The free route almost nobody uses first
Every major auction house and most regional ones will look at photographs of a work at no charge and tell you whether it is of interest and roughly what it might make. They do this because consignments are their business and because the alternative is missing things. It is not a favour and it does not obligate you.
This is genuinely the best first paid-for-nothing step available, and it is the one people reach last — usually after paying for an appraisal they did not need, or after having the picture cleaned, which is worse.
What you send matters more than who you send it to. The front square-on without flash, the signature close up, the entire reverse including every label and stamp, and the frame. A specialist can say a great deal from those five photographs and almost nothing from one blurry angled shot with glare across it.
Four routes, and what each settles
The distinction that matters most here is between attribution and valuation, because they are different jobs done by different people and only one of them is what most owners think they are buying.
| Route | What it answers | What it cannot | Typical cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| A free identifier app | Likely artist, title, period and movement on catalogued works; period and school on unrecorded ones | Attribution; original versus print with certainty; any binding opinion | Nothing |
| An auction house specialist | Whether it is saleable, a likely auction estimate, and often the right direction on attribution | A formal written valuation for insurance; a guarantee | Nothing for a photograph assessment |
| An independent appraiser | A written value for insurance, probate or division of assets | Attribution — they price what the work is agreed to be | Roughly $150 – 400 an hour, or a flat fee |
| An artist specialist or authentication board | Attribution: whether a named artist made this work | Anything quickly or cheaply; many boards no longer operate | Hundreds to thousands, and often refused |
Authentication boards for major artists have largely closed because of litigation risk, which is why attribution now runs through individual scholars and catalogue raisonné compilers rather than committees.
Before any of it, do nothing
This is the most valuable paragraph on the page. The commonest way value disappears from an inherited painting is a well-meant intervention before anybody qualified has looked at it.
- Do not clean it. Household cleaning removes glazes and varnish and can strip paint.
- Do not reline, revarnish or retouch it before a specialist has seen it as it is.
- Do not remove old labels, stamps or backing boards from the reverse — that is the provenance.
- Do not reframe it. Frames date pictures and sometimes belong to them.
- Do photograph everything before anything is touched, including the reverse.
The order that wastes the least money
Photograph it properly. Run it through a free identifier to get vocabulary — period, school, possible hand — so you know what you are asking about. Look up recent auction results for that artist at that size and period, and note that results are evidence while asking prices are not.
Then send the photographs to two or three auction houses, including a regional one, and read what comes back. If any of them is interested, you have both a direction and a route to market at no cost.
Only then pay for something, and be clear which thing. An appraiser for a number an insurer will act on. A specialist scholar for attribution, if the work plausibly merits it. Those are separate purchases and neither substitutes for the other.