The hardest part of buying art for the first time is not choosing the work. It is walking in without knowing the etiquette — whether you are allowed to ask the price, whether you can change your mind, whether you are expected to know something you do not.
You are allowed to ask anything. Here is what the process looks like from our side of it.
Buy what you keep coming back to
Not what will appreciate, not what suits the sofa. The works people still love in ten years are almost always the ones they could not stop thinking about in the first week. If a piece is still in your head after a few days, that is the signal.
Ask what it is made of, and what happened to it
Medium, dimensions, year, and whether it has been restored, relined or reframed. A gallery that cannot answer those questions quickly is not a gallery you should be buying from. We put the answers on the work’s page, and we will send condition photographs on request.
A work with a documented history is worth more than an identical work without one — not only in money, but in how comfortably you can live with it.
Price on request is not a trick
Some works are not publicly priced, usually because the artist or the previous owner asked us not to. Ask. You will get a straight number, and no one will think less of you for asking.
Think about the wall before you commit
Light is the thing people forget. Direct sun will fade works on paper within a few years, and a dark corridor will swallow a dark painting entirely. Tell us where it is going and we will tell you honestly whether it will work there.
What you should get
A certificate of authenticity, an invoice describing the work properly, and everything we know of its provenance in writing. It should arrive crated and insured. If anything is missing, ask before you pay.
If you would like to talk any of this through before you look at a single work, that is what our specialists are for.