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".