文本上都精心策划了他们的收藏，以制作以拍卖收藏行为为中心的特定叙述，塑造和改变了收藏家理解和策划古代艺术的方式。