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The Paris Supreme Court of Appeal allowed copyists to put the signature of all painters who died over 70 years ago, according to a verdict delivered in .
The court was examining the Delamare case which started in 1992 and its decision caused consternation among art dealers.
Daniel Delamare was the owner of a Paris gallery specialising in selling copies of Impressionist paintings, notably by Renoir, Pissarro, Monet, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh or Sisley.
His gallery, situated on the plush avenue Matignon had been set up in 1988 at a time when the art market was booming. He had many painters under contract who were producing good copies which were sold between US $ 10,000 and 30,000 a piece. Most of his customers were pleased to buy such copies as they could not afford to own original paintings. Delamare's cunning idea was to append an indelible marking on the back of each copy stating that the work was a faithful and unique copy from the Delamare workshop. The main difference between that and an original painting was the size, usually reduced by an inch. However, despite his claim, Delamare's copies did not always match the quality of original works.
Nevertheless, such industry alarmed Paul Renoir, one of Pierre Renoir's heirs, who sued Delamare with the backing of other gallery owners such as Bernheim Jeune. Paul Renoir was claiming that such copies, almost identical in size with original paintings, could be deceitful in the long run. One of his main argument was that any copy could be relined so as to mask the indelible marking on its back. Within 10 or 20 years many relined copies might have appeared on the market and the risk would have been that they might have been considered as original works.
Paul Renoir therefore sued Delamare in 1992 for breach of moral rights. He was followed in his suit by the Toulouse-Lautrec museum and by other gallery owners. Paul Renoir won in court but the tribunal's decision was quashed in 1996 by the Court of Appeal which stated that affixing the signature of an artist no longer protected by copyrights on the copy of one of his paintings was not prejudicial as long as their was no confusion between this copy and the original work. Taking advantage of such court decision Delamare sued Paul Renoir and the other plaintiffs after accusing them of having lost a huge contract regarding the delivery of over 2,000 copies to a Japanese firm as a result of their previous action.
However the Supreme Court of Appeal rejected Delamare's demand for heavy damages stating that Paul Renoir's right to launch an action against him was in no way illegal. Still, the court's decision enabling copyists to put the signature of famous artists on their copies baffled all art professionals who feared that it would open the way to many abusive practices in the future, the risk being that mere copies would become fakes in the hands of some unscrupulous dealers.
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