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Provenance research

Reconstruction of an artwork's succession of owners, gaps included, which conditions title, sale and the ability to insure without reserve.

Definition

As a painting passes from hand to hand, each owner leaves a trace: a label on the back, an estate inventory, a gallery letter, a sale catalog. Provenance research puts these pieces end to end. The years 1933 to 1945 have been the auction houses' checkpoint since the Washington Principles of 1998, which call for just solutions for looted art. The Gurlitt case is the reminder: in 2012, Augsburg prosecutors seized more than a thousand works from a collector's Munich apartment. A gap in provenance during that period does not prove looting, but it prevents anyone from ruling it out. For the insurer the issue is title. A fine art policy covers the object against damage and theft, generally not a third party's claim of ownership. When it is covered at all, it falls under title insurance, written only after proper research.

Its 6 cross-references, woven across the glossary's 18 categories
Provenance research: Law & regulation glossary illustration, AlgoPolis
Example

Textbook case: a Geneva dealer prepares to sell a landscape from 1912. His file shows a Viennese owner in 1930, then nothing until a Zurich gallery in 1951. He commissions research: the inventory of a forced sale in 1939 lists the picture. The sale is suspended and the file opened with the heirs.

Read next
Law & regulationCultural property looted by the Nazis (1933-1945)Artworks and objects whose owners, mainly Jewish, were dispossessed through persecution between 1933 and 1945. Their restitution creates lasting title risk for current holders, museums or collectors.Read the entry →Law & regulationTitle riskRisk that an asset may be claimed by a third party on the ground that its holder never validly acquired ownership, central to artworks.Read the entry →Law & regulation1970 UNESCO Convention (illicit trafficking of cultural property)The international convention that commits states to preventing the illicit import, export and transfer of ownership of cultural property. Its 1970 date serves the art market as a due diligence benchmark.Read the entry →
Related terms
Also known as

artwork provenance check, provenance research, chain of ownership of a painting, ownership history of an artwork

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