The painting has been finished for three weeks. The artist has looked at it each morning, made a single small adjustment to a passage in the lower right corner, and looked at it again. Now it is genuinely done - the kind of done that feels less like completion than like the work finally becoming autonomous, no longer requiring the artist's attention to exist. It is ready to leave. What happens next is a process that most collectors, understandably, never see.
Documentation
Before the work is packaged, it is photographed under controlled lighting - typically a raking sidelight that reveals texture and impasto - and condition-noted. Any existing marks, irregularities, or areas of the paint surface that require attention are recorded. This documentation serves multiple purposes: it provides a reference record for the condition of the work at the point of sale, it forms the basis for the Certificate of Authenticity, and it creates the visual record that will follow the painting through its life as a collected object.
The artist provides the completed condition record, the measurements, and confirmation of the medium and year of creation. Where relevant, they note whether the work has been exhibited, whether it has appeared in any publications, and whether there are any special installation requirements - a work that needs to be hung at a particular height to be seen correctly, or that is sensitive to light from a specific direction.
Packaging
The physical care taken at the packaging stage determines much of what happens to the painting during transit. A well-packaged work is a work that can survive significant handling without harm; an inadequately packaged one is a liability regardless of how carefully the shipping company behaves.
For canvases, the standard approach involves first protecting the painted surface with glassine - an acid-free, moisture-resistant paper that does not stick to the paint and will not cause surface damage if it makes contact during transit. The canvas is then wrapped in archival bubble wrap, corners protected with bespoke corner guards, and packed into a rigid double-walled box sized to leave no more than five centimetres of clearance on any side. Larger works, or works on panel, travel in custom-built wooden crates. All works are insured for their full sale value from the moment they leave the artist's studio.
In Transit
International shipments pass through customs at the destination country. For artwork declared at its correct value - which is the only legal approach, and the one that proper documentation makes straightforward - customs processing typically adds two to four days to the transit time. Import duties, where applicable, are the buyer's responsibility; we recommend checking the relevant regulations before purchasing internationally.
The collector receives a tracking link by email the moment the package is dropped off. They can follow the work's journey across borders and time zones, watching a small dot move across a map toward their city. There is something quietly profound about this - the awareness that the object someone made with their hands is, at this moment, somewhere over the Atlantic, or clearing customs in Frankfurt, or on a van three kilometres away.
Arrival
The collector receives the package. They should, before opening it, photograph it as delivered - particularly if there is any visible damage to the outer packaging. This is insurance documentation, and its value lies precisely in its existence before the box is opened.
Inside, the painting is waiting. It has travelled from a studio - perhaps in Kyoto, perhaps in Cape Town, perhaps in a converted warehouse in Porto - to this hallway, this dining room, this space that is now its home. The artist who made it has probably already moved on to the next canvas. But the conversation that began in their studio, across weeks or months of daily decisions, is only now, truly, beginning for the person who will live with it.