Artist's resale right
Royalty owed to a living artist, or to heirs for seventy years, on each professional resale of the work above a threshold.
When a painting returns to auction, the artist or the heirs collect a percentage of the hammer price. In France the droit de suite, from Directive 2001/84/EC, applies to resales involving an art market professional from 750 euros, on a sliding scale by price band capped at 12,500 euros per work. It runs for the artist's life plus seventy years. For the fine art underwriter the royalty affects valuation but is not a risk in itself. The net the seller receives is not the hammer price. An agreed value set on an auction result carries a royalty the owner never pocketed. It also surfaces in disputes: when authenticity is challenged on a work already resold, refund claims run back through the chain, royalty included. The UK applies it, Switzerland and the United States do not, which pushes some sales to New York and Geneva.
Textbook case: a canvas by a living painter sells for 400,000 euros hammer at a Paris auction. The sliding scale (4 percent up to 50,000 euros, 3 percent up to 200,000, 1 percent up to 350,000, 0.5 percent above) yields a royalty of 8,250 euros, paid by the seller. The 400,000 euro agreed value the owner set at inception ignores that deduction.
artist's resale right, resale royalty, droit de suite, ARR
Follow the research
One letter a week. First, the week's underwriting note, when one is published: a dated, argued decision, signed by Paul Bernardski. Then what the observatory published on cyber risk, political risk and insurance. No account, no tracking.
No spam, one-click unsubscribe, no data ever sold.