Business Finance Media Technology Policy Wealth Insights Interviews

Art Art Fairs Art Market Art Reviews Auctions Galleries Museums Interviews

Lifestyle Nightlife & Dining Style Travel Interviews

Power Index Nightlife & Dining Art A.I. PR

About About Observer Advertise With Us Reprints

Is That a Caneletto? Kind of.

Auction houses use "manner of," "follower of," "circle of" and even "attributed to" when they don't quite know what they have. Here's what that means for art collectors willing to take the risk.

Imagine examining an auction catalogue description that read, “Old painting, looks Dutch (or something).” But describe that same picture as being by a “Follower of Rembrandt” or “In the manner of Rembrandt,” and buyer interest is piqued. Maybe it is an unknown Rembrandt, or as close to a Rembrandt as you will ever be able to afford. “An important artist’s name still gets people excited, even if a work might not be by that artist,” Monica Brown, managing director of fine art at Freeman's auction house, told Observer.

Sign Up For Our Daily Newsletter

Thank you for signing up!

By clicking submit, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge we may use your information to send you emails, product samples, and promotions on this website and other properties. You can opt out anytime.

At a 2025 Freeman’s sale of Old Masters and 19th-century art, one painting, View of the Bacino with the Bucintoro and Gondolas attributed as “Manner of Canaletto,” fetched $25,600, well above its $4,000-6,000 estimate. Canaletto was a highly esteemed Venetian painter whose c. 1732 canvas Venice, the Return of the Bucintoro on Ascension Day set an auction record for the artist in July of last year at Christie's, earning $43.9 million—but how do you value a picture that merely looks like his work? At that same auction was another painting, The Grand Canal Looking South From the Molo With a View of Santa Maria della Salute, attributed to a “Follower of Canaletto,” which also sold for $25,600. One might guess that the same person bought both pictures, perhaps hoping to arrive at a more exact attribution for a work that, if it turned out to be an actual Canaletto, could also be worth tens of millions of dollars. It would be like buying a scratch ticket at the gas station that turned out to be a winning Mega Millions ticket.

“Manner of…” and “Follower of…” are just some of the auction house designations that have no true art historical meaning but are a form of marketing, according to Richard Wright, partner and CEO of the auction house conglomerate Rago/Wright. “Truthfully, it is a way of saying ‘We really don’t know.'” This terminology of ignorance has its own hierarchy, as explained in Sotheby’s official glossary of terms. Artworks that cannot be fully authenticated are placed on a sliding scale of information and belief:

1 GIOVANNI BELLINI In our opinion a work by the artist. (When the artist’s forename(s) is not known, a series of asterisks, followed by the surname of the artist, whether preceded by an initial or not, indicates that in our opinion the work is by the artist named. 2 ATTRIBUTED TO GIOVANNI BELLINI In our opinion probably a work by the artist but less certainty as to authorship is expressed........

© Observer