Demystifying the Old Masters Market

Useful online discussion as part of London Art Week Digital about the definitions and use of terms around attribution of old master pictures.

Megan Locke from Art Tactic from Art Tactic excellently quizzed the participants, David Pollock from Sotherby’s, Molly Dorkin of Simon Dickinson Gallery and solo dealer Will Elliott of Elliott Fine Art. Pollock took us through the various attribution definitions from artist and studio through “Circle of” and “Manner of”. All the speakers agreed that this was commonly used vocabulary as so many dealers had some through the auction house training. They also pointed out that these were increasingly being used like legal terms and were defined in good Old Master sale catalogues.

The panelists then discussed the effect of attribution on valuations with Elliott pointing out that this was partly due to the age of a painting. Earlier works are harder to attribute and attaching an artist’s name is less important however as Dorkin said “You don’t get a Circle of Monet painting”. They also discussed why dealers at fairs might be more reluctant to use the more remote attributions eg School of, preferring to define a genre such as Dutch Golden Age rather than mentioning an artist who did not paint it whereas auction houses found the former a useful way of defining what world the picture came from.

 


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