A condition report is the most useful document a saleroom produces and the least read. It is also, unlike a catalogue entry, written in a dialect — a compact professional shorthand that says a great deal in very few words, provided you know which words are doing the work.
Here is how to read one.
The grade is a summary, not the report
A headline grading — excellent, very good, good, fair, as found — tells you roughly where in the range the object sits against others of its kind and age. It does not tell you what is wrong with it. Never bid on the grade alone; the grade is the abstract and the body is the paper.
"As found" is the one grade that is genuinely a warning. It means the house is not undertaking to have listed everything, that the object has faults it can see and probably faults it cannot, and that the lot is not subject to return. In furniture and ceramics it often accompanies an honest old repair — a riveted charger, a spliced leg — which is not a defect so much as a history.
Words that mean more than they look
"Some foxing" means brown spotting in the paper, usually from damp and fungal activity, usually in the margins, usually stable. It is extremely common in anything on paper before about 1900 and it is largely a matter of taste. Heavy foxing across an image is a different thing and would be described as such.
"A later frame" means the frame is not the one the picture was painted for. This is true of most pictures and is not a criticism; it becomes relevant only when a period frame is part of what you are paying for. If the catalogue is silent about the frame, assume it is later.
"Relined" means the original canvas has been laid onto a new one, usually with heat and adhesive. It is a standard conservation treatment and it stabilises a picture — but it also tends to flatten impasto, so an artist whose surface matters loses something in the process. A relined picture is worth less than an unlined one of the same quality, and an unlined picture of any size and age is worth remarking on.
"Overpaint" is later paint applied over the original, whether to disguise damage or to improve on the artist. The report will normally give it as a percentage of the surface and say where. Under five per cent, confined to edges and background, is unremarkable. Fifteen per cent across a sky is a different picture.
The ultraviolet note
Retouching fluoresces darkly under ultraviolet light against the greenish glow of an aged varnish, so a UV note tells you where a picture has been worked on. It is not magic — a recent varnish blocks it, and a very skilled restoration under a fresh coat can be invisible — but it is the cheapest useful test there is.
When a report says "no retouching fluoresces", it is saying something quite strong. When it says nothing about UV at all, that may mean the examination was not made. Ask.
The sentence that is not there
The single most important habit is to notice omissions. A report on a clock that does not say whether it runs, a report on a watch that does not mention the movement, a report on a book that does not confirm the collation — these are not oversights so much as the limits of what the department is prepared to state.
A good department will answer a direct question directly. Ask "does it run?" rather than "what is the condition of the movement?", and ask it in writing.
And then go and look
None of this is a substitute for standing in front of the thing. A report is an opinion honestly held by a person who handled the object for perhaps twenty minutes, written to be useful and not to be a warranty. It cannot tell you how a picture reads across a room, which is the only question that matters once you own it.