Artists Resale Right

MADAM – Last year I bought a basket-case of a canvas from an artist’s estate for £400. I then spent many hundreds of pounds on a new support, re-stretching, cleaning and re-framing and eventually sold it for a profit.

Further to our article in this section in last week’s issue about who pays Artist’s Resale Right and how it applies to sales in the UK where the seller is an artist’s estate, ATG contacted Ireland’s collecting body The Irish Visual Artists Rights Organisation (IVARO) to clarify how this is dealt with in the Republic.

Following our guide to Artist’s Resale Right (ATG No 2404) and now published in the Guides section of this website, we have a received a number of enquiries from readers asking for further information.

MADAM – What wasn’t mentioned in your review of Artist’s Resale Right (ARR) in ATG No 2404 is that the ‘first sale’ exemption also applies to auction houses, so any lots from a studio sale which make over €1000 are exempt from ARR.

New data has been released on the collection of fees for Artist’s Resale Right (ARR) but the art market remains split on its view of the levy.

The growth of new technologies such as blockchain will lead to a ‘fairer and more ethical’ art market, says The Design and Artists Copyright Society (DACS).

Artist’s Resale Right, the royalty payable by a buyer to an artist or an artist’s estate for a painting resold for €1000 or more, is likely to be adopted by the UK along with other EU laws after Brexit.

An attempt by collecting agencies and copyright organisations to establish a global treaty on Artist’s Resale Right has been met with strong opposition from international trade bodies.

MADAM – As someone with a foot in both artist and auctioneer camps, I’d like to add a contrary view to the often one-sided debate on Artist’s Resale Right (ATG No 2287).

MADAM – I read your Editor’s Comment on ARR and Brexit (ATG No 2286) with interest and write to you now with a different perspective.

Christie’s is to appeal last month’s French court ruling that declared Droit de Suite is a charge on the vendor rather than the buyer.

The way Droit de Suite is applied in France was affirmed by a French court ruling last month.

In ATG’s coverage of Brexit in the past year, we regularly asked which EU-inspired law we could most live without. Unanimously the response was Artist’s Resale Right, a royalty on the resale of art hammered above €1000.