Countess sues art dealer after £1m family painting was resold for millions more

The Countess of Wemyss and March has taken an art dealer to court over the £1 million sale of a French “masterpiece” from her family collection which was later resold for millions more.

Trustees of the Wemyss Heirlooms Trust are bringing a High Court claim for millions of pounds in damages, alleging that the original sale of the painting was conducted in an “unprofessional and shoddy manner”.

The case, outlined in court documents, centres on a version of 18th-century artist Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin’s Le Benedicite (Saying Grace).

The “prime original” of the painting currently hangs along with another version in the Louvre in Paris, France. Another version is in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, Russia.

The Countess, who is one of the trustees, is now suing the art dealer who sold her version of the painting.

They claim that the trust is entitled to money it lost out on from the original sale eight years ago.

The Earl of Wemyss and March, her husband and beneficiary of the trust, joined her at court in London amid an ongoing seven-day trial.

Simon Dickinson, a former senior director at Christie’s and director of Simon C Dickinson Limited, helped arrange the July 2014 sale of the painting to Verner Amell, a Scandinavian art dealer with a gallery in Stockholm, Sweden, for £1.15 million, the court was told.

The artwork, bought in 1751 by the Earl’s ancestor Francis Charteris, had received a “light clean” and was sold as “Chardin and studio”.

The court heard how Mr Dickinson believed there were limited opportunities to sell it after an expert said it was not wholly by the renowned French artist.

Six months later, the painting was bought by a family trust of the late Michel David-Weill, the “hugely rich” art collector.

The court was told that the resale came after the painting was further deep cleaned, a purported “Chardin” signature was discovered, and an expert hailed it as a “fully autographed masterpiece by Chardin himself” – meaning entirely painted by the artist.

David-Weill paid $10.5 million (£9.5 million) in Jan 2015, comprising $7.5 million (£6.7 million) in cash and the transfer of a painting by another French artist, Jean-Antoine Watteau, said to be valued at $3 million (£2.4 million), according to the sale invoice.

Lady Wemyss and March, who brought her case with fellow trustee Vilma Ramsay, argued the trust is entitled to the difference between the July 2014 price and that which would have been obtained if the painting had been sold “as a Chardin at its actual market value”.

Andrew Onslow, representing the trustees, said in written arguments that the SCD sale was conducted in an “unprofessional and shoddy manner; at extreme and unnecessary speed; after inadequate and mistaken research”.

He added this was done “without any efforts which met the standard of the reasonably competent international art dealer entrusted with such a sale”.

“It is not easy to fathom or explain the degree of inattention and incompetence displayed by [SCD] in the handling of the painting,” Mr Onslow said.

The barrister explained that an “unusual” aspect of Chardin’s work was that he painted replicas of his pieces “entirely, or almost entirely, by himself”.

Lawyers for the trustees argued that Pierre Rosenberg, a leading Chardin expert, was “clear” that he “regarded the painting as being, without qualification, by the hand of Chardin”.

They argued that, according to the trustees’ own separate expert, Mr Rosenberg’s use of the term “copie retouche” to describe it meant the “wholescale finishing of a replica or repetition” by the artist.

Mr Onslow said that instead of consulting Mr Rosenberg, Mr Dickinson had “assumed the role of expert himself” and was influenced by a “false memory of an unrecorded conversation” with the expert.

During a 1992 visit to the art collection at Gosford House in Longniddry, Scotland – a home owned by the Charteris family – Mr Dickinson claimed that Mr Rosenberg “said words to the effect of there was no Chardin at all in the painting and that it was ‘totally studio’,” said Henry Legge for SCD.

Lawyers for SCD, which is rigorously defending the claim and denied any negligence, said some experts give lower valuations of the Watteau piece and that the “masterpiece” description is “inconsistent” with the view of Mr Rosenberg.

In written arguments before the court, Mr Legge said the fact that the buyer of a painting is able to find someone who will buy the painting for much more does not mean that the original seller has acted negligently.

He added: “The possibility of huge gains being made on the sale of the right piece to the right buyer is the nature of the art world and this is especially the case where, as in this case, something is discovered about the painting which might make it more saleable and which the seller could not reasonably have discovered.”

The trial before Judge Simon Gleeson continues, with a ruling expected at a later date.