Wise to Art

This German high quality site has understood all about the medium’s potential. Whilst still only offering works with prices firmly within what nowadays is acceptable for bidding without actually seeing, Fine Art Auctions’ site manager keeps hammering on the absolute safety of using its platform. Among the arguments is the extraordinary five year guarantee of authenticity given on all works sold through the site. This sounds at first particularly generous but inevitably brings up the question as to why a work would eventually cease to be authentic in the sixth year…

Fine Art Auctions puts it this way:

The value of a work of art is determined by various factors. In rare cases, new testing methods or publications can lead to scientific insights that could not even have been anticipated at the time of purchase – in the worst case, the work is worth less than was thought. One of the most famous cases of a fall in value is probably Rembrandt’s ‘Man in a Gold Helmet’, which in 1986 was attributed to one of his students.

Fine-art-auctions.com is exemplary when it comes to reassuring the potential customer. Of course, if you don’t have the accumulated weight of Christie’s, you need to be reassuring and fine-art-auctions goes more than just out of its way to alleviate any unease:

Only reputable auctioneers and art galleries may qualify as partners of Fine Art Auctions. The basic requirement is for them to have been working on the fine art market for at least 10 years. If this preliminary condition is met, Art Directory Service GmbH meticulously checks the applicant’s references, its qualifications and other issues, for instance whether it is a member of an auctioneers’ association. Specific criteria have to be met for acceptance.

So what’s the result of all this effort? Well, a particularly agreeable site with much dynamic and perhaps the best platform available today for finding quality art at normal market prices. Don’t yet hope to find major works but expect drawings, prints, photography and the odd oil by some minor name. The present sobriety will undoubtedly change in the future as we get more and more used to the virtual platform.