A work changes hands twenty years after it was made, at a far higher price. The artist, still living, has no part in it. The resale right exists to correct that. Buyers know little about it, sellers often ignore it, and it applies automatically all the same.
Here is how it works, in France, today.
The principle in one sentence
When a graphic or plastic work of art is resold with the involvement of an art market professional, the author receives a percentage of the resale price.
Three conditions must be met. It is a resale, so not the first sale by the artist. A professional is involved, as seller, buyer or intermediary: a sale strictly between private individuals is not caught. And the price reaches the statutory threshold.
The figures
The threshold is 750 euros. Below that, nothing is due.
The rate is 4 per cent for the first band of 50,000 euros, then decreases through successive bands for higher prices. The total is capped at 12,500 euros per work, whatever the price reached.
In practice, for the vast majority of contemporary art resales, the useful rule fits on one line: above 750 euros, four per cent.
Who pays, and who declares
The resale right is borne by the seller. It is never added to the price paid by the buyer.
Responsibility for payment lies with the professional involved in the transaction. He declares it and pays it to the competent collecting society, which passes it on to the author or the author’s heirs.
At ARTDELION this obligation is set out explicitly in article 15 of our Terms and Conditions of Sale: for any work resold at 750 euros or more, we handle the declaration and the payment. The displayed price remains the price paid.
How long the right lasts
The resale right benefits the author throughout life, then the heirs for seventy years after death. It is an economic right: it passes on, but it can neither be assigned nor sold during the author’s lifetime.
It is not the same as moral rights, which are perpetual and inalienable, and which we touch on in the article on the representation contract.
What falls outside it
The first sale by the artist. When you acquire a work directly from its author or his agent there is no resale right: the artist already receives the proceeds.
Sales between private individuals with no professional. Two collectors dealing directly trigger nothing.
Works by authors who died more than seventy years ago.
Manuscripts and certain categories of object, the right covering original graphic and plastic works.
Why the right exists, and why it is debated
The founding argument is simple: a painter sells a canvas for three hundred francs at twenty-five, it is worth a hundred thousand at his death, and his family is destitute. The resale right was born of real situations, in France, at the start of the twentieth century.
The opposite argument exists too, and it is honest: the right makes transactions more expensive and can push certain important sales towards markets that do not apply it. That is a genuine issue at the very top of the market.
For a living artist whose works resell between one and ten thousand euros, the effect is different: the resale right is the only mechanism that gives a share of the value created, and which appreciates without them.
What it means for you
If you buy from us, nothing. You are buying in a first sale, the resale right does not apply, and the displayed price is the price paid.
If you resell later through a professional, know that four per cent will be taken above 750 euros, and that it is not for the buyer to bear. Build it into your calculation, as you would a commission.
If you are an artist, check that you are registered with a collecting society. A right left unclaimed for several years is eventually lost, and that is one reason many artists never receive anything.
Going further
If your question is about resale value rather than the mechanics of the right, read having a sculpture valued. And if it is about how a purchase price is built, it is all in how the price of a work is set.
This article describes French law as we apply it. It does not replace professional legal advice on a particular situation.