Interview with Lynda McLeod, Keeper of Christie's 'Underground' Provenance.

Interview conducted by: Dr Valeria Vallucci

Lynda McLeod is Head Librarian and Associate Director at Christie’s King Street. In 2018, she celebrated 20 years at Christie’s Archive, one of the most fascinating research destinations in London, and probably in the world. The archive has been protected underground at Piccadilly Line level. With a large display of pea-green bound Country Life issues as background, Lynda sits at her antique mahogany desk to talk about her role across the auction house, private interests and academia, and sheds light on the future of provenance in the art .

Valeria: Lynda, you have been working three floors underground for over 20 years in fairly ‘insalubrious’ conditions. Not a single window, not a breath of fresh air. You have renounced the light to illuminate the Provenance Researchers’ winding paths. Custodian of an invaluable collection of sale catalogues and books, you are the keeper of intriguing details regarding history of ownership of works of art and the guardian of sought-after collectors’ privacy, as well as the defender of Christie’s core values and dealings. This, at any rate, is how we understand your job. But how wouldyou describe it?

Lynda: Yes, incredibly in August 2018 I reached a 20-year milestone and seriously it is a question of ‘where have all those years gone?’ The variety of sources I check and the varying depths of research that I do on individual works of art, has fascinated, enthralled and captivated me. The experience of that ‘Eureka’ moment, when, as an art detective, you bring together breadcrumb trails of provenance and suddenly it all fits and the chronology and journey of that item all comes together, continues to keep me here. Had I known, when I started in 1998, that I would remain in a subterranean department with no windows for this length of time, I would not have believed it.I would describe my job as a provenance hunter-gather.

Valeria: Christie’s Archive is a unique research gem and, to some extent, one of the repositories of art historical data and other information. In your estimation, what is the future of the archive, particularly given new technological innovations such as blockchain on the horizon? Ideally, how would you like to see the archive develop into the future?

Lynda: In the auction world, the Christie’s archive is primus inter pares, without bias it is the most outstanding paper-based collection of annotated sales catalogues out of all three of our main competitors (Sotheby’s, Phillips, Bonhams). What I have heard about blockchain is very exciting: An electronic provenance that remains with your electronic work of art. That surely is provenance nirvana? However, this is emerging, fascinating technology and I look forward to the department contributing to this electronic-based knowledge. The Archive must develop an electronic dimension. This will be a paradigm moment in the history of these archives, which are after all, now 253 years old!

Valeria: Do you foresee that academics and researchers will always be able to read and research Christie’s catalogues and other materials?

Lynda: The Archives department is open to bone-fide visiting researchers, by appointment, every Wednesday & Thursday 10am-4pm. While I continue to be the incumbent keeper of these records, this situation will remain the same. We are a private company and the records therefore belong to our owner, M. Pinault and his family. It is with his/their knowledge and blessing that the records are open to non- Christie’s researchers.

Valeria: With regard to provenance research, what would be your top three methodology tips?

Lynda: Tip One: ensure that the person selling the work of art is either the owner or there is clear evidence that they have permission to sell on behalf of the owner(s).

Tip Two: you must become familiar with markings, labels, chalk-marks, stenciled numbers on the backs of paintings or attached to decorative pieces. Know the labels of the dealers, recognize the ‘danger’ red-flag labels and markings (such as the innocuous bland rectangular label for works of art destined for Adolf Hitler’s Linz Art Museum). And become familiar with the various black ink-stencilled numbers and chalk-marks that some of the auction houses use.

Tip Three: Set boundaries for your own due-diligence research. Ensure that you check your ‘go-to’ databases, archival collections and key-museum owned records for EVERY work of art you are researching. Don’t cut corners and keep your own moral compass facing in the right direction and keep your standards high! Gosh that sounds a bit high-minded, yet if you don’t do your due diligence and the history of a work is subsequently questioned. This might come back to bite you on the bottom and destroy your hard-worked for reputation.

Valeria: Being a group of independent, keen Provenance Researchers, we look on in envy as auction houses’ cataloguers and researchers carry out the main bulk of provenance work in the art market. However, they work on very strict deadlines and they often have only a few weeks to investigate a huge number of lots. This inevitably lowers their chances of finding something new and relevant for each work of art. This seems to us to represent a major challenge for market participants. Would you agree?

Lynda: Yes, I would agree. The turnaround time from consignment to sale can be very short. The ability to have time to undertake in-depth research is restricted. And I have noticed the increased pressures on specialists over the years. However, due diligence is still a key-word in our industry. The freedom to spend ‘extra’ time on further/longer research can be curtailed. Very often today, our clients present works of art with a known provenance/history and once that is verified and the critical ‘KYC’ (Know Your Client) checks have been made, we are good to go. We also rely on outside specialists, industry experts and indispensable art historians and writers when the pressure is on!

Valeria: Given the critical importance of provenance in the art market, what is the prospect of more time and funds being allocated to provenance research within the auction house?

Lynda: An interesting question, as far as I can see it is not a question of throwing money at provenance research (although is clearly done). It is the timescales to carry out this historical due diligence that will be a difficult circle to square. Having said that, the department is in the middle of a three-year digital scanning project, the annotated London-based sale catalogues will be available as either JPGs or searchable PDFs to staff as an in-house resource.

As more and more records in different libraries come online. For instance, the Witt Library is digitizing the contents of their ‘Artists’ Boxes’. Once these types of collections are on stream, research can be done from your pc/laptop/tablet, rather than having to visit the Courtauld/Christie’s Archives in person.

Valeria: As the value of provenance is becoming increasingly important and relevant to works circulating within the market, what would you say are the prospects of auction houses collaborating more frequently with independent researchers?

Lynda: Provenance research has become more important in the last fifty-years, so much so that in the new millennium it appears on the curriculum of many universities and colleges: a great development! I contribute to this dissemination of provenance research by giving lectures at various academic institutions. Christie’s has always collaborated with independent researchers. Mr James Christie (1730-1803), the founder of the firm had a whole raft of gentlemen on whom he relied for historical research, including the Belgian art dealer/artist Phillip Joseph Tassaert (1732-1803) and the English artist Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788). Today that pool of independent advisors/experts who are called upon to contribute to research, write, testify and scientifically confirm is deep and wide.

Valeria: Of all the artworks consigned by collectors, what would you say is the percentage of works that come to market with an unbroken chain of provenance? Are buyers and sellers conducting adequate due diligence themselves before buying or consigning works for sale?

Lynda: Phew, this is a multi-level question and full of potential pit-falls. Unbroken provenance, as I mentioned earlier is heaven. Yet, the percentage of works with an unbroken story, gosh I am going to try a top of my head answer, is less than 50%. This isn’t scientific, perhaps 45-55%. I would suggest that many works of art come with a partially-broken journey, with an incomplete portion. Or more likely the buyer of a work of art knows between nothing and very little and takes the word of the seller as sacrosanct: never wise. I will repeat - always carry out your own provenance research. NEVER rely only on what the seller conveys to you.

Photo Credit: Christie’s