here is his story about finding a 160 Million $ painting by Picasso in his attic
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Indeed when you find an exceptional or even a less exceptional artwork in your attic, the first thing to do is to open Google and look up similar artworks by this artist.
This first step should already bring you some clarity
When you think you may have a valuable artwork, you should test to see if your painting is a real painting or a reproduction. This is a very easy step:
- do you feel or see brushstrokes?
- do you see brushstrokes but they are all applied in a circular way, they not match the underneath painting strokes..obviously a reproduction with a layer of varnish applied in circular strokes
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Go to Sotheby's or Christie's ?? Avoid them at this stage. I saw many paintings they turned down because the provenance was unclear, etc and turned out they were authentic.
Sotheby's and Christie's are great to sell your stuff because they make a "modest" revenue from the seller and from the buyer, an average of 50 % of the value of the painting. Somebody would think that with such a lucrative income they will take everything ...wrong. They hunting the owners of big masters, that's why you find in their staff lots of gentleman and ladies from Aristocracy or heirs from important modern and contemporary painters or even sons and daughters of important gallery owners.
What you need to do is to find a reputable and honest art expert ( yes they exist...) and hire him to find out if your painting is authentic or not. Usually if you have a copy or a pastiche he will tell you immediately.
Not to do:
alerting newspapers, tv stations, why?
the sole recognized experts for a painting don't want the old world to know about a discovery:
1- they like to announce it themselves ( Prestige etc )
2- they are afraid to make mistakes. Indeed when an expert has a 5% doubt about the provenance or details in the painting you will not receive your authentication. It happened to me with a painting by Jacques-Louis David, the expert had a 5 % doubt, everything in the painting was totally corresponding his work,but he doubt the history for a little 5 %. This would have changed my life completely because I will have been very rich at the age of 35 years, and could have made a large collection of paintings...
3- the same if you put a painting on Ebay, the sole recognized expert will no longer recognize the authenticity because it was overexposed
to be continued
Gerard Van Weyenbergh
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