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Interior of the gallery. Framed pictures hanging on red walls. Wooden floor, dark skirting boards, and door frame. View through the doorway into another room with similar doorway. Visitors standing on white tiled floor.

The art&market Exhibition in Karlsruhe

Catch the art&market exhibition at the Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe by the end of the month! The exhibition sheds light on the London art market around 1800.

04/07/2025 – 28/09/2025

Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe
Nördliche Hildapromenade 3
76133 Karlsruhe

The art&market exhibition explores a crucial period of transition in the history of the European art trade. The focus is on the emergence of the professional London art market in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries —a time when new forms of exhibiting and selling art began to develop.

At the heart of the exhibition is Count Joseph Truchsess von Waldburg-Zeil-Wurzach (1748–1813), whose art collection—originally assembled in Cologne and Strasbourg—found its way to London as a result of political upheavals, where it was intended to be sold. The collection’s fascinating history reveals many facets: alongside collecting practices of the ancien régime, it offers insight into the development of modern museum education. For example, early endeavours in educational exhibition practices— rooted in Dusseldorf and Vienna—can be observed through the count’s own curatorial display.

The main focus of the exhibition, however, is the attempted sale of this collection in London from 1802 onwards. Count Joseph’s aim in making the sale was to establish a British national gallery based on his artworks.

Building on this attempted sale, art&market highlights the market mechanisms of London as a vibrant centre of the art trade, driven by economic growth and private collecting enthusiasm. It shows how the count positioned his collection within London’s art market and what marketing strategies he pursued within England’s cultural infrastructure.

At the same time, art&market offers insights into the reception and impact of the Truchsessian Picture Gallery—including responses by contemporary artists such as William Blake—and paints a vivid picture of the prehistory of the National Gallery in London and the transition to modernity within the European art trade.

The exhibition is based on the count’s fragmentarily preserved estate, filed under the reference GLAK, N Truchsess von Waldburg at the Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe.

Access the digital copies here: http://www.landesarchiv-bw.de/plink/?f=4-8642

Find the online catalogue here: https://www.leo-bw.de/themen/truchsessian-gallery


Featured Image: Interior of the National Gallery, London, 2023. Photo by DiscoA340. Published under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license

Blog post by the exhibition’s curator, Nikolas Maisch MA


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Nikolas Maisch (September 19, 2025). The art&market Exhibition in Karlsruhe. German Historical Institute London Blog. Retrieved November 17, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/14prr


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