A Friend, a Partner, a Steward: How Alton Perkins Came to Protect William Verdult's Legacy
Most of what the Estate has published about William Verdult's later years concerns the work itself — the series, the exhibitions, the appraisals. Less has been said about the relationship that ultimately carried his legacy forward: a business partnership, and eventually a friendship, between Verdult, his son Troy, and Alton Perkins, the collector and dealer who would go on to found Verdult Legacy Publishing.
A Working Relationship, Not a Simple One
By his own account, Perkins began listing, selling, and building a market for Verdult's work in the early 2000s, working alongside both William and Troy Verdult. The Estate's records describe the arrangement candidly: a business relationship that was, at times, contentious, as any long partnership involving money, inventory, and a strong-willed artist tends to be. Over the years it grew into something larger in scope — Perkins facilitated the auction and sale of more than 5,000 Verdult pieces across paintings, prints, lithographs, giclées, and the artist's Black Pottery, and personally commissioned more than 57 formal appraisals of the work, alongside CPA-conducted audits and IRS-related donation appraisals.
The Final Months of 2016
The record turns personal in the last year of Verdult's life. In 2016, with William in declining health, Troy contacted Perkins directly — his father was ill, and having money available would help. Despite his diagnosis, William reportedly refused to slow down on his doctor's advice. Troy and Perkins finalized business arrangements that year specifically to make sure William had the funds he needed. The two men spoke by phone in December 2016; by Perkins' own recollection, they talked and laughed, and William thanked him for their long relationship. William Verdult died on December 21, 2016, only weeks after that call.
From Personal Bond to Formal Stewardship
What had been a working relationship between an artist and a dealer became, after 2016, something closer to formal stewardship. Perkins continued the appraisal and authentication work he'd already been doing for years, but also began supplying verified sales and auction data to reference platforms including Artnet, MutualArt, and Invaluable, and monitoring secondary markets like eBay to guard against misuse of Verdult's images and intellectual property. That groundwork — appraisals, audits, documented sales history — is what the Estate now points to when explaining why it, rather than any auction house or reseller, is treated as the source of record for Verdult's market history.
Why the Origin Story Matters
None of this is incidental to how collectors should think about the Estate today. A stewardship built on decades of transactional detail — appraisals filed, audits completed, data supplied directly to the platforms that track an artist's market — carries a different kind of authority than one asserted after the fact. The Estate's current role, including its authority to issue Certificates of Authenticity, traces directly back to this record rather than to a title claimed after Verdult's death.
Perkins has since told the fuller story of this relationship, and of Verdult's life and market, in The Life and Times of William Verdult: The Dutch Master, His Value to You.