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Guide to Provenance Research

Material Culture in Special Collections at BMC

Archival Research

Archival research is research involving primary sources held in an archives, a Special Collections library, or other repository. Archival sources can be manuscripts, documents, records (including electronic records), objects, sound and audiovisual materials, or other materials.

Archival sources supporting Art & Artifacts in Special Collections at Bryn Mawr College are most typically organized as part of the donor's papers. Search here.

Material Research - Art

Material research includes analysis of the physical matter from which an object is made and the manner in which it is constructed.

Materiality, as an aesthetic concept, emerges from Formalism and its method of formal analysis for describing the visible aspects of the work of art. It is interconnected with concepts of style and the practice of connoisseurship.

  • Formal analysis
    • mode of analysis focusing primarily on the identification and description of the formal features of an artwork and on their relations—rather than on its explicit content, or without reference to its specific cultural or historical context (see also decontextualization) (Oxford Reference)
    • the process of describing the physical properties of a work of art as objectively as possible and with as much detail as possible (Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology)
  • Style
    • term used to describe coherence of qualities in periods or people across comparanda
    • concept which makes possible the grouping of artworks into related and affiliated groups on basis of shared and/or contrastive distinctive features (comparanda) and in order to situate objects’ makers, societies, cultures, or nations as close to or distant from each other in varying ways (Preziosi, ed., The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology (New York: Oxford History of Art, 2009).
    • central concept of art history that both presupposes and promotes the hypothesis of a shared stylistic or family resemblance amongst the artifacts of a group, studio, region, nation, ethnicity, or race
      • Caution and circumspection: Theories of style that codify it according to formal typicality have been consistently and broadly criticized, but they are difficult to fully overturn: there are undoubtedly moments in history when it is impossible not to perceive that different cultural artifacts express a single or unified idea. (Elkins on "Style," Grove Art Online).
  • Connoisseurship
    • diagnostic evaluation of evidence that an object might provide for authentic origins or provenance
    • European art historical practice (Vasari, Winckelmann, Morelli, and Berenson) (Grove Art Online).

Material research also considers relevant information related to the object's physical existence.

  • Production date and provenance
  • History and condition
  • Maker's biography, personal history, community

Comparanda Research - Art

Comparanda are materials used for comparison, which may come from the same period or the same place, use the same materials, or display the same iconography.

  • Gathering comparanda is a major part of art historical research. Discovery of similar objects and their formal styles can help in their identification because one is looking for conventions or tendencies among a culture as a whole. But caution should be used in assuming a typicality or tribality from a single object. There are always contingencies and exceptions to consider: individual styles and borrowing from the styles of other culture groups are some possibilities. 

See related link for advice on comparanda research for African art

Provenance Research - Art

Provenance is the history of ownership, or the sources of origin, for movable works of art. 

  • Provenance research aims at a recovery of information about an object's history of ownership. A complete provenance provides an accurate account of the locations and changes in the chain of ownership of a work of art from the time and place of its manufacture to the present. The more extensive this record is, the more secure the attribution of the work is likely to be. An accurate and verifiable provenance may also be critical in establishing the rightful ownership of a work of art. It is important to document an object’s provenance for legal, ethical, and scholarly reasons. (See more: Grove Art Online)

Resources 

Guide to Provenance Research (Yale University)

Getting started with Provenance Research (Artwork Archive) 

IFAR (International Foundation for Art Research) Provenance Guide

  • Database of every artist catalogue raisonné ever published and currently in production

Getty Research Center Provenance Guide

Metropolitan Museum's Provenance Research Project

Art Institute of Chicago: Provenance Research Case Study

 

Provenance

Provenance is the tracing of the history of an object (usually a work of art of a book) through its various owners and locations.