Research on Museum Collection Provenance

The J. Paul Getty Museum is committed to sharing its research on the provenance of works in its collection. "Provenance" is the history of an artwork, encompassing the details of its origin, past ownership, sale timelines and previous locations. To compile this information, researchers study sale catalogues, personal papers, inventories and other archival documents, as well as physical marks, stickers, inscriptions, and stamps on the artwork itself. We regularly update our website and collection catalogues with new findings.

Our ongoing research is incorporated into object records in the Museum’s collection pages. Users of this site can search collection records with several keywords, including the names of people found in the artwork’s provenance.

Provenance research is, and has always been, a central and time-intensive activity of the Museum’s staff. It serves many purposes, from helping to substantiate a work’s origins to acting as an essential aid for curators, educators, and scholars investigating the history of a particular artwork or collection. It can lead to discoveries about the dynamics of the art market as well as important contributions to the field of art history.

Reconstructing a complete history of ownership for a given work presents many challenges. Much archival information remains undiscovered or difficult to access, and many records of ownership have been lost due to natural disasters, conflict, or neglect. Information is sometimes withheld by dealers and auction houses at the request of previous owners who wish to maintain their anonymity. Tracing provenance sheds light not only on collecting practices but also on the international political forces that impact the movement of objects. Although the current owner is accountable for ascertaining a thorough provenance, many objects will continue to have gaps in their histories, which may be filled by further research and future revelations.

Each artwork’s collection page includes provenance-related details such as marks, stickers, inscriptions, bibliography, and exhibition history. In the Provenance category of the History of this Artwork section, we summarize most of this into a narrative of dates, owners, and research notes.

Each entry in the Provenance section is in the following format, with information included when known:

year range name of owner or seller, life dates of owner or seller (location of owner or seller in parentheses)
followed by details of the transaction by which the object passed to its next owner and/or [information about a related public sale, e.g., auction date, place, lot number, sale price; in brackets]

The left column shows the range of ownership in years. Common date formats include:

An owner name with no date(s) in the left column indicates that we know the work was in a particular collection, but not precisely when. We can conclude the work was in the collection between the owners listed above and below it, though there may be other unknown owners in the chain of ownership.

"Private collection" indicates that we know the work was not owned by a dealer and can mean:

1. we do not know the name of the owner or seller of that work, or
2. we know the name of the owner or seller, but they made it a condition of sale that their identity not be revealed. "Private Dealer" means that we know the seller was a dealer but we do not know their name.

Where information is linked to related pages, these entries appear as blue hyperlinks.

Below is an example of a full history, the provenance for Belvedere Antinous (pictured above), and available here in the collection pages.

For some works, the first line of provenance includes the place of discovery or excavation. If known, the year is located on the left, followed by the word “Found”; the excavation or discovery details; and a citation for the first known publication of this information. The example below is pulled from Mosaic Floor with Orpheus and the Animals, with Four Seasons in the Corners:

The Museum continues to identify works in the collection with World War II-era provenance concerns. The two areas of research include:

• Works with gaps in provenance during the period 1933–1945
• Works known to have been confiscated during the period 1933–1945 and restituted to previous owners prior to the Museum's acquisition of them

Provenance-related Getty Exhibitions

• Artists as Collectors
• The Getty Commodus
• Carvers and Collectors
• The Life of Art

Provenance Research at the Getty Research Institute
Provenance-related News & Stories
The Nazi-Era Provenance Internet Portal (an external searchable database with a subset of Nazi-Era provenance information)

Provenance research in the Museum is ongoing, with new content published regularly to the online collection pages. Works with researched and catalogued provenance information include a Provenance tab on their collection page.

If you have information or questions about the provenance of any of the works in our collection, please contact us: museumprovenance@getty.edu