Unknown provenance
Even after extensive research, the provenance of an art work regularly remains entirely unknown. This happens particularly with applied art, such as crockery, furniture, pewter and silver objects. We simply lack factual information about these objects that is needed in order to begin investigating the provenance. Often, the artist's name is missing and there is no description of the work that could not easily be confused with other works. Furthermore, we also have far fewer extra resources, while these do exist for paintings. One need think only of the extensive collections of old archived photographs containing the provenance details of paintings. Nonetheless, it does occur that the complete provenance of paintings will remain unknown. At the most, there may be an indication of who the last German owner was, but the painting’s prior history will be missing. Sometimes, whether these art works originated in the Netherlands cannot even be ascertained. Presumably, they were sent to the Netherlands by the Allied authorities because the painting's typically Dutch character made Dutch provenance seem likely.
