The difference
Provenance is the record of a work’s ownership and whereabouts: who has owned it, when, and how it moved between them. It is a historical account, assembled from sale records, exhibition catalogues, inventories, correspondence and labels on the reverse.
Title is the legal question of whether the seller actually owns the work and can pass ownership to a buyer. A work can have a long and well-documented provenance and still carry a defect in title — if, for instance, it was stolen at some point in that history, or is subject to a charge, a dispute between heirs, or a restriction on export.
Provenance is evidence. Title is the conclusion. Good provenance supports title; it does not guarantee it.
Why buyers should care
A defect in title can surface decades later, and when it does the buyer’s position is often weaker than they expect. A claim brought by the heirs of a dispossessed owner, or by a government asserting an export or cultural property restriction, can make a work unsaleable long before the claim is resolved.
Even where a claim ultimately fails, the practical consequences begin immediately. Museums may decline to borrow a work with an unresolved question over it. Insurers will ask, and auction houses may decline the consignment. The market is small, and it remembers.
Gaps matter most in certain periods. Works that changed hands in Europe between 1933 and 1945 receive particular scrutiny, as do antiquities without documented excavation or export history.
What a proper check involves
Due diligence should be proportionate to the work and the transaction. A print bought at auction for a few thousand pounds does not need the scrutiny that a major painting acquired privately does. But the questions are the same in kind.
Who is selling, and do they have the right to sell? Is the ownership history continuous, and where it is not, is the gap explicable? Do the stolen art registers show anything? Are there export, cultural property or sanctions considerations? Is the attribution supported by scholarship or by a recognised catalogue raisonné? Does the physical work match its documentation?
Where a question cannot be answered from the record, it is usually better to bring in the appropriate specialist — a scholar, a conservator, a scientific analyst, a lawyer in the relevant jurisdiction — than to accept an assurance.
The practical point
Almost every serious problem we have seen in this area was visible, in outline, before the transaction completed. What was missing was not information but the willingness to ask an awkward question while there was still time to walk away.
That is the value of an adviser who acts for you alone. The work of checking is not adversarial; it is simply the work. But it is much more likely to be done properly by someone whose only interest is your position.