Art “Sleepers”

In the art market, attribution is everything: a work’s value and significance hang on the name attached to it. A “sleeper” is a work whose true authorship goes unrecognised at the time of sale, so that it changes hands for a fraction of its real worth, only to be reattributed later and resold, sometimes for a fortune. When a sleeper slips through, an expert has failed to identify what was in front of them, and the consequences can be dramatic for everyone involved.

This seminar examines how sleepers come to be and what happens when they awaken. We will look at the process of attribution and connoisseurship by which experts assign, and sometimes miss, a work’s true author, and at the difficult questions that follow. What standard of care can be expected of auction houses and art dealers when they value and authenticate a work? When an intermediary fails to spot a sleeper, has it breached its duty to the seller, and what remedies are available? 

We will be joined by two leading experts in the field of art sleepers to explore the contractual relationships, liabilities, and remedies that arise in the context of auction sales.

Image credits: Pieter Brueghel the Younger, “Wedding Dance in the Open Air” (1607–14) (photo by Dominic Brown, © Holburne Museum)

Jan Six

Jan Six is a Dutch art dealer, art historian and owner of Jan Six Fine Art, the Old Masters art dealership based in Amsterdam.  He is a member of the Six family of art collectors – his ancestor Jan Six I (1618-1700) was a close friend of Rembrandt and the subject of Rembrandt´s “Portrait of Jan Six”. Throughout the centuries, the Six family have kept their passion for Rembrandt´s work, preserving paintings, drawings and etchings by the artist in their private collection. In this surrounding, the present Jan grew up and formed his own passion for the artist. Jan studied art history and archaeology in Amsterdam and after graduating worked at Sotheby´s in London and then as Head of the Old Master Painting Department at Sotheby’s, Amsterdam. The Jan Six Fine Art gallery´s extensive research has led to discoveries of paintings by Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Rubens and Saenredam, among others.   Aside from running his gallery, Jan has worked extensively with Prof Dr. E. van de Wetering, an expert on Rembrandt, and has been researching the complete oeuvre of Rembrandt for the last ten years, which will result in a new catalogue raisonné of the artist´s work.

Silvia Beltrametti

Dr Silvia Beltrametti lectures in the departments of Arts Administration and Art History, Theory and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her main area of research and teaching is art law and includes matters relating to copyright, provenance, the art market and collecting, all areas in which she has also published widely. Silvia also consults on intellectual property matters. In 2020 she published an article in the International Journal of Cultural Property on sleepers in the context of the antiquities trade. Silvia and her husband Jay Krehbiel own auction house Freeman’s | Hindman and collect 18th century Irish Art.