A NoMad art dealer bid $1.7 million for a painting by renowned French Impressionist Camille Pissarro but is ghosting Sotheby’s on the bill because he says the international auction house lied to him, according to interviews and a lawsuit filed on Friday, Aug. 23.
The lawsuit alleges that Albert O’Hayon, owner of Binoche Fine Art in Manhattan, signed a contract to place a minimum “irrevocable bid” on the painting, “Le Jardin des Tuileries et le pavillon de Flore,” but has so far ignored Sotheby’s attempts to collect. In a phone interview, O’Hayon said the auction house misled him and told him that it had another interested bidder who was willing to pay much more.
“I feel I’ve been cheated, I feel I’ve been lied to,” he said. “I feel they misinformed me purposely because they didn’t have a buyer.”
The lawsuit filed in New York state Supreme Court sheds light on the underbelly of the art world, where experts say prearranged bids are increasingly used during live auctions to drive enthusiasm for an artwork.
In this case, however, the purported guaranteed bidder was left saddled with the art, a 2-foot-by-2-foot oil on canvas depicting a garden in Paris where the Jacobins executed revolutionaries by guillotine in the 18th century.
“Sotheby’s is telling me they have another bidder above me, that they’re going to bid for this,” O’Hayon said. “If it sells anything above [the alleged guaranteed bid], I’m getting a 30% commission for the painting, so I have nothing to lose because everything is fully trusted.”
O’Hayon said he never signed the bid contract, but Sotheby’s lawyer Paul Cossu said it was signed electronically.
“As the complaint references, there is a fully executed agreement between the parties on the property at issue,” he said in a phone interview.
According to the suit, after accounting for overhead and a “buyer’s premium” of $400,000, the auction house said it is owed $2.1 million.
O’Hayon said he plans to countersue Sotheby’s, though it was not clear if he would hire a lawyer to do so.