Some artists whose work ended up at thrift stores include Ben Nicholson, Ilya Bolotowsky, Giovanni Battista Torriglia, Alexander Calder, and even Pablo Picasso. So you’ll know what paintings to keep an eye out for, learn about different artists through local galleries, art museums, and online databases like the Web Gallery of Art.
If you don’t know the name of a painting, search for it using descriptors. For example, you can find Thomas Gainsborough’s The Blue Boy with the terms “painting,” “kid,” and “blue. ” If you can take a high-quality photo of the piece, try running it through Google’s Reverse Image Search at https://reverse. photos. This will make the searching process far easier.
Most limited edition prints have numbers on them indicating which copy you have and how many copies exist.
This is especially important if you plan to sell your paintings online since small and abstract art is hard to convey over digitized photographs.
Hand-carved designs Intricate or unique patterns Gilded molding Slight wear and similar signs of age
If you know the artist’s name, look them up online and see if their signature matches the version on the painting. Signatures are easy to fake, so don’t use this as your only proof of authenticity.
Though this method will help you identify common prints, be aware that it may not work for higher-quality giclee reproductions. Unlike laser prints, paintings made using a pointillist technique will have dots of varying sizes and shapes.
If a painting only has 1 or 2 spots of texture, it may be a forgery disguising itself as the real deal.
If the back of a frame is mostly dark but has a few bright streaks in it, there’s a good chance the painting is authentic but had to be relined at some point. Many old frames have a X or H shape in the back, something far less common in contemporary frames.
