Independent art advisory for wealth managers and family offices — considered paintings, sourced and authenticated to sit alongside a client's wider portfolio.
Fine Art Consultancy
Sooner or later a client asks about art: what the pictures on the wall are worth, whether to buy, whether to sell, what happens to them on death. It is rarely a question you want to answer yourself, and introducing the wrong specialist is a risk to a relationship you have spent years building. We have been dealing in nineteenth and twentieth-century paintings since 2001, and we are used to working as part of a client’s professional team rather than around it.
We work alongside you, not past you
You keep the relationship. We report to you unless you tell us otherwise, we copy you on correspondence, and we do not solicit your clients. Introductions made to us stay yours.
Valuations you can put on file
Written valuations for insurance, for probate and inheritance tax, for family division and for disposal, each prepared to the appropriate basis and supported by comparable evidence. Where a collection has never been catalogued, we will inventory it, photograph it and tell you what is genuinely of value and what is not — which is often the more useful half of the exercise.
Honest about art as an asset
We will not tell you that paintings are an investment – even though they often are. They are illiquid, they carry real transaction costs, and they do not behave like a financial asset. What good pictures do is hold their value over time and give pleasure in the meantime, and a client who buys what they actually want is far less likely to be disappointed than one who buys on a forecast. We would rather say that plainly at the outset than be quoted back on it later.
Buying and selling
For acquisitions we work to a brief and a budget, source from auction and the trade as readily as from our own stock, and set out our costs in advance. For disposals we advise on the realistic choice between private sale and auction, including a straight comparison of net proceeds and timing, and we will say when auction is the better route for the client even though it is not the better route for us.
Provenance and compliance
Every work is researched and authenticated by our own team. We carry out customer due diligence on every transaction and keep the records your own compliance team will expect to see.
To discuss a client brief in confidence, contact us directly.
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Fine Art Advisory Services
Portfolio Diversification
Fine art is increasingly held alongside traditional assets, valued for its low correlation to public markets as much as its aesthetic worth. We advise on paintings suited to sit within that wider strategy, sourced and authenticated to the same standard as any other holding.
Succession & Legacy
Art is often the least well-documented asset a family passes down. We help build a clear picture of what a collection contains and what it is worth, so it moves between generations with the same clarity as the rest of an estate.
Philanthropic Giving
Works we have sourced have gone on to major public collections, and we are glad to advise where a client is considering a gift or bequest — from identifying a suitable painting to preparing the documentation an institution will expect.
Working with You
Most of the collections we place involve more than one advisor — an interior designer, a project manager, or your own art consultant. We are accustomed to working alongside the professionals already involved, and see our role as adding specialist knowledge to that team, not replacing it.
Professional Fine Art Sourcing
If a particular artist, period or subject is right for your collection but isn’t currently held by us, we can search on your behalf — including works not publicly listed, through contacts built over twenty-five years in the market.
How We Work
Discretion is not an afterthought for us — it is how this side of the business runs day to day.
Client names, locations and project details are never shared or used in our marketing without express permission.
Family offices, personal assistants and estate managers regularly act as our primary point of contact. We structure our process around that arrangement as a matter of course.
By named contact, encrypted email or a single point of contact within your team — whatever suits your arrangement.
Get in Touch
Whether you are sourcing a single work or planning a collection across an entire project, get in touch to discuss your requirements.
Who We Are
Leighton Fine Art holds one of the largest privately owned collections of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings in the world, based in Marlow, Buckinghamshire. Every work is owned outright, authenticated and researched by our own team.
Our advisory work extends across private residences, hospitality and commercial interiors alike, guided throughout by the same standard: every painting is owned outright, authenticated and researched by our own team before it reaches a client.
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