Questions collectors ask

Provenance and attribution

What is provenance, and why does it matter?

Provenance is the recorded history of a work's ownership, from the artist's hand to the present holder. It matters for three reasons: a line of named owners is evidence that the work is what it is said to be, it establishes legal title, and it usually carries the exhibition and publication history that scholarship rests on. Gaps are common in older material and are far from damning in themselves, though they should be described rather than smoothed over.

How do you check a provenance claim?

Test each link against a document that exists independently of whoever is making the claim. An estate name can be matched to a probate inventory or a family paper, an exhibition to its printed catalogue, a publication to the page cited, an earlier sale to the auction house's own archived record. Where a link rests on an assertion alone, treat it as an assertion. The strongest records are dull ones: labels on the reverse, old stock numbers, correspondence, receipts that nobody thought to embellish.

What does attribution mean, and who decides it?

Attribution is the reasoned assignment of a work to a particular hand, and it is a judgement rather than a fact. It is reached from signatures and inscriptions, documents, provenance, exhibition history, technical evidence such as pigment and support, and comparison with securely accepted works. Authority rests with whoever has looked hardest and published their reasoning: a specialist scholar, an artist's estate or foundation, the compiler of a catalogue. Attributions therefore move, and a responsible entry says on what grounds it stands.

What is the difference between signed, attributed to, studio of, and after?

They are graded terms for how firm an attribution is. 'Signed' records that a signature is present, which is evidence rather than proof, since signatures have been added by other hands for as long as there has been a market. A work catalogued under the artist's name alone is held to be by that artist; 'attributed to' means probably so, on the balance of evidence; 'studio of' places it in the artist's workshop and period; 'after' means a copy of a known composition by another hand.

Why does a catalogue raisonné matter?

A catalogue raisonné is the attempt to record every known work by an artist, each with its measurements, medium, provenance, exhibition history and literature. It matters because it gives an attribution something to be checked against: a work that appears in it carries the compiler's judgement, and a work that does not invites the question of why. For most Sri Lankan modern artists no such catalogue yet exists, which is exactly why individual labels, records and family papers carry so much weight here.

Condition and care

Which condition problems matter most in a tropical climate?

Humidity governs, and most of the rest follows from it. Sustained damp brings mould and foxing, the brown speckling that disfigures paper; it swells and cockles supports, loosens glue and lifts paint from canvas; and it creates the conditions insects prefer. Insect damage comes second, with silverfish and booklice grazing paper surfaces and termites destroying stretchers and boards outright. Light is third and the most easily overlooked, because fading is gradual, cumulative and beyond reversing.

Does restoration reduce value?

Heavy, undocumented or irreversible restoration reduces value; minimal, recorded and stable treatment protects it. The distinction the field draws is between conservation, which stabilises what survives, and restoration, which replaces what has been lost. A relined canvas, extensive overpaint or a washed and bleached sheet each subtract, because part of the original has gone. Disclosure matters as much as the treatment: a repair found later, having gone unmentioned, damages confidence in the whole record.

What can be done in a house without climate control?

Stability matters more than any particular reading, since repeated swings do more harm than a steady, moderately humid room. Keep works off exterior walls and away from bathrooms and kitchens, keep air moving rather than still, and run a dehumidifier through the wettest months. Frame works on paper with an acid-free mount and a spacer so the sheet never touches the glazing, choose glazing that filters ultraviolet light, and hang out of direct sun. Inspect the backs once or twice a year.

The market, and how to begin

How do auction estimates and reserves work?

An estimate is the auction house's published opinion of the range a work should fetch, given as a low and a high figure, and it is a forecast rather than a valuation. It is set from recent results for comparable works, adjusted for condition, size, subject and the strength of the provenance. The reserve is the confidential minimum the seller has agreed, beneath which the work will stay unsold, and by convention it sits at or below the low estimate.

What is buyer's premium?

Buyer's premium is the commission the auction house charges the buyer, calculated as a percentage of the hammer price and added to it. Rates differ between houses and usually step down across bands of value, so the real cost of a lot always exceeds the bid. Tax may apply to the premium, and shipping, insurance, import duty and any artist's resale royalty sit on top. Read the conditions of sale first, then work backwards from the total you will accept to the bid you can make.

Why does the '43 Group matter historically?

The '43 Group is generally recognised as Sri Lanka's first modern art movement, formed in Colombo in 1943 around Lionel Wendt, the photographer, critic and patron at whose house the founding meeting was held. Its importance lies in what it set out to do: build a modern painting from the island's own visual inheritance, the Sigiriya frescoes and the temple murals, rather than import one from London or Paris. Its members are held in institutions here and abroad.

How does someone start a collection sensibly?

Look a great deal longer than you buy. See work in person where it is publicly held, the Sapumal Foundation in Colombo being among the few places that show the core '43 Group artists under one roof, and read the standard literature before spending anything. Decide what the collection is about, since a defined interest in one artist, one period or one subject builds a better group than opportunity does. Keep every document that arrives with a work.

Books, maps and prints

How do you tell a genuine antiquarian map or plate from a modern reproduction?

Look at the paper and the printed line before anything else. Hand-made laid paper shows chain lines, and often a watermark, when a sheet is held up to the light, and an engraving or etching leaves a plate mark, the shallow embossed rectangle where the plate pressed into the damp paper. Under a loupe an old line is continuous ink of varying depth, while photomechanical printing resolves into a regular rosette of dots. Later facsimiles are also frequently the wrong size.

What do 'plate' and 'impression' mean?

A plate is the matrix an image is printed from, usually a worked sheet of copper or steel; confusingly, the word also names the finished illustration a book carries, which is why plate counts appear in book descriptions. An impression is one sheet taken from that matrix. The term carries a judgement of quality as well, because a plate wears with use: an early impression prints crisply, a late one weakly, and the difference is both visible and material to value.

What does 'state' mean for a print or a map?

A state is a stage in the life of the printing surface, marked by a deliberate change to it: an added imprint, a corrected place name, a redrawn coastline, a new date. Because the change is recorded in the impression itself, states allow a sheet to be placed in sequence and often dated closely, which is why catalogues describe them so minutely. On maps especially, a later state may carry geography the earlier one lacked.

What makes one copy of an antiquarian book differ from another?

Completeness comes first: the plates, maps and folding tables must all be present, and what 'all' means is settled by a bibliography rather than by a seller's count. After that come edition and issue, the first appearance of a text usually being the one collected; then condition, including whether the sheets have been washed and whether the plates are clean; then the binding, an original one being preferred to a later; then provenance, in bookplates and inscriptions.