Sales catalogues
There is no comprehensive repository or guide to holdings of sales catalogues. The best place to start is with Wellcome's marked-up copies of auction catalogues, some of which are available online.
If you find a relevant entry there is a useful memorandum on auction catalogue annotation conventions used by the Wellcome staff bidding at sales from the 1920s can be found at WA/HMM/CO/Sub/204 Notes on auction catalogue annotation.
For historic catalogues from the major auction houses, it’s about scoping archives, and for modern sales (2000s onwards) it’s first a case of hoping there might be an online record. For anything in between, there are really two options (both of which favour fine art sales):
Looking at one of the major repositories e.g. Paul Mellon Centre or Art Sales Catalogues online
Contacting the auction house directly.
Stock reply
[Example of email response where Wellcome doesn't hold the catalogue]
The accession register entry indicates that the item was listed in catalogue no.48, and unfortunately we don’t hold that volume of the Davis & Orioli catalogues (you can see the ones we do hold here.) I’ve had a quick look online and I can’t see any links to this catalogue elsewhere, but you could try one of the major sales catalogue repositories e.g. Paul Mellon Centre or Art Sales Catalogues online to see if you can find a copy.
I hope this helps with your research...
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