Artists' right to `added value' thwarted by London

Patrick Smyththe late Patrick Collins, like most successful Irish visual artists, never made a fortune from his work.

And, as happens all too often, in the time before his death a couple of years ago, when his name had become firmly established and the buying power of the Irish market had pushed the resale value of his works into the £20,000 to £30,000 bracket, it was cold comfort to a man who was no longer painting and later to his widow, Patricia, living precariously on a non-contributory pension.

She recalls the work they sold in 1968 for 150 guineas and when it was resold in 1981 for £8,000. Today, if it returned to the market, it could fetch three times that.

For Stella Coffey, of the Artists' Association of Ireland, the inability of the visual artist, unlike the author or musician, to benefit from the post-sale success of his or her work is a glaring injustice. While a few may realise some return on reproduction rights, for the vast majority resale success largely passes them by.

Not so in France since 1921, and, it had been hoped by artists, soon throughout the EU. The droit de suite, literally the "right to follow", now a feature of some 50 states worldwide and 11 in the EU, gives artists a small percentage of the resale value of their work.

But the attempt by the European Commission to introduce a harmonising directive to extend the right throughout the Union has led to a powerful backlash from the London art market and the Labour government, with dire predictions that up to 8,500 jobs and £60 million in business will be at risk when dealers take the auction business elsewhere.

Unprecedentedly on a single market issue, faced with being outvoted last week, the British threatened at a ministerial lunch to invoke the phrase "vital national interest" to delay the measure for up to six months.

In the end the threat was enough to have the vote put back, but has angered many memberstates who see its use on an internal market issue as a dangerous precedent.

The proposed royalties were to be graduated, beginning at 4 per cent for works fetching from £4,000 up to £40,000, and gradually dropping to 0.25 per cent once works exceed £400,000. A maximum of £10,000 would be paid to artists, while royalty rights would extend 70 years after death.

Yet, in truth, the resale or secondary market for the works of living or recently deceased artists in London is estimated at less than 10 per cent of British fine art sales and economists say it is a lot less price sensitive than the British government is suggesting. A middle-ranking British artist is likely in any case to fetch a better price in London than New York.

Irish officials argue that the tax is an inefficient measure and costly both to collect and distribute, and thus likely to be of little benefit to artists, and they, with the Dutch, back British concerns about the flight of the auction market to New York or Geneva.

The Irish resale or secondary market is tiny at present though Stella Coffey argues that, courtesy of the Celtic Tiger, it is now capable of taking off.

But, she points out, the droit de suite was once Government policy and was part of the Programme for Government after the 1993 election.

She claims the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, has been nobbled by the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, on the issue on the margins of a summit meeting, sacrificing artists' rights for nebulous feel-good in Anglo-Irish relations. Officials deny there has been a recent change of position.

Iwo Dawney for the British Art Market Federation cites figures from France and Germany to bolster their case against the royalty system. Last year only 480 artists, of over 7,000 registered, benefited from German resale rights; of those, 274 living artists shared in £205,600 while 206 heirs, in £1.44 million.

In France, a recent, leaked report to the Culture Minister on the effect of the droit de suite undermined it by suggesting those contemplating sales of pictures worth £15,000 or more would find it worthwhile to move them to Geneva, while for works valued over £23,000, New York beckons.

The Commission dismisses the claims, pointing to the acknowledged reality that the Germans are extremely lax in collecting their tax, and insisting its proposal, unlike the flat-rate French tax, tapers away dramatically as the price of a picture rises, thus reducing the competitive disadvantage potentially suffered by European sellers.

Yet the French evidence on the limited benefit of the royalty is strong: a fifth of the money raised goes to collection agencies, gallery owners evade it or claw back some of the percentage from the artist, and in the period 19931995, 60 per cent of the artists receiving any money from the royalty got less than £320 each, on which collection charges were levied.

The truth is, perhaps, that however unfair the present system may be to artists, the droit de suite may not be an effective remedy.

A compromise proposal which would allow states the option only to pay royalties to living artists has failed to break the deadlock at a meeting of EU ambassadors last week and the issue was kicked on to the Portuguese Presidency next year.