Provenance & Due Diligence

What it is. Provenance due diligence establishes the documented chain of ownership for a work — who has held it, when, and on what evidentiary basis — before it is acquired, consigned, insured, or exhibited.

Method. We reconstruct ownership history from primary sources: sale and exhibition records, dealer archives, estate inventories, shipping and customs documentation, and correspondence, cross-checked against published catalogues raisonnés and loss registries covering wartime and colonial-era displacement. Every gap in the record is identified and dated rather than assumed benign, and every claim in the final report is sourced.

Why it matters. An incomplete or disputed provenance can affect a work's insurability, its saleability, and — in the most serious cases — legal title itself. Due diligence conducted before a purchase is far more effective than due diligence conducted after one; problems discovered early are usually solvable, while those discovered later rarely are.

How to engage. Assignments typically begin with the work's available documentation and any auction or dealer history already known. We agree scope and an estimated timeline in advance — a straightforward chain-of-title check runs to a few weeks; contested or fragmentary histories take longer — and deliver a written report suitable for use with insurers, counsel, or a prospective buyer. By appointment.