Resale right and ADAGP: the money you may not be claiming

There is an income stream that many French visual artists ignore or neglect: the resale right (droit de suite). Every time one of your works is resold on the secondary market by a professional (auction house, gallery, dealer), you are entitled to a percentage of the resale price. This right has been enshrined in French law since 1920 and harmonised at the European level since 2001. It represents a potential revenue stream that can become significant as your reputation grows and your works circulate on the market. And yet thousands of artists do not receive it, either because they do not know it exists, or because they have not registered with a collective management organisation. It is money that belongs to you, and you are leaving it on the table.

01What the resale right is and how it works

The resale right is the right for an author of original graphic or plastic works to receive a percentage of the resale price of their works when the resale is carried out by an art market professional. In France and the European Union, this right applies to all resales involving a professional (auction house, dealer, art merchant) where the sale price equals or exceeds 750 euros.

The rate is degressive based on the sale price, which means artists whose works sell at modest prices receive proportionally more than those whose works reach summits. For the bracket up to 50,000 euros, the rate is 4 per cent. From 50,000 to 200,000 euros, it drops to 3 per cent. From 200,000 to 350,000 euros, it is 1 per cent. From 350,000 to 500,000 euros, it is 0.5 per cent. Above 500,000 euros, it is 0.25 per cent. The total amount is capped at 12,500 euros per work, regardless of the sale price. This cap obviously only concerns works sold at very high prices, and will change nothing for the vast majority of artists.

Concretely, if one of your canvases is resold at auction for 5,000 euros, you are entitled to 200 euros in resale rights. If it is resold for 20,000 euros, you receive 800 euros. If it is resold for 1,500 euros, you receive 60 euros. These are not fortunes taken individually, but multiply those amounts by the number of resales over the years, and you get a meaningful income supplement that arrives without you having to produce anything new.

02Who pays the resale right and to whom

The resale right is borne by the professional seller (the auction house, the gallery carrying out the resale) and not by the buyer. The professional must identify the artist, calculate the resale right amount and remit it, either directly to the artist if reachable, or to the collective management organisation to which the artist is affiliated.

In practice, most artists use a collective management organisation to collect their resale right, and it is the most efficient solution. In France, the main organisation is ADAGP (Societe des Auteurs dans les Arts Graphiques et Plastiques). ADAGP collects resale rights from art market professionals and distributes them to its members, after deducting a management commission that remains reasonable relative to the service provided.

ADAGP does not only manage the resale right. It also manages reproduction rights (when your works are reproduced in books, catalogues, magazines, websites, posters), representation rights (when your works are projected or shown publicly in a rights-generating context), and the private copy levy (a collective remuneration linked to private copying of protected works). Together, these rights constitute an income supplement that many artists do not receive for lack of registration, even though it is theirs by right.

03How to register with ADAGP and activate your rights

Registration with ADAGP is open to any visual artist whose original works are likely to be reproduced or resold. You can register online directly on the ADAGP website. The membership file includes a description of your artistic activity, examples of your works (photographs), and signature of the organisation's statutes. Membership is free at the time of registration: ADAGP earns only through a commission deducted from the rights it collects for you, which means you only pay if you receive.

Once registered, ADAGP permanently monitors auctions and transactions declared by galleries and dealers to identify resales of your works. When one of your works is resold and identified in the system, ADAGP collects the resale right from the professional and pays it to you, generally on a quarterly or semi-annual basis. You receive a detailed statement showing which works were resold, at what price and by whom.

The artist Daniel Buren, the artist Christian Boltanski before his passing, the artist Annette Messager, the artist Pierre Soulages: all are or were ADAGP members. But the system does not only benefit famous artists whose works sell at six figures. An emerging artist whose canvas purchased for 2,000 euros is resold at auction for 5,000 euros five years later is entitled to their 200 euros in resale right, and those 200 euros are collected automatically if they are registered with ADAGP. Without registration, that money is lost.

04Reproduction rights: the other overlooked income

Beyond the resale right, reproduction rights represent a revenue stream often underestimated by artists who are not registered. Every time one of your works is reproduced in an exhibition catalogue, art book, illustrated press article, website, promotional poster, derivative product or postcard, you are entitled to remuneration. In practice, many of these reproductions happen without the artist being informed or paid, especially for online digital reproductions that multiply at great speed.

ADAGP negotiates framework agreements with publishers, museums, media and digital platforms to collect these rights on a pooled basis and redistribute them to its members. Individual amounts are sometimes modest (a few tens of euros for a reproduction in a small-run catalogue), but accumulated over a full year they can represent several hundred or several thousand euros for an artist whose work is regularly published, exhibited or cited in publications. These revenues arrive without additional effort on your part: you have already created the work, it is simply a matter of collecting the rights linked to its use.

The artist Yayoi Kusama receives considerable reproduction rights due to the omnipresence of her polka dot motifs in global publications, advertising campaigns and derivative products. On a more modest but equally real scale, a French artist whose works feature in FRAC catalogues, art centre publications and museum materials receives rights every time those images are used, provided they are registered with ADAGP.

05The resale right after the artist's death

The resale right does not expire with the artist. It is transferable to heirs for seventy years after death, like standard copyright in France and the European Union. The heirs of Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp and Yves Klein still receive resale rights on resales of their works, and these sums can be very considerable given the volume of transactions on the secondary market for these artists.

For a working artist, this succession dimension is important to plan for. If you are registered with ADAGP and your catalogue raisonne is well maintained, with a complete inventory of your works, your heirs will be able to continue receiving resale and reproduction rights on your works after you, without complex procedures. If you are registered nowhere and your catalogue is non-existent, your heirs will have to reconstruct the entire file from scratch, which is costly, time-consuming and often incomplete. Registration with ADAGP and maintaining a catalogue raisonne are acts of foresight that protect your work and your loved ones beyond your own lifetime.

06Mistakes that cost you money

The first mistake is not registering with ADAGP on the assumption that your market position is too low for the resale right to be relevant. The resale right applies from 750 euros in resale price. If you sell works at one or two thousand euros and some are resold a few years later at higher prices, the resale right is yours, even if individual amounts are modest. It is money to which you are entitled by law.

The second mistake is not documenting your initial sales. The resale right can only be collected if the resale is identified and the artist is identifiable. Auction sales are easy to trace because auction houses systematically declare artists and prices in their catalogues. Gallery sales are harder to track if no register exists. Keeping a register of your initial sales, including the buyer's name (when they agree to be referenced), facilitates traceability of your works on the secondary market.

The third mistake is confusing the resale right with private-to-private resales. The resale right only applies to resales involving an art market professional. If a collector resells directly to another collector without going through an auction house or gallery, the resale right does not apply under the current legal framework. This limitation is regrettable but it is written into the law, and it makes it all the more important to register with ADAGP so as not to miss any of the professional resales that do generate rights.

Artedusa documents every transaction carried out on the platform, facilitating the traceability of your works and the collection of your future rights on the secondary market. If you have not yet registered with ADAGP, now is the time. And if you want to sell within a professional framework that protects your rights over the long term, discover artedusa.com.