Mr Lancelot Thwaytes v Sotheby's
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mrs Justice Rose,MRS JUSTICE ROSE |
| Judgment Date | 16 January 2015 |
| Neutral Citation | [2015] EWHC 36 (Ch) |
| Docket Number | Case No: HC-2012-000042 |
| Court | Chancery Division |
| Date | 16 January 2015 |
[2015] EWHC 36 (Ch)
Mrs Justice Rose
Case No: HC-2012-000042
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
CHANCERY DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Mr Henry Legge QC and Mr Andrew Bruce (instructed by Boodle Hatfield) for the Claimant
Mr Andrew Onslow QC and Mr Richard Edwards (instructed by Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer) for the Defendant
Hearing dates: 27, 28, 29, 30 and 31 October, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 19, 20 and 21 November 2014
| CONTENTS | |
| I. BACKGROUND | |
| (a) The case in summary | 1 |
| (b) Caravaggio and the Cardsharps | 4 |
| (c) Copies of Caravaggio's works and of the Cardsharps composition | 7 |
| (d) Sotheby's | 10 |
| (e) Some technical terms | |
| (i) The creation of a painting | 12 |
| (ii) Technical analysis of a painting | 16 |
| (f) The factual witnesses in the case | 19 |
| (g) The expert witnesses | 25 |
| II. THE SALE OF THE PAINTING | |
| (a) The Painting before it was consigned to Sotheby's | 32 |
| (b) The Painting at Sotheby's | 37 |
| (c) The Painting after the sale | 56 |
| III. THE SCOPE OF SOTHEBY'S' DUTIES | 67 |
| IV. THE ALLEGATIONS OF NEGLIGENCE | 80 |
| (a) Sotheby's general approach to assessing the Painting | 81 |
| (b) Was Sotheby's' assessment of the poor quality of the Painting unreasonable? | 97 |
| (c) Sotheby's' failure to notice features of the Painting (visible at the Picture Meeting) which indicate that it is not a copy | 107 |
| (d) Sotheby's' failure to compare the Painting with the Volpato engraving | 131 |
| (e) Sotheby's' alleged failure to examine the x-rays properly | 136 |
| (f) Sotheby's' analysis of the infra-red images | 150 |
| (g) Was Sotheby's negligent in not informing Mr Thwaytes about the Olympia Meeting? | 161 |
| (h) Overall conclusion on negligence | 166 |
| V. CAUSATION AND QUANTUM | 167 |
| VI. CONCLUSION | 189 |
I. BACKGROUND
(a) The case in summary
In the collection of the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas there is a painting called The Cardsharps ( I Bari in Italian) by the Italian Baroque artist Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, known as Caravaggio. The painting depicts three men grouped round a table, playing cards. On the left side of the painting is a young man ('the dupe') dressed in a sumptuous purple velvet doublet, his eyes downcast looking at the two cards he holds in his hand. Slightly behind him and to his left, facing the viewer, is an older bearded man ('the old sharp') and opposite the dupe, to the left hand of the old sharp is a young man ('the young sharp'). The old and young sharps are in league against the dupe. The old sharp is covertly glancing down at the dupe's cards and signalling to the young sharp with the fingers of his right hand what cards the dupe holds. The young sharp leans forward eagerly towards the dupe, his left hand outstretched and resting on the richly patterned rug covering the table. The young sharp's right hand is reaching behind his back where, tucked into the belt of his breeches, two additional cards are concealed, one of which he is removing. I shall refer to this painting in Texas as the Kimbell Cardsharps. It is accepted by the parties to this dispute and by Caravaggio scholars that the Kimbell Cardsharps is an autograph painting by the hand of Caravaggio.
The painting which is the subject of this dispute is another painting of the same scene, with the same three characters in broadly the same positions. This painting ('the Painting') used to be owned by the Claimant in these proceedings, Mr Thwaytes. In 2006 Mr Thwaytes entrusted the Painting to the Defendant, the well-known auction house ("Sotheby's"). It was sold by Sotheby's on 5 December 2006 for £42,000 plus buyer's commission. The purchaser was Ms Orietta Benocci Adam but it is accepted that she bought the Painting on behalf, at least in part, of her close friend Sir Denis Mahon.
Sir Denis was himself a lifelong Caravaggio scholar of great renown and had been an experienced collector of Baroque paintings for many decades. After acquiring it at the Sotheby's auction, Sir Denis carried out extensive investigations into the Painting including having it cleaned and restored. In November 2007 Sir Denis announced to the world that the Painting was an autograph replica of the Kimbell Cardsharps painted by Caravaggio himself. He was supported in this attribution by an Italian scholar Professor Mina Gregori. Mr Thwaytes now brings this action against Sotheby's in negligence and for breach of contract. He alleges that the Sotheby's experts failed adequately to research the Painting and failed to notice certain features of it that should have indicated to them that it had 'Caravaggio potential', that is to say that it might actually be by Caravaggio rather than a copy. He does not assert that the Painting is by Caravaggio. But he alleges that if Sotheby's had performed their duties towards him properly, he could either have sold the Painting for much more money or he would have decided not to sell the Painting and would now own a work of art of much greater value than he received on its sale.
(b) Caravaggio and the Cardsharps
Caravaggio was born in Milan in 1571 and arrived in Rome to work as a painter probably in 1592 – 93. Relatively few works by Caravaggio – only about 60 paintings – are known to exist. Although Caravaggio trained in an art studio he did not himself teach or organise his own studio of pupils and followers. Caravaggio painted the Kimbell Cardsharps in about 1594 so it counts as one of his early works; a genre painting depicting every day life rather than a scene with a religious or mythological subject. Its original owner was the artist's first important patron, Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte. The Cardsharps was an immediate success. It was later bought by Cardinal Barberini and was in his family's collection for some time. In 1772 an engraving was made of the image by the Italian engraver Giovanni Volpato ('the Volpato engraving'). There is some dispute between the experts in this case as to whether the Volpato engraving is copied from the Kimbell Cardsharps or from the Painting.
The autograph original passed through various hands over the centuries. It was sold in the 1890s and left Italy and it was then 'lost' for about 80 years. There was a photograph taken of it in about 1890 by a Parisian firm Braun, Clément & Compagnie. This was known to be a photograph of the autograph work and was the image against which the claims to authenticity of any contending painting fell to be judged. In 1987 the Kimbell Cardsharps was discovered at the Zurich Institut für Kunstwissenschaft where it had been deposited for restoration and analysis. Professor Gregori was one of those who saw it by chance and she realised that it must be the missing original. The Kimbell Art Museum acquired the painting through a New York art dealer. The cleaning and restoration of the Kimbell Cardsharps was undertaken in 1987 in New York by a team at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The head curator of the Metropolitan Museum is the art historian Dr Keith Christiansen who is another well-known scholar of Italian Baroque art. In the January 1988 edition of the Burlington Magazine (a leading publication in the art history world) two important articles appeared. I shall refer to these together as the 'Burlington Cardsharps Publication'. The first was by Sir Denis Mahon called Fresh Light on Caravaggio's Earliest Period: His 'Cardsharps' Recovered. He recounts that he first saw the painting cleaned but before restoration: 'It did not take very long – sceptical though I have always been on this subject – to convince me that this was indeed the autograph painting by the youthful Caravaggio himself which had figured in Braun's photograph of a century ago…'. The two features that Sir Denis picked out in the Kimbell Cardsharps as particularly convincing of the artistic merits of the painting are the delicate handling of the feather in the hat of the young sharp and the 'spectacular execution of his quasi-Savoldesque breeches'. The article included a picture of the Volpato engraving and of various copies of the work. Sir Denis also recounts that when the Kimbell Cardsharps was relined during restoration, a stamp was found in the bottom left corner of the original canvas, showing that the painting had been in Cardinal del Monte's collection. The article contains infra-red reflectogram images of the work, including one showing that the position of the young sharp's right hand had been altered during the course of composition.
As an Appendix to Sir Denis' article there was a technical report from Dr Keith Christiansen. He described the condition of the painting as 'exceptionally fine' although there were small areas of wear. In that appendix Dr Christiansen refers to two aspects of the Kimbell Cardsharps that are important for our purposes. The first is that before restoration, the painting had an added piece of canvas running along the length of the top of the canvas, about 14 cm high. This strip was removed during restoration and no one currently knows its whereabouts. The second element Dr Christiansen points out is in relation to a black area by the right elbow of the dupe. I discuss the significance of this 'black mass' later.
(c) Copies of Caravaggio's works and of the Cardsharps composition
It is important to draw a distinction between 'replicas' or 'copies' where two paintings are virtually identical; 'variants' where the two paintings show the same scene but with significant modifications; and 'repetitions' of a subject where the two paintings deal with the same incident from the Bible, or a religious or mythological figure (such as Bacchus) but in a different way. It is accepted that Caravaggio painted repetitions of the...
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