Best Auction Houses & Dealers in Belgium

Belgium's Auction Market

Belgium's auction trade is spread across several cities rather than one capital. In Brussels, Hôtel de Ventes Horta has held art and antiques sales since 1982 and now runs a catalogued sale every month from Avenue de Roodebeek. Its name comes from its first home, next to the museum of the Art Nouveau architect Victor Horta. Also in Brussels, Arenberg Auctions was formed in 2018 by the merger of Henri Godts and The Romantic Agony. It specialises in old and rare books, manuscripts, maps, prints and photographs.

Antwerp is home to two long-established family houses. Bernaerts began in 1974 as an antiques shop in Lier and has sold from a former Antwerp cinema since 1994. It holds five themed live sales a year covering European master paintings, Old Masters, Art Nouveau, Art Deco and design. It also holds the Belgian record it cites for a painting at auction: Magritte's L'Oiseau de ciel, sold for €3,815,000 in 2001. Campo & Campo in Berchem traces its roots to an art shop opened in 1897 and runs print, modern art and classic art auctions from an Art Deco cinema built in 1929.

In Bruges, Carlo Bonte Auctions traces its origins to the Van Dyck auction room, which opened in 1932. It now describes itself as Belgium's leading auction house for Asian art. Flemish and Belgian art appears throughout these salerooms. Carlo Bonte has sold a painting attributed to Frans Francken the Younger for €247,650 and an Emile Claus for €100,000. Horta's catalogues regularly include 17th-century Flemish panels and works by Belgian modernists such as Constant Permeke.

Online bidding is now standard. All five houses take live bids through platforms such as Drouot, Invaluable or their own systems, and platform bidding usually adds 1.5 to 5 percentage points to the premium. Published buyer's premiums for bids in the room range from 22% at Horta and 25% at Campo & Campo to 28% at Bernaerts and Arenberg and 29% at Carlo Bonte. For original works by living artists, or artists who died less than 70 years ago, a resale right is added from a hammer price of €2,000.