The Deceived Couple: Uncovering the Hidden Value of an African Mask

2023-10-02 15:45:00

The couple who wanted to empty a second home called on an antique dealer. The latter bought several objects from them, including an African mask brought back from Gabon by Governor René Fournier, one of the couple’s ancestors. Unaware of its real value, they sell it for 150 euros.

A Foundation for African Art

But on March 24, 2022, the man discovered in the pages of Le Figaro that this mask was going to be presented at an exceptional auction. The object is in fact a very rare Fang mask from the Ngil secret society. Only around ten other examples of the same kind are known and listed among Western museums and collections. “The traditional customary justice rites of Ngil society were abandoned in the 1920s, which put an end to the creation of the instruments of this institution,” explains le magazine Interencheres. And the rarity of the object appealed to the buyers present in the room, because the mask was sold for the tidy sum of 5.25 million euros.

Faced with such a discrepancy, the couple declares having been deceived by the professional. They are convinced that he must have been perfectly aware of the real value of this exceptional object and that he voluntarily hid it from them. The antique dealer did not in fact display the object in his shop and carried out a carbon 14 dating costing 600 euros, or four times the price at which he purchased the mask. He then entrusted the object to an ethnologist and presented it to the Montpellier auction house. The work will be priced at 300,000 euros.

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For Me Mansat-Jaffré, the couple’s lawyer, it is possible to cancel this sale. French case law includes a similar case in which paintings by Nicolas Poussin were sold at low prices even though they were attributed to minor authors by experts. After their authentication and numerous procedures, they were finally able to cancel the sale and recover their goods.

The principle invoked in this case refers to thearticle 1110 old of the French Civil Code. This stipulates that the seller’s “error” can be invoked to result in the nullity of a property contract if this error relates to the “substance” of the subject of this contract. For Poussin’s paintings, the error concerned the “substance” of the painting, i.e. its authenticity. Me Mansat-Jaffré wishes to assert this same principle by appealing to l’article 1132 new of the Civil Code and the three “Poussin judgments” of the Court.

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The lawyer specifies that his clients “never doubted the absence of value of the mask” and therefore acted under the influence of the error by selling it for 150 euros. The antique dealer was taken to court and Me Mansat-Jaffré requested the seizure of the professional’s accounts of the proceeds of the resale, which amounted to “3.1 million euros, following deduction of costs and capital gains tax”. On June 28, the Nîmes Court of Appeal authorized the blocking of this sum.

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