A work with a gap in its history is not necessarily fake. It is necessarily harder to sell. Provenance is the difference between an asset and an ornament, and most of the checking happens before anyone talks about price.
Provenance is a chain, and gaps matter
Provenance is the documented ownership history: who commissioned or bought it, who sold it, which exhibitions and publications it appeared in. A complete chain from the studio to today is rare and valuable.
Certain gaps carry specific weight. Work that changed hands in Europe between 1933 and 1945 attracts particular scrutiny, and rightly: restitution claims are live, well-resourced and can surface decades later. A dealer who waves that period away is not someone to buy from.
Archaeological and ethnographic material carries its own regime around export licences and country-of-origin law. If a piece has no export documentation, assume it is unsaleable until proven otherwise.
Catalogue raisonné and authentication
For a well-studied artist, the catalogue raisonné — the scholarly inventory of known works — is the reference. Inclusion is close to definitive. Absence is not proof of a fake, but it is a question you will be asked every time you try to sell.
Some estates run authentication committees; several major ones have been wound up after litigation, which means for certain artists no authority will now issue an opinion at all. Know before you buy whether an opinion is obtainable for that artist, because if it is not, the market prices that uncertainty in.
Technical analysis — pigment dating, infrared reflectography, canvas and stretcher examination — settles some questions and not others. It can prove a work is impossible. It rarely proves a work is genuine on its own.
The searches worth running
A stolen art database search, principally the Art Loss Register, is standard on any significant purchase and cheap relative to the risk. Reputable auction houses search their own consignments; a private sale may not have been searched at all.
Ask for the invoice chain, exhibition history and any prior condition reports. Ask why it is being sold. A seller with a clean story usually tells it readily.
Contemporary work has its own version of this
For a living artist the questions change but do not disappear. A certificate of authenticity from the artist or their gallery is standard, and for editions and installations it is the document that defines what you own — edition number, materials, permitted installation, what happens if a component fails.
Buy directly from the primary gallery where you can. On the secondary market for a young artist, ask when and from whom the seller bought: rapid flipping is visible, and galleries remember it.
How our desk handles it
Valuation, acquisition and sale run through us, and the checking is not optional at any price level. The specialist completing the transaction verifies provenance and condition and runs the identity and source-of-funds checks UK art-market rules require. If the history does not stand up, we say so and the deal does not happen.