Sotheby's wins French auction battle

SOTHEBY'S France will this weekend celebrate victory in a battle to break the 400-year monopoly over French art auctions enjoyed by the country's commissaires-priseurs.

Its managing director, the doughty Princesse Laure de Beauvau-Craon, will win her decade-long fight with the sale of a manuscript about degenerate upper-middle-class Parisians.

The hand-written drafts of Andre Gide's 1926 novel The Counterfeiters are part of a collection of manuscripts and first editions that belonged to Belgian connoisseur Charles Hayiot and which is expected to achieve around e3m(£1.87m) over three days. But any saleroom drama will be amply eclipsed by the saga of Beauvau-Craon's defeat of the French Establishment.

Ever since the days of Henry II, the French art market has been a monopoly of some 458 commissaires-priseurs. Combining the roles of auctioneer and legal notary in the registration of sales, they were appointed by the official Keeper of the Seals.

Until the 1950s, their expertise made Paris one of the world's great art markets. But in recent decades, the inability of individual auctioneers to grow internationally as the market expanded and evolved has left Paris a poor third to London and New York.

Nonetheless, the commissaires-priseurs fought tooth and nail to protect their privileges. Since January 1992 when she first sought an auctioneers' licence for her Anglo-American company from the Keeper of the Seals, Beauvau-Craon has been badgering the European Commission and the French government to encourage competition.

But even with the EU behind her, it has taken six years to prod French ministers into passing a law that allows Sotheby's to hold an auction in its own name. 'I can still scarcely believe it is finally happening,' she said. 'Owners were coming to us with objects, and we were having to sell them in London.' Three rival companies have already acquired licences, marking the start of a revolution that looks set to turn Paris into a serious rival of London and New York, dominated by a handful of big, corporate auction houses.

Christie's, owned by French tycoon Francois Pinault, will hold its first sale next Wednesday. Auctioneer Francis Briest has tied up with the deep-pocketed Dassault family, while art auctioneer Tajan, teamed with Philips auctioneers under the ownership of French luxury baron Bernard Arnault, has also gained a licence.