# How to Research a Provenance Yourself

> The archives that establish ownership are largely digitised, free and open. Here is the order to work in, the real size of each resource, and why a dead end is a finding.
> The Study - 2026-08-02
> Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/study/how-to-research-a-provenance/

## Key points

- The Getty Provenance Index alone exposes more than twelve million resources from over 22,000 sales catalogues, free and downloadable.
- The Knoedler archive at the Getty Research Institute runs to 3,042.6 linear feet in 5,554 boxes, with the stock and sales books digitised.
- A single 1970 loan label on the back of a frame was the only hard documentary link in the Camden Rembrandt's history.
- The Nazi-Era Provenance Internet Portal is now an archive of about 30,000 objects from 179 museums and accepts no new records.

## Work backwards, and name the document before you look for it



## The Getty Provenance Index is the backbone, and it is free



## Dealer archives are where the private years are recorded



## The back of the picture is a document



## Know what the wartime registers actually contain



## Write down what you did not find



Provenance research is less a specialist art than a discipline of asking, at every link, what document would prove this and whether anyone has looked for it. The infrastructure is already built and mostly free: twelve million Getty resources, a fully imaged run of Knoedler ledgers, 1.2 million Frick photographs, a searchable Lugt. What is scarce is the willingness to record the searches that came back empty, because those are the entries that tell the next researcher where not to spend a week.

## Questions

**Do I need physical archive access to research a provenance?**

Far less than most people assume. The Getty Provenance Index is open access with downloadable datasets, the Knoedler stock and sales books have been imaged, and the Lugt collectors' marks database is free. Physical access matters mainly for probate, notarial and family papers that have never been digitised.

**What is the most commonly missed source?**

Dealer photographic archives and stock books. They frequently hold the only image or ledger entry for a work during a period of private ownership, and the Getty's Goupil and Knoedler sets alone expose over 380,000 resources between them.

**Is a clean search of the stolen-art databases enough for due diligence?**

No. Each register has a defined scope: NEPIP is a frozen archive of about 30,000 objects from 179 museums, the ERR database covers French and Belgian plunder processed at the Jeu de Paume, and the Lost Art Database consists of third-party reports. A clean search shows those specific records are silent.

**How far back is realistic?**

For most European pictures the record thins sharply before the later seventeenth century. The Getty's sales catalogue coverage begins in 1650 and its archival inventories in 1520, so anything earlier usually depends on individual notarial and monastic archives rather than on systematic series.

## Sources

- [1] Getty Research Institute, 'What's Covered in the Provenance Index'. <https://www.getty.edu/databases-tools-and-technologies/provenance/whats-covered/>
- [2] Getty Research Institute, 'FAQs: Getty Provenance Index', on open access and downloadable datasets. <https://www.getty.edu/databases-tools-and-technologies/provenance/faqs/>
- [3] Online Archive of California, finding aid, 'M. Knoedler & Co. records, approximately 1848-1971', Getty Research Institute, accession 2012.M.54. <https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8sq91rk/>
- [4] The Frick Collection, 'Photoarchive'. <https://www.frick.org/research/photoarchive>
- [5] American Alliance of Museums, 'Recommended Procedures for Providing Information to the Public about Objects Transferred in Europe during the Nazi Era'. <https://www.aam-us.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/nepip-recommended-procedures.pdf>
- [6] American Alliance of Museums, 'The Nazi-Era Provenance Internet Portal (NEPIP) Archive'. <https://www.aam-us.org/programs/the-nazi-era-provenance-internet-portal-nepip-archive/>
- [7] German Lost Art Foundation, 'Lost Art Database'. <https://www.kulturgutverluste.de/en/databases/lost-art>
- [8] Art Loss Register, homepage, stating the size of its database. <https://www.artloss.com/>
- [9] 'Cultural Plunder by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg: Database of Art Objects at the Jeu de Paume'. <https://www.errproject.org/jeudepaume/>
- [10] Fondation Custodia, 'Collectors' Marks', on the online edition of Frits Lugt, Les Marques de collections. <https://www.fondationcustodia.fr/Collectors-Marks-273>
- [11] CODART, 'New online edition of Frits Lugt, Les marques de collections de dessins et d'estampes', 23 April 2010. <https://www.codart.nl/research-study/new-online-edition-of-frits-lugt-quot-les-marques-de-collections-de-dessins-amp-d-estampes-quot/>
- [12] Thomaston Place Auction Galleries, press release on the sale of the Camden, Maine portrait, 24 August 2024, recording the 1970 Philadelphia Museum of Art loan label. <https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-england-art-discovery-rare-17th-century-portrait-fetches-1-4-million-at-thomaston-place-auction-galleries-302235323.html>
- [13] National Gallery of Art, Washington, 'Notes to the User', on the function of provenance notes. <https://www.nga.gov/research/publications/notes-user>