Glossary
The vocabulary of provenance, attribution and the saleroom, defined plainly. Each entry opens with the definition; the paragraph after it is why the term matters when you are reading a catalogue entry or a lot description.
Provenance
Provenance
Provenance is the documented history of ownership of a work of art, from its making to the present day.
It matters for three separate reasons that are often confused: it supports or undermines the attribution, it establishes legal title, and it is itself part of the object's history. A chain with gaps is normal for an old object; a chain presented as complete when it is not is the problem.
See also: Documented, disputed, unknown, Due diligence
Documented, disputed, unknown
These are the three grades this site applies to every link in a provenance chain: documented means a contemporary record supports it, disputed means sources conflict, unknown means no record has been found.
The grade travels with the claim everywhere it appears, including in our llms.txt. Quoting a provenance link from this site without its grade misrepresents it, because an ungraded chain reads as a documented one.
See also: Provenance, Attribution
Due diligence
Due diligence is the research a buyer, dealer or museum carries out before acquiring a work, to establish that the seller has good title and that the object was not looted, stolen or illegally exported.
Standards have tightened sharply since the 1998 Washington Principles and the 1970 UNESCO Convention became reference points. What counted as adequate enquiry in 1960 does not count now, which is why acquisition date matters when judging a museum's conduct.
See also: Provenance, Restitution
Restitution
Restitution is the return of a work of art to an owner, heir, community or country from whom it was taken, whether by looting, forced sale, colonial appropriation or theft.
It is distinct from repatriation, which describes return to a country of origin rather than to an identified claimant. Most restitution is settled by negotiation rather than litigation, and many settlements are confidential, so published cases understate the volume.
See also: Due diligence, Provenance
Attribution and cataloguing
Attribution
An attribution is the assignment of a work to a particular artist, workshop or period, and it is an argument from evidence rather than a fact about the object.
Attributions change, in both directions, and a change is a scholarly event rather than a scandal. The evidence is usually some mixture of documentary record, provenance, style and technical analysis.
See also: Autograph, Circle of, studio of, after, Catalogue raisonne
Autograph
A work is described as autograph when it is held to be entirely by the hand of the named artist.
The term matters most where a busy workshop was normal practice: much of what hangs under a great name was executed partly or wholly by assistants under supervision, and the market values the distinction heavily.
See also: Attribution, Circle of, studio of, after
Circle of, studio of, after
These are the standard cataloguing qualifiers for degrees of distance from an artist: studio of means produced in the artist's workshop, circle of means by an unidentified contemporary close to them, and after means a later copy of a known composition.
The wording is not decorative. Auction houses use a defined ladder of these terms and the difference between two rungs can be the difference between six figures and seven, which is why a lot description should always be read literally.
See also: Attribution, Autograph
Catalogue raisonne
A catalogue raisonne is a scholarly attempt to list and describe every known work by an artist, with the compiler's reasoning for what is included and excluded.
Inclusion functions in practice as an authentication and exclusion can make a work almost unsaleable, so the compiler holds unusual power. Successive editions frequently disagree with each other.
See also: Attribution, Autograph
Accession number
An accession number is the unique identifier a museum assigns to an object when it formally enters the collection, and it usually encodes the year of acquisition.
It is the most reliable way to refer to a specific object, because titles vary between languages and catalogues while the accession number does not. A Metropolitan Museum number beginning 1975 records the year that object was accessioned.
See also: Recto and verso, Provenance
Recto and verso
Recto is the front or principal face of a sheet, panel or canvas; verso is the reverse.
The verso is often the more informative side for provenance: collectors' marks, dealer stock numbers, exhibition labels and inventory stamps accumulate there. Many records here cite verso evidence for that reason.
See also: Accession number, Provenance
The market
Hammer price
The hammer price is the amount at which the auctioneer's hammer falls, before any fees are added.
It is not what the buyer pays and it is not what the seller receives. This site states hammer and premium separately on every sale for that reason, and a single conflated figure should always be treated as ambiguous.
See also: Buyer's premium, Bought in
Estimate
An estimate is the range the auction house publishes before a sale as its expectation of the hammer price.
It is set with the consignor and reflects commercial judgement as well as valuation, so an estimate should not be read as an appraisal. The reserve, the confidential minimum below which the lot will not sell, sits at or under the low estimate.
See also: Hammer price, Bought in
Bought in
A lot is bought in when it fails to reach its reserve and goes unsold, and it is then returned to the consignor.
A bought-in lot is not a sale and produces no price, although unsold lots are sometimes reported as though a figure had been achieved. Being bought in publicly can depress a work's prospects for years afterwards.
See also: Estimate, Hammer price