France

THE French government’s change of heart over the Artist’s Resale Right is being hailed a sea change by fellow ‘anti’ campaigners.

FRENCH culture minister Christine Albanel has announced a major overhaul of France’s auction system to meet President Sarkozy’s urgent call to “turn the French art market around”.

The 17.9m euro premium-inclusive total generated by Christie’s two-day sale of the ‘hidden’ collection of Charles Gillot in Paris last week may have wildly surpassed the auctioneers’ 5m euro predictions, but the performance of the 476-lot auction nonetheless ran pretty much along predicted lines.

Bonhams staged their first auction in France on February 9 with a sale of vintage automobiles at the Retromobile car fair in Paris.

SOTHEBY’S and Christie’s have launched an unprecedented attack on France’s auction laws in a bid to halt Paris’s decades-long decline as a market force.

For the first time, a trio of auction firms pulled clear of the field in Paris in 2007.

When the last of the 823 lots in the sale of the contents Ariane Dandois’ Gallery on the Faubourg St Honoré in Paris was hammered down by Sotheby’s on October 26, it provided a $32.2m (£16.9m) grand finale to a month of sales devoted to traditional areas of the decorative arts in New York.

FRENCH auctioneers are to hold their next open weekend of events on November 17-18.

Sotheby’s have posted their highest price in Paris since the French auction market was opened to foreign firms in 2001.

THE French government are so concerned about their dwindling share of the global art market that they have come up with a four-point plan to rescue it. They include a measure that effectively calls for the scrapping of due diligence for auctioneers.

A delegation of 17 members of the Syndicat National des Maison de Ventes Voluntaires (SyMEV, the main body representing French auctioneers) was in England last week for a three-day study tour investigating different aspects of the UK market.

Half-yearly Paris figures to August showed Christie’s consolidating their lead with sales of €100.3m (£67.3m), nearly twice as much as their nearest rivals, ArtCurial.

France’s share of the global auction market fell by 5.8 per cent in 2006, warns the Conseil des Ventes, the national auction watchdog, in its annual report published on June 25. Worldwide auction activity, it says, rose 34 per cent over the same period.

The Birmingham industrialist and designer Matthew Boulton was the toast of the Paris salerooms last week when this impressive ormolu-mounted fluorspar vase was sold at Drouot Richelieu for €170,000 (£121,430) plus premium.

Sotheby’s – who were outsold by Christie’s in Paris last year three to one – have announced a series of moves designed to reposition their Paris branch as “one of the pillars of the group’s global strategy”.

There are signs that many other member states are waking up to Britain’s warning of the threat of droit de suite, or the artists’ resale right, to the European art market.

Christie’s confirmed their Paris dominance in 2006 by posting sales of €200.8m (£135m), up 74 per cent on the previous year.

THE British art trade has paid out over £1m since Droit de Suite came into force at the start of the year. Despite some initial bureaucratic difficulties, the Artists’ Resale Right appears to have been implemented more smoothly in Britain than in other European countries.

The reform of auction law forced itself to the top of the agenda when delegates from SYMEV, France’s national auctioneers association, sat down at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers in Paris on October 3 for their annual conference.

Giuseppe Eskenazi, London’s pre-eminent dealer in Chinese works of art, has been appointed a Chevalier (Knight) of the Légion d’honneur for services to the arts.