Art collecting can be a very expensive hobby, but some discerning art lovers can find valuable masterpieces at bargain prices. Whether you’re looking for great deals at a thrift store or appraising a painting at an art show, knowing how to determine a painting’s authenticity and value can help you find a good deal among the many knockoffs and reproductions.
Find High Value Paintings
Find works by famous artists. For many people, searching for paintings is about finding masterpieces by their favorite painters. While it’s unlikely to find a Monet or Vermeer, it’s still possible to stumble upon hidden gems, such as excellent paintings by lesser-known or locally popular painters.
- Some painters whose works end up in thrift stores include Ben Nicholson, Ilya Bolotowsky, Giovanni Battista Moroni Battista Torriglia, Alexander Calder, and even Pablo Picasso.
- This way you’ll know which paintings to look out for and learn about different artists from local galleries, art museums, and online databases such as the Chinese Contemporary Art Database.
Search for various paintings on your phone and see if you find anything. If you stumble across a painting that you think might be valuable, search it with a search engine. If this painting shows up in search results, you may have found a valuable work.
- If you don’t know the name of the painting, you can search it using keywords. For example, you can use the keywords “famous painting”, “boy” and “blue” to search for Thomas Gainsborough’s masterpiece “The Blue Boy”.
- If you can take a high-resolution photo of the painting, you can try Google’s reverse image search feature, which greatly simplifies the search process.
Purchase limited edition and signed prints. While most prints are worth next to nothing, there are several exceptions. Look for limited-edition prints, meaning the artist made only a small number of reproductions, with his or her handwritten signature on the front or back of the painting.
- Most limited edition prints will have a number on them indicating which copy it is and how many such copies there are in total.
If you plan to buy a painting for sale, avoid paintings that are small and have unclear themes. Unless you stumble across an original painting by a well-known artist, stay away from paintings that are extremely small or have abstract themes. While these paintings may be nice, they are less attractive than traditional large paintings and therefore more difficult to sell.
- Because small abstract paintings are difficult to represent in digital photographs, this is especially important if you plan to sell your paintings online.
Choose a painting with a quality frame. Even if you think the painting is worthless, remember to check the frame. The frame itself is also a work of art, so regardless of the painting, an old or well-made frame is valuable in its own right. Look for frames with the following characteristics:
- Hand engraved design
- Complex and unique patterns
- Frame gold plated
- Minor wear and signs of age
Identify the Authenticity of Paintings
Look for the artist’s original signature. Generally speaking, the easiest way to determine the authenticity of a painting is to look for the artist’s signature on the front and back of the painting. Especially signatures that are handwritten or added to paintings. If the signature is missing from the painting, or if the signature looks bland and fake, the painting is most likely a copy or fake.
- If you know the artist’s name, you can search online to see if their signature matches what’s on the painting.
- Signatures are easily forged, so they cannot be used as the sole basis for determining authenticity.
Use a magnifying glass to examine the printed dots. Before purchasing, use a magnifying glass to look carefully for tiny, grid-like dots. If so, the painting is a reproduction printed on a laser printer.
- While this method can identify ordinary prints, it does nothing for high-quality giclée reproductions.
- Unlike laser printing, paintings created with pointillism have dots of varying sizes and shapes.
Check the surface of the oil painting for texture. When checking the authenticity of an oil painting, look for bumps on the surface or texture of the oil. If the painting has a rich texture, it’s likely to be authentic. If the surface of the painting is completely flat, it must be a reproduction.
- If a painting has only one or two textures, it’s probably a fake pretending to be authentic.
When inspecting a watercolor painting, look for roughness on the surface. To identify the authenticity of a watercolor painting, you can carefully observe its strokes from a certain angle. If the paper around the main strokes is rough, the painting is probably original. If the paper is even and smooth, it’s most likely a reproduction.
Check whether the edges of the painting are rough or uneven. In many cases, oil painters leave jagged, jagged brushstrokes on the edges of the canvas. But since audiences rarely look at these areas, they generally don’t bother to polish them. Because of this, if the edges of a painting are very flat, it is most likely a factory copy.
Check the back of the frame for signs of time. The back of a frame often says more than the painting itself. Look for frames that are darker in color and have obvious signs of age, such as peeling paint and scuffed wood. The older the frame, the more likely it is that the painting inside is authentic.
- If the back of the frame is mostly dark but has some bright streaks, there’s a good chance the painting is authentic and has just been reworked before.
- Many old picture frames have an X or H shape on the back, which is very rare in modern picture frames.
Look at the way the painting was fixed to determine how old it is. If the painting is fastened with nails, or there are empty nail holes around the frame, it is most likely an original painting from before the 1940s. If the painting is fastened with staples, especially if it is said to be very early and there are no traces of previous fastening, it is likely to be a copy.