Authenticate Banksy — Girl with Balloon
The most reproduced image in the artist's catalogue, and therefore the most faked.
Bristol
Girl with Balloon exists as a street work, as screenprints in signed and unsigned editions, and as an enormous quantity of unauthorised reproduction. Establishing which of those you are looking at is the whole task, and a loupe does most of it — a screenprint lays flat opaque ink, a reproduction shows dots.
The screenprint editions have documented sizes, and the signed and unsigned runs are different numbers. A print numbered outside its run, or claiming a signature on an image whose run was unsigned, is fabricated.
Because the image is so widely reproduced on posters, cards and merchandise, a great many people arrive believing they own a print when they own a poster. That is not a fraud on anyone's part, and the loupe check settles it in a minute.
What a Girl with Balloon does on the secondary market
The most liquid Banksy image, with certified signed editions trading strongly and unsigned editions well behind them. Without a Pest Control certificate, the auction market is effectively closed.
An orientation for honest, unrestored condition — never an appraisal, and never a quotation.
Questions we are asked
- Is my Girl with Balloon a print or a poster?
- A loupe settles it: a screenprint lays flat opaque ink with no dot pattern, a reproduction shows a fine regular grid. The image is among the most widely reproduced in the world, so a great many people arrive holding a poster.
- Can I sell a Girl with Balloon print without a Pest Control certificate?
- Not through the auction market in any practical sense. Pest Control's certificate is the gate the Banksy market accepts, and a print without one is treated as unsaleable there however convincing it is.
Lovenhall ArtRead the work itself
The checks tell you how it was made. The instrument tells you what it appears to be, and roughly what its kind fetches.