More Authentication Issues

Fellow appraiser Francine Proulx, ASA, ISA AM thought a recent Art Newspaper article on droit moral linked well to some previous AW posts on art authentication.

The Art Newspaper reports a Maurice Utrillo painting (see image) purchased in 1954 from the Redfern Gallery in London was to be sold at Sotheby's.  Sothey's sent images to the authenticating body and it was declined and noted forgery.  According to French law, this is the way the process should work. The moral rights law in France are to protect the integrity of the artists works, it does not include authentication but in practice it does.

The Art Newspaper reports

An attempt to sell a work believed to be by the French painter Maurice Utrillo (1883-1955) has highlighted the grey area between ownership of an artist’s droit moral (moral rights) and the power to authenticate art.
Caught in the gap is Theodore Rabb, an emeritus professor of history at Princeton University, New Jersey (and a contributor to The Art Newspaper), who had hoped to sell what he believed to be Utrillo’s Le Moulin de la Galette through Sotheby’s earlier this year. The oil painting was inherited by Rabb from his parents, who bought it from London’s Redfern Gallery for £600 in 1954. Sotheby’s initial response was that, after the work was cleaned, the auction house could sell it with an estimate of $40,000 to $60,000.

This was, however, pending the opinion of Jean Fabris, the Paris-based owner of Utrillo’s droit moral.

Having seen an image sent by email from Sotheby’s, Fabris declared Le Moulin de la Galette to be a forgery; consequently, Sotheby’s returned the work to Rabb. “The majority of works we send to experts every season are confirmed, but there are invariably a few decisions that surprise us,” says Scott Niichel, an assistant vice-president in Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern art department in New York.

The weight of Fabris’s decision is entirely in accordance with French law, under which artists have moral rights that protect the integrity of a work, including when and how it is shown and treated, regardless of its owner. When an artist dies, this right is bequeathed either to an heir or to another designated person, or people. In theory, the right does not extend to authentication, but in practice, the owners of the droit moral also, by default, become artists’ external validators, often compiling their catalogues raisonnés.

Source: The Art Newspaper