ART + MUSEUMS
From the French word provenir, which means "to come from," provenance is the history of ownership of a valued object, such as a work of art. A full provenance provides a documented history that can help prove ownership, assign the work to a known artist, and establish the work of art's authenticity.
Perhaps begin by reading Provenance Research: An Art Detective Traces the Life of Artworks in THE MET for inspiration and a guide to the methods for doing this kind of research.
GENERAL PROVENANCE RESEARCH
WORLDCAT is library catalog that connects to over 10,000 libraries worldwide. A few of the more pertinent resources for provenance research found in WorldCat include catalogue raisonnés and exhibition catalogs. A catalogue raisonné is often written by an expert on a specific artist and outlines the entire body of work by that artist. Each listing includes basic facts about the object including provenance. Exhibition catalogs document whether an object was included in an exhibition at a gallery or museum.
IFAR the International Foundation for Art Research, has a database of every artist catalogue raisonné ever published and currently in production. The catalogue raisonné database is searchable by artist name. IFAR also has a Provenance Guide, which is 22 pages of guidelines and resources that can be used for provenance research.
ARCHIVES
Archives are original historical papers that contain documentation about people and objects. SOME EXAMPLES INCLUDE
THE FRICK CENTER FOR THE HISTORY OF COLLECTION
PHAROS International Consortium of Photo Archives was developed in the last few years and is a collaboration between 14 European and North American art historical photo archives and contains tens of millions of images documenting provenance and attribution, conservation research, exhibition research, publication history, the history of photography, and the history of art history.
TIPS AND APPROACHES
TRACE OWNERSHIP
CAN YOU USE A PROVENANCE INDEX TO FIND IT'S OWNERSHIP HISTORY?
THE GETTY PROVENANCE INDEX (See example at left, and more details on the examples of use here)
BOSTON MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS PROVENANCE PROJECT
GERMAN/AMERICAN PROVENANCE EXCHANGE RESEARCH PROJECT (also valuable for lost/repatriated items)
The J. Paul Getty Museum acquired The Entombment (ca. 1612) by Peter Paul Rubens in a Christie's sale in 1992. At that time, the provenance of the painting could only be traced as far back as the mid-19th century. The number 146, located on the face of the painting, appeared to be an inventory number.
A search in the Getty Provenance Index retrieved a single record in which the artist name (Rubens) and item number (146) matched. The search led to a 1651 inventory preserved in the Archivo de la Casa de Alba, Palacio de Liria in Madrid, which lists this Rubens painting. Possibly its first owner was Gaspar de Haro y Guzmán Carpio (1629–1687). The Getty Provenance Index provides additional information about the collector, inventory, and related documents.
PATTERNS + TRENDS
Provenance Indexes can also be used to reveal a wide variety of collecting patterns, including those related to consumer behavior, market trends, dealer networks, and modes of display.
The example above analyzes patterns of display in Rome from 1550 through 1750. Nearly 300 Roman inventories comprised of 65,000 individual records were used to demonstrate whether there was a change in the distribution of painted subjects over time, in various rooms of a palace, or among different social levels of palace owners.
LOST OR STOLEN ART
It can be even more difficult to explore the provenance of pieces that have been stolen or lost. Particular attention is paid to art that was repatriated after World War II in Nazi Germany. Research is ongoing around this and some institutions are doing great work to recover, process, and track these works of art. Works created between 1933 and 1945 with European origin are particularly hard to trace provenance on so bear this in mind as you do research, as is any art obtained by a Colonial Empire to Africa, North and South America, South East Asia, and more.
ADDITIONAL IMPORTANT NOTES
THE STANDARDS REGARDING THE UNLAWFUL APPROPRIATION OF OBJECTS DURING THE NAZI ERA