{"id":316652,"date":"2025-11-27T11:45:06","date_gmt":"2025-11-27T11:45:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/316652\/"},"modified":"2025-11-27T11:45:06","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T11:45:06","slug":"artists-and-staffers-accuse-london-gallery-of-withholding-payment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/316652\/","title":{"rendered":"Artists and Staffers Accuse London Gallery of Withholding Payment"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tFor the past three days, Los Angeles\u2013based artist Brittany Fanning<\/a> has posted the same picture to her Instagram grid. It shows two grinning men in double-breasted suits, complete with pocket squares. In her caption, she identifies them as brothers Jackson Navin and Matthew Navin, of London-based gallery Pictorum<\/a> Art Group. In a separate posting, Fanning says that she is still owed money from the gallery related to a group show she participated in three years ago.\u00a0
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During the course of her campaign, Fanning said she learned that other artists are claiming to be in a similar situation and have also not received payment from Pictorum. One of these artists, Finn Johnson, received a court judgment ordering payment for balances owed to her. Additionally, former staffers told\u00a0ARTnews\u00a0that they have also gone unpaid despite numerous attempts to contact the principals.\u00a0
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Pictorum was dissolved in July, and\u00a0ARTnews\u2019s attempts to reach the Navin brothers were unsuccessful.\u00a0
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Though Fanning described herself in an interview with\u00a0ARTnews\u00a0as somewhat new to the art world, she has had solo shows since 2022 at well-regarded galleries around the world, including Miami\u2019s Mindy Solomon, Los Angeles\u2019s Steve Turner, and Seoul\u2019s Galerie BHAK. She has also participated in group shows in Rome, Mexico City, and Taipei since 2018. The artist has in the past painted brightly colored, sunny scenes of leisure settings often intruded upon by wild animals; her most recent work has reverted to a black and white palette.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Articles<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"A<\/p>\n

\n\tFanning first connected with Pictorum in 2022. Initially, she thought the gallery was doing great things, discovering new artists and hosting events to cultivate collectors, she recalled in her interview. But Fanning was surprised when she learned about the gallery\u2019s terms for payment. Rather than offering the usual arrangement in which a gallery takes works on consignment and then pays the artist their share of the proceeds (typically 50 percent) once a work sells, Pictorum would instead pay artists a smaller share, 20 to 30 percent, upon receipt of the work, which would go into an exhibition that would be sold later. The gallery would pay the balance then after it sells. Receiving the balance for her works that have sold, or getting back works that have not, has proven impossible, Fanning said.\u00a0
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Pictorum Art Group incorporated in 2022, and included a gallery on Portman Square in London\u2019s Marylebone neighborhood. The company was intended, per its website, \u201cto create a group of complementary art companies that seamlessly intertwine and provide a holistic eco-system that collectors, artists and corporations alike can benefit from.\u201d These included an advisory arm; Uma Gallery, still \u201cset to launch in 2018\u201d per the website; Articul8, \u201can art commentary platform and aggregator of information within the art market,\u201d supposedly set to launch in 2024; and Duveen + Vollard, offering logistical support to the art world. (The latter\u2019s name refers to Britain\u2019s Joseph Duveen and France\u2019s Ambroise Vollard, two of the most important art dealers in history.)<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Screenshot\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tScreenshot<\/p>\n

\n\tFanning said she received one payment in 2023, for a percentage of the sale of the painting\u00a0Shark Lover; she says she is still owed\u00a0$2,640 for that work.\u00a0The gallery sold two other paintings to a collector in Saudi Arabia, for which she has\u00a0received $1,000 in the aggregate. Fanning showed\u00a0ARTnews\u00a0the invoice sent to the collector by the gallery. She says she\u2019s owed around $6,500 for those two. \u201cThat\u2019s a lot of money to me,\u201d she said.
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Fanning said Matthew Navin\u2019s mother-in-law, Beldish Shergill, is also an owner of Pictorum. A\u00a0UK government website<\/a> used to locate and update UK-based companies identifies Shergill as Pictorum Art Group Limited\u2019s only officer in the role of director. (That same website has an entry for both\u00a0Matthew Navin<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Jackson Navin<\/a>, listing them both as director, with a label indicating \u201cresigned,\u201d for a company named Pictorum Advisory Limited.)<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"A<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tBrittany Fanning, Shark Lover 2022. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tcourtesy the artist<\/p>\n

\n\tCorrespondence and legal documents provided to\u00a0ARTnews\u00a0by Jenny Thompson, acting on behalf of her daughter, artist Finn Johnson, reflect a court judgment for Johnson against\u00a0Pictorum Art Group\u00a0in the amount of \u00a38,500 (about $11,240). The correspondence includes emails from Matthew Navin, identified as the company\u2019s CEO, admitting to liability for outstanding payments for two artworks, as well as demands by Thompson\u2019s attorneys, Keoghs Nicholls Lindsell and Harris, to Anderson Brookes, the liquidators of Pictorum.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"A<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tBrittany Fanning, Self Portrait (In a Robe) (2025).<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tcourtesy the artist<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOur client has expressed serious concerns regarding the conduct of the company\u2019s directors, particularly as they suspect the directors may have been engaged in fraudulent trading and\/or, at the very least, wrongful trading prior regarding the company affairs,\u201d the letter from Johnson\u2019s counsel reads.\u00a0
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That letter indicates that the attorneys have had trouble locating Shergill to serve legal papers. \u201cOn one occasion, a person believed to be a family member of the Director informed the bailiff officer that they had never heard of the debtor,\u201d reads the letter, which adds that this \u201craised further concerns regarding the good faith and conduct of the Director.\u201d
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The letter further alleges a \u201cconcerning pattern of behaviour by the company\u201d as \u201c[s]everal young artists entered into agreements with the company, surrendered their paintings or artworks, and received no payment. The company repeatedly promised future payment, which was never fulfilled.\u201d
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Nicole Bainov worked on a consultant basis as sales director for Pictorum from 2020 to 2022; her role was primarily conducted remotely. She is still owed three months\u2019 salary, she said in a telephone interview with\u00a0ARTnews. \u201cI\u2019ve been a close friend to Brittany [Fanning] for years, and I brought her to the gallery,\u201d she said, noting that Pictorum hadn\u2019t returned Fanning\u2019s unsold works and had not sent her payment in a timely fashion. \u201cThe gallery was not operating in an orthodox way.\u201d\u00a0
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Another former employee, speaking anonymously pending a legal action, claimed in a conversation with\u00a0ARTnews\u00a0to be owed over\u00a0\u00a315,000 ($19,850).
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Though Bainov is owed back pay, she said, \u201cthe most important thing, to me, has always been the artist. I\u2019m a collector myself and I want to protect the artist. \u2026 Pay the artist first and everything comes after.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the past three days, Los Angeles\u2013based artist Brittany Fanning has posted the same picture to her Instagram…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":316653,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,162579,229,88,162580],"class_list":{"0":"post-316652","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-brittany-fanning","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-pictorum"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/316653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}