What is Droit de Suite? (the exact translation from french is “the right to follow”)

There is a brief explanation of the artist’s resale right on Christie’s where “Droit de Suite is a royalty payable to a qualifying artist or the artist’s heirs each time a work is re-sold during the artist’s lifetime and during the 70 years following the artist’s death.” This means the artist, who originally created a work of art is entitled to royalties of resold artwork during his or her lifetime and then family heirs can reap benefits up to 70 years since the creation of the artwork. It’s a way to bring justice for the creators of art and also a form of intellectual property rights.

However, there are some conditions that apply for instance Christie’s will not pay royalties to works going under 1000 euro and will only pay a maximum of 12,500 euro. The percentage of the final hammer price for a royalty is from 0.25-4% depending on the hammer price range where the bigger the hammer price the bigger the royalty percentage.

For royalties not to exceed 12,500 euro seems to be a bit unfair because why should the artist be cheated of the insanity of contemporary art prices? This pretty much is saying that if a work at auction goes for more than 312,500 euro the artist will not get more than 12,500 euros- why are the auction houses taking such big commissions? Is it really because so much additional magic goes on in the auction house that push the prices up so they get to reap the benefits? or  is the art actually worth this big value and therefore the artist should be entitled to a bigger resale cut? mysteries…..

"Angelus" Jean-Francois Millet

So where did this originate from? According to France’s Minister of Culture, droit de suite was created in France following the sale of Jean-Francois Millet’s famous 1858 painting, the Angélus, after world war I. The controversy was that the painting mad ea huge profit, which went all to the seller, while the family of the artist lived in poverty, which ironically is also the subject of the painting.  Several artists, and their families, had suffered from the war, and droit de suite was a means for financial support.

This seems like the right way to go about things, but not easy to keep track of. For instance, is it implemented by all countries or only several and mostly in the European Union- if this is the case it results in inefficient markets since some are regulated and others are not and therefore unfair since art follows an international market. Then there’s the difference between private and public deals (where public ones that are published will be more likely to control for and follow droit de suite and private deals will not.)

More on this art law debate is conducted by the  United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) or the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works