This article is taken from the August-September 2024 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

What is it about the excitement of owning something that used to belong to someone famous? The extraordinary price of $29,900 paid at Sotheby’s in 1998 for a piece of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor’s wedding cake is the most revealing and ridiculous example of what some call provenance perversion.

Provenance is without doubt important, indeed sometimes the critical element in the purchase of a work of art: knowing where something has been throughout its life is critical to verify an object’s history, to establish a firm date when an object existed, a terminus ante quem. Gaps in the history of an object invite questions — indeed, between 1933–45 sometimes deeply uncomfortable questions.

If throughout an object’s life (sometimes called the “biography of an object” — see Edmund de Waal’s The Hare with Amber Eyes) it belonged to a renowned person, this can invest an object with a powerful lustre.

But how and why do certain objects inveigle one with their associative lustre, and how do those objects possess it? I have evolved an unscientific and incomplete theory of the power of provenance in the art market.

There are four aspects. First, an object owned by a renowned person is more desirable than an identical one which has an “ordinary” ownership history. Second, the object should be a recognisable or somehow universal object — a piece of wedding cake, a spoon or a piano, and if it is in good, recognisable condition, so much the better. Anything too unusual or downright odd certainly adds a degree of attraction, but to a narrow market.

If an object has been particularly close to said owner(s), for example a piece of clothing or jewellery, then the lustre is further increased.

Finally, there is the quality of the object itself. Condition issues apart, if the piece is of high artistic quality — and it is in fashion — this will add to the lustre of a piece, but quality is given the lowest weighting in my equation.

How this plays out in the market can be demonstrated by two recent very successful sales. The huge Sotheby’s sale in London in September 2023 of the personal collection of Freddie Mercury was an ideal example of how ownership history drives market success.

Here was a famous person, with universal objects (sunglasses, watches, furniture etc), some with a close association to him (his piano, lyrics to “Bohemian Rhapsody” in his own hand, worn Adidas high-top trainers) and works of quality (his collection of Japanese lacquer boxes was good if not great: a very good incense box sold for ten times its high estimate). The Freddie Mercury sale was a rip-roaring success, satisfying punters’ desires to own a kind of Freddie magic.

Hot on its heels came the sale at Christie’s New York in October 2023 of a collection from the French Rothschilds. This was a superb group of objects, wholeheartedly representative of that distinctive, rather serious style called le goût Rothschild, a sort of mitteleuropa focus on 18th century French furniture, 17th century German silver-gilt, spectacular Renaissance maiolica, and other Renaissance and Baroque-era Kunstkammer objects often made from hard stones and other luxurious materials.

It was thus the acme of what is unfashionable in the art market today. Nonetheless, high prices were paid: in the case of a pair of French armchairs, ten times the low estimate, selling for $6.2m (possibly helped by the Madame du Barry provenance). But then another pair of armchairs, just two lots earlier, reached just under ten times the low estimate, selling for $4.4m. Here the only known provenance was the family. How to explain the success?

Ownership by a famous family, rarified objects, probably sat on by a Rothschild — but in most cases, the telling factor was quality. A great many of the works offered for sale were of world-class, international museum collection-worthy quality.

Perhaps even without the famous Rothschild name, the pieces may have soared to great prices in the saleroom, but these objects had been chosen by the Rothschilds — and here was a chance for a buyer to insert themself into the succession of a great and well-known named owner.

A chance for art market immortality perhaps? Not insignificantly, the collection had remained in family ownership for over a century (though confiscated in Germany between 1940 and1946, then restituted). The pieces were valued for their beauty and quality, and also for their secure history back to the 19th century or beyond. And, yes, for the unmistakable lustre of their owners.