Paedophile Rolf Harris looks set to make a profit from the sale of his artwork as collectors rush to sell paintings from the disgraced artist at knockdown prices. Collectors are rushing to offload the works and salvage some value.
The disgraced TV presenter will make a personal profit of 4% for every one sold. He will get the commission despite being behind bars because of legislation that awards a percentage to the original artist whenever it is resold.
The paintings were listed for auction with auction house Robson Kay Associates. Mr Kay, who received an abusive email in the wake of the first Harris sale in August, said that is possible more collectors come forward in the future.
He said, ‘Four different owners of Rolf Harris paintings have approached us on the back of the previous sale. All of them are in the same boat. They bought a picture in good faith prior to his convictions. Quite understandably they no longer want these works hanging on their walls and they are worth far, far less than what they paid for them. Their only other option is to quite literally throw them in the bin so they have approached us to sell them for whatever we can. They know they are likely to make a loss from the sale. Two collectors have agreed to sell the works through us while two more are thinking about it. To our knowledge and according to the agency that collects royalties for the artist, no other auction house is taking paintings by Rolf Harris, we are the only ones. We had one abusive email after the previous sale, we can’t avoid that – we understand it is an emotive subject.”
Harris will stand to profit from the sale of the two paintings thanks to the Artist’s Resale Rights (ARR), which awards the artist of an original painting four per cent of the secondary sale price. This would apply to work sold at auction or in any other circumstances, and he will be paid via a middle-man company that protects artists’ rights. The law does not prevent convicted criminals serving a jail sentence from collecting the cash.
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