Authentication & Appraisal Services

Is it or is it not a Turner? Are you bewildered or curious about a Turner in

your collection? Do you want to know about a Turner offered for sale? The Turner

Museum is ready to help with our appraisal service.

For more than a quarter century we have advised a wide variety of interested parties,

ranging from museums to individuals and from executors of estates to auction houses.

For a small donation, we are ready to give you appraisals based on our unrivaled

experience. And if you are one of our regular customers or a patron of The Turner

Museum, you may be eligible for a free appraisal. Please call for details.

Over the years we had to tell many an owner that a cherished “Turner” was NOT a

Turner. We prefer to remember the occasions when items found in the attic, a drawer

or in a trunk, was in fact a collection of VALUABLE GENUINE ORIGINAL Turners.

They do exist and many await discovery! For examples of masterpieces awaiting

discovery, browse over our TreasureHunt exhibition.

We must confess our Appraisal Service has a selfish motive - the more light

we can shed on the confusion in the arena of Turner collecting, the better we can

serve the cause of J.M.W.Turner -- and The Turner Museum.

Note:

In consideration of the substantial effort and expense involved in authenticating your

Turner (or work by any other artist ), you may consider giving it as a gift to The Turner

Museum - this option may bring you/your estate important tax benefits - we urge you to

consult with your tax and estate advisors about this. Other options include but are not

limited to the following: (a) keeping a life interest in the work and leaving it to the museum

in your will; (b) giving the museum a donation commensurate with the importance of the

art work involved; (c) negotiate a partnership with the museum according to which each

partner gets a percentage ownership interest in the work in question - and so on. In any

event, please be advised that a full authentication process is a time consuming and often

expensive procedure and furthermore, the odds against discovering a genuine Turner are

considerable - in this connection please read the section below: A Warning to Collators.

 

A Warning To Collectors

Beware of prints and reprints of prints with practically unlimited editions offered as valuable

original Turner prints! Beware of " Turner" oil paintings parading as originals. Beware of

Turner watercolors with impressive and deceptive certificates of authenticity!

Over a career spanning more than six decades, J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) was one of the

most successful and also one of the most expensive artists of all time. He was consistently

the best and commanded sky-high prices. His oils, for example, fetched as much as 5,000

guineas when (say) a rural laborer earned less than 10 guineas a year. Some of his

contemporaries preferred his beautiful original prints over "perishable" oils and "fading"

watercolors. They were snapped up for the equivalent of six months wages of a early 19th

century laborer.

Turner jealously guarded the reputation of his works. Whilst alive, he went to court to expose

fakes and spent a fortune to buy back many of the plates used in the production of his prints.

He tried to protect the value and reputation of his prints when copyright laws were less

stringent than to-day. For prints produced in America, Turner had zero copy right protection.

After 1851, when Turner was no longer around and even earlier, the floodgates opened up.

In the first half of the 20th century, for example, America, was inundated with many

thousands of "Turner" water-colors from the collection of an eminence in the art world: the

founder of a leading auction house, the predecessor of Sotheby's North American subsidiary.

Turner prints did not escape the attention of "creative" publishers. They used modern

industrial production techniques and flooded the market with countless imitations to supply

an eager demand for cheap original "Turners".

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Revenue Service -

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