A catalogue raisonné is a scholarly tool. Its purpose is to record, for the art-historical record, every known work by an artist, with its provenance, exhibition history, and current location where this is known. It is essential to the integrity of the market for that artist.

The catalogue is also, by necessity, a record of who has owned what. Entries typically note the chain of ownership where it is known. Anonymous owners are recorded as 'private collection,' but the descriptions that surround such entries often locate the collection with considerable precision. A catalogue note that refers to 'a private European collection, on loan to the X exhibition in 2018' may be enough, in combination with the exhibition catalogue, to identify the collector.

The collector who lent the work, the gallery that handled the sale, the auction house that recorded a price, the institution that received the loan: each contributes a piece. The catalogue, by its scholarly nature, joins them. A determined observer can often work out which private collections hold which works of which artists, with surprising accuracy.

For the collector this is rarely the version of their collection they would publish themselves. It is detailed, durable, and updated by the next iteration of the catalogue rather than by them. It moves with the work, not with the collector.

The considered approach is, well in advance of a loan or a sale, to understand what the existing record already says, and what a new entry would add. The catalogue is not adversarial. The scholars who maintain it are often receptive to a careful conversation about how a collection is described, particularly where the description would otherwise locate it more precisely than the collector intended.