Is buying art online safe: authenticity and provenance

Authenticity is a chain of evidence rather than a single document, and buyers who understand that ask better questions. A certificate on its own proves only that somebody was willing to sign a piece of paper. What carries weight is the identity of the signer, their standing with respect to that artist, and whether the claim can be checked against records held elsewhere.

Provenance means the recorded chain of ownership from the artist to the present seller. A complete chain is uncommon outside museum collections, so buyers learn to read gaps rather than to demand perfection. A gap of forty years in the middle of the twentieth century is ordinary. A gap that begins where an attribution suddenly improves is a different matter. Ask the seller to write down what they know about the gaps as well as what they can document.

Which documents actually carry weight

For living artists the strongest document is confirmation from the artist or their studio, ideally with a photograph of the work attached. Gallery invoices from the primary dealer come next, since dealers keep records of what they sold and to whom. Inclusion in a published catalogue raisonne is the strongest evidence available for a historical artist, and exclusion from one is close to fatal to a sale.

Certificates issued by third parties vary from authoritative to worthless. An authentication board recognised by the artist estate carries real weight. A certificate from an unnamed expert, or from the seller themselves, adds nothing to the transaction. Ask who signed it, what their relationship to the artist is and whether anybody else in the trade recognises their opinion.

Scientific analysis settles some questions and not others. Pigment analysis can prove that a material was unavailable during the claimed period, which disproves an attribution decisively. It cannot prove authorship, because a competent contemporary copy uses period appropriate materials. Technical evidence rules things out with confidence and rules things in only alongside documentary and connoisseurial support. Reputable laboratories state the limits of their own findings in the report itself.

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  Confirmation from the artist or the artist studio is the strongest document for contemporary work
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  Primary gallery invoices matter because dealers keep records of what they sold and when
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  Inclusion in a published catalogue raisonne is the strongest evidence for a historical artist
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  Certificates carry the authority of whoever signed them and nothing more than that
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  Scientific analysis disproves attributions decisively and confirms them only in combination with records
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  Check the work against stolen art registers before completing any significant purchase

Stolen and looted property is a separate risk from forgery and it is checked separately. Registers of stolen works exist and searching them is inexpensive relative to a purchase. Buying a work with an unresolved wartime provenance gap can create a claim years later that no insurance policy will cover, so this check belongs in the process rather than at the end of it.

What recourse a buyer actually has

The answer depends on where you bought and what you were told. Auction houses generally offer a limited authenticity guarantee with a defined period, often several years, subject to conditions printed in their terms. Dealers who belong to a recognised trade association operate under a code that provides a complaints route. A private seller with no association membership offers whatever the contract says and nothing more.

Nobody guarantees an attribution forever. What you are buying is the strength of the evidence and the standing of the people willing to put their name to it.

The practical routine is short. Ask for the ownership history in writing, ask who authenticated the work and on what basis, search the stolen art registers, and keep every document with the piece. Buyers who do those four things almost never end up in the disputes that make the news. None of it takes long once you have been through the routine twice.