Renowned British television hosts, Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly, popularly known as Ant and Dec, have successfully obtained a court order compelling an art dealer to reveal transaction details related to their collection of Banksy prints. This legal move aims to clarify whether an intermediary profited from these transactions without disclosure.
A High Court judge determined on March 4 that there exists a "good arguable case" suggesting potential misconduct linked to an unnamed art consultant involved in facilitating purchases, sales, and loans of artworks within the presenters' contemporary collection, as reported by the BBC.
According to court documents reviewed by the Art Newspaper, McPartlin and Donnelly acquired six Banksy prints through this consultant for a total of $736,000. The prints were sourced from London's Andrew Lilley of Lilley Fine Art Ltd., who allegedly received $401,000, leaving a notable $335,000 gap that the presenters seek to understand.
The court order mandates Lilley to disclose information about his dealings with the intermediary, referred to as "X" in the legal filings, following previous refusals to provide such information on confidentiality grounds.
Reportedly, the consultant was engaged on a 10 percent commission basis to guide the presenters in expanding their art collection, a partnership that concluded in 2021.
Legal representatives for McPartlin and Donnelly expressed their intent to "uncover what really happened" during these transactions, which include the sale of a Banksy piece titled Napalm. The presenters were informed that the artwork sold for approximately $15,000, later discovering it may have actually fetched $17,400.
In a broader context, the presenters are seeking insights into 22 transactions involving Banksy works from their collection.
Judge Iain Pester granted the disclosure request under a Norwich Pharmacal Order, a legal provision that enables courts to require third parties potentially involved in wrongdoing to provide pertinent information.
While Lilley and his firm are not accused of any wrongdoing, he stated to the BBC that he feels "caught up in this mess," believing he was purchasing the artworks at fair market value. He emphasized that the core dispute lies between the presenters and the unnamed intermediary.
This case underscores the ongoing interest in Banksy's work within the secondary market. Data from the analytics platform Artdai reveals that the artist's auction market has seen substantial growth over the past two decades, with an index tracking his works surging over 9,000 percent since the early benchmarks. Nonetheless, the market has experienced a 27 percent decline in the last five years, suggesting a shift in the auction landscape for Banksy's art.
