Art law expert Dr Sophie Vigneron comments that authenticity is paramount and expects a ‘battle of experts’ following news that Sotheby’s is being sued over misattribution of a painting later valued at £10m.
Dr Vigneron says: ‘Authenticity is paramount in the art market both for buyers and sellers as the genuineness of an artefact rather than its quality determines its selling price. An auctioneer’s worst nightmare is to fail to spot a ‘sleeper’, ie an original that has not yet been identified as such, like the painting attributed to a follower of Caravaggio, auctioned for £42,000, and which is then attributed to Caravaggio himself and is now worth £10m. Such cases are rare but not unheard of (Rubens, Vermeer, Van Gogh…) and rarely hit the headlines as auction houses that have misattributed a work of art prefer to settle a claim rather than go to court which is expensive and leads to negative publicity.
‘This case concerns the contractual duty that Sotheby’s owes to the seller, and whether its contractual duty to act with skill and care when appraising the painting was breached. In other words: is Sotheby’s negligent for failing to spot a dormant masterpiece? The case will entail a battle of experts, particularly the claimant’s experts who will have to show 1) that the painting is authentic and 2) that Sotheby’s experts should have identified the painting as such. It is difficult to predict the outcome of such cases as so much rests on the facts and on the testimony of experts who will have to convince the court that the painting is original and that Sotheby’s experts were unreasonable to describe it as ‘follower of Caravaggio’.
‘In conclusion, the law tends to be in favour of auction houses and dealers who are not liable for failing to spot a sleeper unless their behaviour fell below the standard of a reasonable auctioneer and case law illustrates that this is rarely the case.’
Dr Vigneron, a Senior Lecturer in Law at Kent Law School, has published articles on the subject of authenticity including ‘The Authenticity of Art: an Insight into French law‘ (Art Antiquity and Law, 2008) and ‘L’authenticité d’une oeuvre d’art, une comparaison franco-anglaise’ (Revue Internationale de Droit Comparé, 2004). She has also published a book section on the subject, entitled ‘L’authenticité des œuvres d’art: problèmes juridiques’ in L’objet d’art en France du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle: De la création à l’imaginaire.
Dr Vigneron also lectures at postgraduate level at the Institut D’Etudes Superieures Artistiques (Paris) and at the Ecole du Louvre (Paris) and was invited to the 19th General Assembly of States Parties in 2013 to observe the UNESCO World Heritage Convention which met to consider means of prohibiting and preventing the illicit import, export and transfer of ownership of cultural property.
For more informatin about Dr Vigneron’s research interests and publications, visit her staff profile page.