Start with institutional records

Museum databases and national collection portals are the most reliable starting point, because they record what they hold and often note related works. Search by the artist name alone first, then add a date range if the results are noisy. A record that lists a title, medium, and accession number gives you something solid to chase. Those entries also tend to link outward to exhibition histories or bibliography notes, which is where the next layer of the trail usually begins.

The catch is that an institution's online record is not the same as a complete catalogue raisonné. It shows what arrived there, not what was lost, destroyed, or still in private hands. Treat each entry as a confirmed point, not as a boundary. If a museum page names a dealer or a previous owner, that name can open another search. The work of assembling a full picture is slower than a single database query, but it is the only method that stays honest.

Where the scattered pieces usually turn up

A painter with a limited public footprint tends to surface in a few predictable places, and knowing those places saves time. Auction archives can show titles and sale dates, though the images are sometimes small and the cataloguing uneven. Gallery and dealer pages may still carry older stock or reference works that are no longer available. Exhibition catalogues and review archives can name works that never made it to a permanent record. Each source covers a different slice, so one alone will not be enough.

The practical move is to compare what each source says rather than trusting any single page. A title that appears in two records is more likely to be real than one that appears once. A date that conflicts across sources is a signal to slow down, not to guess. If you want to browse their full body of work, you are really building a working list from several partial lists, and the gaps are part of the record.

How to keep the record honest

A working list is only useful if you can tell a confirmed work from a guess. Keep a simple note of where each title came from, because that is what lets you judge its weight later. A museum accession record carries more authority than an unattributed image on a random page. A reproduction site may be useful for seeing a composition, but it is not evidence about the original painting's whereabouts. Separate what you have seen from what you have inferred.

If your goal is to browse their full body of work, accept that the finished list will still have holes. Some paintings stay in private hands and never appear online. Some titles resurface only in a single old catalogue. The point is not to force completeness, but to know which entries are firm and which are provisional. That distinction matters more than the total count.