Landmark authenticity case in India finds in favour of the auction house

Delhi: A court in Karnataka, south-west India, has ruled that Shiv-Kiran-Nadar Investments (SKN)—whose director is the Delhi-based collector and museum-owner Kiran Nadar—must pay the full amount for a 120-year-old painting that Nadar bid for at an auction held by the Indian company Bid & Hammer. Nadar won the bidding for Jatayu Vadham, 1895, by Raja Ravi Varma at the “Significant Indian Paintings” sale in Delhi in November 2010; the hammer price was Rs13.5m ($290,000), equivalent to the low estimate for the work.

The auction house, which had sued Nadar and SKN, said that Nadar paid 50% of the total, and then asked for an extended period of 30 days to make the remaining payment. “However, at the end of this credit period when reminded to pay the balance amount, she disputed the authenticity of the work based on the [conservator’s] report,” says a statement from Bid & Hammer.

Ganesh Shivaswamy, the lawyer representing Bid & Hammer, tells The Art Newspaper: “Nadar sought to cancel the sale which the auction house found unacceptable…the dispute which originally commenced only to enforce the payment of [a] remainder matured into an adversarial proceeding regarding the authenticity of the painting itself.” Shivaswamy says that this litigation—where a dispute regarding the authenticity of a work has gone to court—is probably the first of its kind in India.

Jijo Jose, a spokesman for Nadar and SKN, says that Nadar agreed to receive the painting “on payment of half of the sale price… with the understanding that she would get [it] examined and tested by an expert and would complete the sale only if satisfied of [its] authenticity.” But a spokesman for Bid & Hammer said that Nadar “simply changed her mind [in 2010] after delivery of the work and took advantage of the trust we had [put] in her with regards to the payment schedule”.

The 2011 report by the conservator Sreekumar Menon concluded that “the authenticity of the painting under study is questionable and it is very unlikely that the painting is painted by Raja Ravi Varma (1848-1906).” However, in his December verdict, Justice Gururajan— the High Court of Karnataka’s appointed arbitrator—said “what is clear to this tribunal is that the respondents’ expert himself is not sure with regard to authenticity… when an expert subjects a painting [to examination] he should be positive and he cannot leave the question not fully answered.” Menon maintains his view.

The court ruled however that the work “is genuine and answers the description in terms of the catalogue”. (The catalogue describes the provenance as: “Consigned by a very prominent Chennai-based collector, who acquired it directly from the descendants of the Travancore Royal Family from Nagerkovil in Kanyakumari District in Tamil Nadu, in the 1970s.”)

The tribunal found that the agreement was with SKN, not Nadar personally, which must pay Bid & Hammer the balance of 50% of the total sum of Rs16m ($350,000, with buyer’s premium) plus 12% interest, along with legal fees.

Gareth Harris

(Source: The Art Newspaper, London, Section 2, Number 265, February 2015)