Gothic Poem / Blake Artwork: Ethics Gone Mad
Chris Barker
Each Other
The following is an article from the Antiques Trade Gazette reference a very
recent auction.
"Multi-million pound deal struck in row over Blake watercolours folio"
A secondhand bookshop in Glasgow and two Yorkshire dealers are celebrating a
windfall of several million pounds after settling their dispute over the
ownership of a lost cache of William Blake watercolours. The folio of 19
illustrations for Robert Blair's poem, The Grave, one of the most exciting
"finds" in art market history, have been sold through London art dealer
Libby Howie, acting on behalf of an anonymous collector, for an estimated
£4.9m.
This was the sum of money that Agnew's had advised the Tate Gallery to pay
for the illustrations. "Unfortunately, the Tate would appear to have shown
their hand and the vendors accepted a better offer," said Andrew Wyld of
Agnew's.
The private sale raises the possibility that the watercolours would never be
seen in public and would disappear abroad, but Ms Howie, while not being
drawn on the nationality of her client, said: "He is a man who understands
the importance of these watercolours to scholars. Their loan to a museum has
not been ruled out."
Blake had been paid just £21 for a group of 40 illustrations for the 1808
edition of The Grave by publisher Robert Cromek, but only a dozen designs
were eventually used by the engraver Luigi Schiavonetti.
The illustrations were sold by Cromek's dependants at an Edinburgh auction
in 1836 and for the next 164 years Blake scholars were unaware of their
whereabouts. Then, in the spring of 2001, two Yorkshire book dealers, Paul
Williams and Jeffery Bates, spotted a red morocco slipcase titled in gilt
Designs for Blairs Grave, containing 19 watercolours, while browsing through
a secondhand bookshop, Caledonia Books, on Glasgow's Great Western Road.
The dealers acquired the folio and consigned it to Swindon book auctioneer
Dominic Winter (for whom one of the men worked as a regional agent). They,
in turn, contacted various Blake scholars, including Robin Hamlyn of Tate
Britain, the gallery with a world-famous collection of Blake drawings, who
were in no doubt that the watercolours were genuine.
However, Caledonia Books learnt of the planned sale of the folio at Dominic
Winter in June 2002 and served a High Court writ on the two Yorkshire
dealers, suing for the return of the illustrations and costs of more than
£15,000.
The outcome of the case was expected to hinge on whether money was paid in
receipt of the folio by Williams and Bates, or whether it was taken on
approval. The case also attracted the attention of the estate which had
originally sold the folio to Caledonia Books, and they joined proceedings.
Eventually the dispute was settled to the satisfaction of all parties, who
signed a confidentiality agreement not to disclose the terms which led to
the multi-million pound sale of the watercolours. But an Antiques Trade
Gazette contact in the book trade said that the Yorkshire dealers appeared
to have won most of the argument. "From what I have heard, they got the lion
's share of the settlement, while the Glasgow bookshop and their customer
each got substantial amounts of money", he said.
End of article.
I found it particularly interesting that a roving bookdealer is actually an
agent for an auction house. I also wonder what the arrangement between the
auction agent and the Glasgow bookshop was e.g. whether he bought the folio
for himself (or indeed the auction house), or whether it was specifically
taken on consignment / approval. If the latter, I wonder how ethical it is
for an auction house to sell its own possessions? I naively believed they
could only sell other people's things for a commission fee.
But most staggering of all is the fact that a bookshop, having presumably
under-vauled this rare folio by a quite staggering amount, then chase the
people clever enough to realise its true worth after realising that they
have made a monumental blunder; followed by the original owner, who had in
turn sold it to the Glasgow bookshop for a price they presumably advised was
realistic.
No one comes out of this well. Either the folio WAS sold outright and the
bookshop made an error; or the auction agent took the book on approval, and
then tried to stiff the bookshop.
What next? An Ebay seller sues an ABE seller for having snapped up a bargain
only to list it online at a higher price? It'll be interesting to see, for
example, whether someone who walks into a bookshop with a copy of Le Fanu's
GHOST STORIES [1851] and gets told it is only worth £20, then sues the shop
when they see that the same book is then put online by the bookseller for
£2,500. The issue of title and ownership etc is pretty straightforward in
other matters, but when it comes to old books and antiquities, it all
becomes very murky indeed. And it underlines that there is a pretty
unpleasant side to this hobby we all share.
Todd T.
"Chris Barker" <haunte...@waitrose.com> wrote in message
news:G5idnZcprKb...@brightview.com...
> Or: How Several Professionals Cocked Up, But Then Scrabbled Round Biting
> Each Other
>
> What next? An Ebay seller sues an ABE seller for having snapped up a
bargain
> only to list it online at a higher price? It'll be interesting to see, for
> example, whether someone who walks into a bookshop with a copy of Le
Fanu's
> GHOST STORIES [1851] and gets told it is only worth £20, then sues the
shop
> when they see that the same book is then put online by the bookseller for
> £2,500. The issue of title and ownership etc is pretty straightforward in
> other matters, but when it comes to old books and antiquities, it all
> becomes very murky indeed. And it underlines that there is a pretty
> unpleasant side to this hobby we all share.
>
>
"Antiques Roadshow", who is presumably there to inform and shold take no
financial interest in goings on, assessed some US Civil War artifacts at a
modest sum, then offered that sum to their owner, and later was found taking
bids from museums for many multiples of the first transaction. Fraud comes
into play in such a scenario, but I can definitely see where a
misunderstanding could arise about what role everyone is expecting everyone
else to play in a game of agents and sub-agents.
- Todd T.