How to Identify a Painting

Begin by making a complete photographic record before you clean, reframe, or move the painting anywhere. Stand it upright in soft daylight, fill the frame with the canvas, and turn off the flash — a direct flash creates hot spots that hide brushwork and fine cracks. Shoot the front square-on, then take close details of each corner, the signature area, and any damage. Put a ruler or a coin in at least one frame so a later viewer can judge scale.

Turn the painting over and photograph the back in the same careful way. The stretcher, the labels, the hanging hardware, and the colour of the canvas all carry clues the front cannot give you. Shoot the edges and the corners of the frame too, because a frame can hide a trimmed canvas or a panel that has split. Name the files by date and object, and keep the originals uncropped — an appraiser may want to see how the work was stored.

Look in the places artists actually sign: the lower right, the lower left, the back of the canvas, and the edge of the stretcher. Use a raking light — hold a torch at a low angle across the surface — and a magnifying glass. A signature painted in the same layer as the image sits under the varnish. One added later often sits on top, with a different sheen or a faint halo where the paint around it was cleaned.

Write down every mark exactly as you see it: a name, a date, a dedication, a gallery stamp, a number, or a monogram. Do not “correct” a spelling, and do not assume a name means the famous artist who shares it. Many works are signed by students, copyists, or family members, and some signatures were added by dealers decades after the paint dried. Photograph the mark at high resolution and note its position in centimetres from each edge.

With the painting flat and well lit, look across the surface at a low angle. The weave of the canvas, the colour of the ground, the pattern of cracks, and the thickness of the paint are all evidence of how and when the work was made. Fine, even cracks that follow the weave usually suggest an older oil on canvas; sharp, spiderweb cracks can signal a modern canvas or a repaint. Shine a torch across the surface to see cupping, flaking, and old retouching.

If you can borrow one safely, a conservator’s ultraviolet lamp is the next step. Old varnish glows a milky green, later retouching often appears as dark, matte patches, and many modern pigments absorb UV light entirely. None of this proves authorship on its own, but it shows you where the painting has been changed. Note anything that looks like a different hand, a repaired tear, or a composition painted over an older one.

The back of a painting is a small archive. Dealer labels, auction lot stickers, exhibition labels, customs stamps, shipping marks, and handwritten numbers can place the work in a city and a decade. Photograph each one in place before you try to read it, then transcribe the text into a notebook. A label from a gallery that closed in 1938 is a useful anchor; a label from a frame shop tells you where it was framed, not where it was painted.

Look at the frame as a separate object. Its style, joinery, and gilding can support a date, but frames were swapped constantly, so never date a painting by its frame alone. Check whether the canvas has been cut down to fit: a composition that runs into the frame, a signature clipped at the edge, or a stretcher smaller than the marks left in the canvas are all signs of trimming. Record the frame’s condition, because it affects both value and safe handling.

Step back and describe what you see without naming an artist. Is the light dramatic or flat? Are the brushstrokes visible or blended? Does the clothing belong to a particular decade? A street scene painted with broken colour and bright shadows points toward Impressionism; a smooth, tightly finished portrait against a dark background points to an earlier academic tradition. Write these observations down before you search, so a famous name cannot steer your eye.

Then look for a regional signature: the way trees, water, skies, or fabric are handled often identifies a school or a teacher’s circle more reliably than a single brushmark. Compare the painting with works from the same period in museum collections, and note the pigments you can see — a brilliant synthetic blue or a fluorescent pink cannot predate the pigment’s invention. Keep your description modest. “Provincial Dutch still life, late seventeenth century, in the manner of” is more useful than a confident attribution you cannot support.

A catalogue raisonné is the scholarly list of an artist’s known works, and it is the first place to check once you have a candidate name. Search the artist’s name with the title, medium, and dimensions. If the painting is not listed, that does not prove it is fake, but it does mean the case needs more work. Museum collection databases, the Getty Provenance Index, and auction archives are free places to start; specialist databases charge for access but often include condition notes and previous sale prices.

Search the signature as well as the name. Look for variant spellings, initials, dates, and the titles dealers used. Save every record you find as a PDF with the URL and the date you accessed it, because listings disappear. Be sceptical of any “certificate of authenticity” offered by a seller: a certificate is not an appraisal, and a gallery’s opinion is not the same as a catalogue raisonné entry. Build a file of evidence rather than a pile of claims.

Provenance is the documented history of ownership, and a clean chain is one of the strongest signals a painting can have. Start with what you already own: receipts, insurance schedules, wills, letters, photographs of the work in a former home, and any auction catalogue that mentions it. Ask family members for the story, then look for the paper that supports it. A painting that entered the family in 1952 should have a document from around 1952, not only a typed note from 1998.

Follow the work through auction records, dealer inventories, and museum exhibition lists. The Getty Provenance Index, archive catalogues, and digitised auction catalogues can fill gaps. Gaps are normal — most paintings have them — but a chain that jumps from an unknown seller straight to a major auction house deserves questions. If the painting may have changed hands in Europe between 1933 and 1945, check the Nazi-era provenance resources before you buy, sell, or donate it.

Put your painting beside high-quality images of works that scholars accept. Compare the way the artist drew ears, hands, foliage, and highlights, not just the overall subject. Copyists tend to smooth out the awkward passages that make an artist recognisable. Check the dimensions against known works, the direction of the canvas weave, and the preparation layer, which is often visible at the edges where the canvas wraps around the stretcher.

A comparison is strongest when several independent features agree: the signature, the pigments, the support, the subject, and the provenance all point the same way. If only the signature matches, be careful. If the style matches but the materials are anachronistic, the painting may be a later copy or a pastiche. Write a short comparison sheet with the images side by side, and note where the match is strong and where it fails.

An appraiser values the painting; a conservator stabilises and treats it; an art historian or curator can help with attribution. These are different jobs, and no single person is automatically qualified for all three. For a signed work you plan to insure, start with a qualified appraiser who belongs to a professional body such as the American Society of Appraisers, the Appraisers Association of America, or RICS in the United Kingdom. Ask whether they have valued works from the same period and whether they will put their opinion in writing.

Get the fee structure in advance. Good appraisers charge a flat fee or an hourly rate; avoid anyone whose fee is a percentage of the value they assign, because that creates an incentive to inflate the number. Ask for references and check for a conflict of interest: an appraiser who also wants to buy the painting, or who earns a commission on a sale, is not independent. For a damaged or flaking work, call a conservator before you move it at all.

Make the expert’s job easy. Put your photographs, measurements, transcriptions of labels and signatures, receipts, and family documents into one folder, in date order, with a one-page summary at the front. Include condition notes and any treatment history, and say clearly what you already know and what you are guessing. Do not clean, varnish, reframe, or repair anything before the appraisal — irreversible changes can destroy evidence and value.

Measure the canvas and the frame separately, in centimetres and inches, and note any signs of trimming. Record the location of the signature and labels, and photograph the back in raking light. If the painting has been in the family for decades, include old photographs that show it hanging in a room; those can help date the frame and support the ownership story. Keep a copy of the package for yourself.

A useful appraisal states its purpose. Insurance replacement value, fair market value for a sale, and the value for a tax-deductible donation are different numbers, produced under different assumptions. Make sure the report names the painting, the artist or “attributed to” line, the medium, the dimensions, the condition, and the valuation date. It should also list comparable sales and explain how they were adjusted for condition, size, and provenance.

Read the report before you rely on it. Check that the comparables are genuinely similar and recent, and that the appraiser has not simply multiplied a gallery price by a guess. Ask what the value would be in a forced sale, because insurance value and quick-sale value can differ by half. Keep the report with your insurance papers and update it every three to five years, or after any restoration, because the market moves.

With a written opinion in hand, the practical choices are easier to compare. Insuring and keeping the work usually makes sense for a piece with family meaning or a stable value. Selling through a specialist auction house may suit a work with a strong provenance and a known market. Restoration is worth considering only when the painting is stable enough to benefit and the likely increase in value justifies the cost. Get a treatment estimate before you authorise any work.

If the appraisal is uncertain, get a second opinion from an independent expert and do not pay for a “guaranteed” attribution. Keep the painting out of direct sunlight, away from radiators and damp walls, and hang it on two hooks rather than a single wire. Review your insurance schedule when the appraisal changes, and keep the documentation with the work so the next owner inherits the story as well as the object.