The market for contemporary art in the second half of the nineteenth century was deeply affected by the introduction and widespread use of long-term contracts between artists and their dealers. This article examines the legal and commercial logic behind these agreements and their impact on the production, distribution, and consumption of art. It draws mainly from the uniquely preserved contracts and correspondence of the Belgian art dealer Gustave Coûteaux. The article also provides complete transcriptions of the seven successive contracts concluded between Coûteaux and his most successful artist, Henri Leys, from 1841 to 1865.

During his lifetime, the French artist Félix Régamey became an accepted authority on the arts of Japan and comparative drawing pedagogy. While his admiration for Japanese cultural production has been treated in isolation from his pledge to reform French drawing instruction, his expertise in each domain converged on multiple occasions. This article maps Régamey’s ideas about Japanese methods of art making and training alongside his own goal of revising state-sanctioned drawing pedagogy in France. Recuperating Régamey’s agenda has ramifications that extend well beyond the politics of cultural exchange to art history as a disciplinary practice.

Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson (1887–88) is his most widely reproduced bas-relief. Conceived as a souvenir of friendship, this combination of words and image became, in numerous variations, a celebrity icon, a memorial tribute, and an artistic legacy. The sculpture’s history shows how private associations can promote public interest in a life portrait and morality can alter its significance in both spheres.