Art auction house skulduggery??

devondiver

I was recently over the moon to have won an item by bidding online in a live art and antiques auction run by a reputable auction house in Ireland.  I was invoiced and paid promptly including a significant fee for packing and carriage - and so was absolutely gutted to receive a call from the auctioneer, some two weeks later, telling me they had ‘lost’ the item and they would refund my payment.

Now, this was my first time ever bidding in a conventional auction and the item is an old oil painting of great family significance for which I had been on the lookout for years.  I was therefore absolutely delighted to have spotted it in the upcoming auction catalogue of a large country house contents sale where it was, in my amateur view, poorly described and significantly undervalued. There were a few other (room) bids but my winning bid was even less than the auctioneer’s lower estimate – so imagine my disappointment to be told that the painting I bought and paid for has now somehow ‘disappeared’.

So, my question to those experienced in the field is: am I justified in suspecting that something fishy may be going on here, and if so what recourse is open to me? – bearing in mind that I am now absolutely committed to ‘re-claiming’ this picture any way that I can (within reason, of course).

Thanks for reading, and for any serious suggestions.

knightstyle

Insist the auction house give you the name and contact details of the seller and contact them. Also ask for the police report as the picture belongs to you, you have bought it before it was 'lost'.

GabbaGabbaHey

knightstyle said:

Insist the auction house give you the name and contact details of the seller and contact them. Also ask for the police report as the picture belongs to you, you have bought it before it was 'lost'.

Providing the seller's details would be a breach of GDPR (and anyway the auction house are under no obligation to provide this information). And why would there be a police report for a lost item?

RFW

GabbaGabbaHey said:

knightstyle said:

Insist the auction house give you the name and contact details of the seller and contact them. Also ask for the police report as the picture belongs to you, you have bought it before it was 'lost'.

Providing the seller's details would be a breach of GDPR (and anyway the auction house are under no obligation to provide this information). And why would there be a police report for a lost item?

Agreed. They are under no obligation to give the name of the vendor, if there was one (the auction house may have bought the contents prior to sale). If it is a genuine loss then the auction house will probably be bearing it themselves.

All the OP can really do is keep an eye out for the painting turning up again, either with the same auction house or elsewhere.

Of the various legal avenues that are open I can't see any getting anywhere.

theoretica

If you accept the refund I would think the painting becomes no longer yours.  If you want to push for a search it might help to tell them you do not -yet- give up ownership but want further searching /do they have cctv/ when was it last seen...

devondiver

Thanks all for the replies.

In case it isn't obvious - my suspicion is that, subsequent to the auction, 'someone' realised that the painting may be of significantly higher value than the hammer price (by the way, we are only talking about several hundred euros) and decided that it could 'go missing' rather than be let go at knockdown price. If so I am hoping that something can be done to encourage the 'someone' to come clean, and 'find it'. (Does this sort of thing really happen?)

RFW said:

Of the various legal avenues that are open . . . . 

Please elaborate.

Clive_Woody

If you have some way of justifying the higher value you could perhaps tell the auction house that the item of yours that they have lost is worth significantly more than the fee paid and they can compensate you for full value or look a little harder to find it.

theoretica

You might ask them if they can advise about registering it with the art loss register - which should make it unsaleable!  https://www.artloss.com/

RFW

devondiver said:

Thanks all for the replies.

In case it isn't obvious - my suspicion is that, subsequent to the auction, 'someone' realised that the painting may be of significantly higher value than the hammer price (by the way, we are only talking about several hundred euros) and decided that it could 'go missing' rather than be let go at knockdown price. If so I am hoping that something can be done to encourage the 'someone' to come clean, and 'find it'. (Does this sort of thing really happen?)

RFW said:

Of the various legal avenues that are open . . . . 

Please elaborate.

The main one gets touched on above. A "loss of bargain" expense claim. You'd have to prove the value of your purchase and claim the difference. As I've said I doubt that would work.
There's probably another possible for claiming for loss but I can't see that you've lost anything. If you want to pursue it, call a solicitor.

If it's genuine then a court wouldn't rule in your favour, if it's not then I'd guess the auction house would be smart enough to cover their tracks so it looks like it was. Stuff goes missing all the time in auctions, especially when the public have access. Labels can get swapped, items get moved around.

I was an auctioneer and we occasionally lost whole pallets of stock. You can usually pinpoint where it went but it's not always easy to retrieve.

unforeseen

A "loss of bargain" expense claim

All depends on Irish law

 a reputable auction house in Ireland.

devondiver

theoretica said:

If you accept the refund I would think the painting becomes no longer yours.  If you want to push for a search it might help to tell them you do not -yet- give up ownership but want further searching /do they have cctv/ when was it last seen...

Think I'll try this first, - coupled perhaps with this: 

You might ask them if they can advise about registering it with the art loss register - which should make it unsaleable!  https://www.artloss.com/

I'll try to get something in writing to them tonight. Thanks Theo. Fingers crossed.