Ant and Dec were the subject of mainstream news reporting in March 2026. Not because of typical media interest in their latest escapades as well-known TV presenters. But due to their achievement of a significant ruling in London’s High Court, as litigants in an art law case. They won a court order to trace secret profits made by an agent, who represented them to buy and sell contemporary art. The ruling reinforces the legal invalidity of the well-known custom and practice, commonly asserted by art world dealers, that the identity of a private buyer or owner of an artwork is not revealed.
Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly filed their joint application in August 2025, against a UK-based dealership specialising in high-end street art. The application arose from their engagement over several years of an art consultant (referred to as ‘X’ in the proceedings) to act as agent on their behalf to build up a contemporary art collection. It focused on 22 buying and selling transactions with the dealership in which X conducted and allegedly made ‘secret and unauthorised profits’ – the recovery of which from X, could not be pursued without the dealership’s disclosure of documents or information detailing the trading transactions.
As a prime instance of X’s wrongdoing, the application cited X’s purchase of Banksy prints: six of the series, released in 2005/6, of Kate Moss in the style of Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe, 1967; and a version of Napalm (Can’t Beat The Feeling), 2004, reproducing the Pulitzer Prize-winning Vietnam War photograph, shot in 1972, of a naked nine year old girl screaming in pain from napalm blast burns, alongside images of Mickey Mouse and Ronald McDonald appearing to hold her hands. Although Ant and Dec paid a total of £550,000 for the prints via X, they believe the dealership received only £300,000.
Ant and Dec had asked the dealership several times to provide them with information about X’s transactions to show the secret profits skimmed off by X, but the dealership refused. The reason given was that disclosure would breach the dealership’s duty of confidentiality to its client, X. Hence, the duo applied for a court to order disclosure of the transactions by the dealership that had, albeit unwittingly, been involved in X’s alleged misconduct. The court ruled there was a ‘good arguable case that a form of legally recognised wrong has been committed’ by X, but was ‘not making any finding that [X] has any liability or had done anything wrong’; and ordered the dealership to provide relevant information to Ant and Dec.
The court’s order followed a judicial precedent, first established in 1974, which had been re-examined and re-affirmed in subsequent years by the UK Supreme Court. Such an order is a standard method for compelling a third party to disclose information or documents about a wrongdoer; and is used when the third party is ‘mixed up’ in the wrongdoing – even innocently – to help the victim identify the culprit or trace assets. An applicant must satisfy the court of three key matters: there is a ‘good arguable case’ that wrongdoing has occurred; the information is needed to pursue the wrongdoer; the third party possessing the necessary information was involved in the wrongdoing. The court’s poweris flexible and exceptional, and is exercisable only when necessary and proportionate. This method has been widely adopted in many countries, and is especially used to gather digital information identifying and tracing users via IP addresses.
Non-disclosure of sales transaction details, especially the identity of buyers and sellers, is perhaps the most prevalent issue that can put clients at odds with their agents and dealers. Under general laws of agency, the agent has a fiduciary duty of transparent disclosure to the client. For example, in 2017, a US agent sold for $6.5m a client’s Jean Michel Basquiat, Future Sciences Versus Man, 1983; but the client was told the buyer paid only $5.5m. The court ruled the agent was ‘a faithless servant’, and ordered payment to the client of $1m ‘secret profits’ earned from the sale.
Ant and Dec’s High Court application for a disclosure order is strikingly similar to a 2020 case, also heard at London’s High Court, concerning a dealer’s refusal to disclose a client-buyer’s identity after being legitimately requested to do so. The dealer’s lawyers contended that ‘client confidentiality remained a paramount reason against disclosure’, was a ‘well-known custom and practice in the art world’, and ‘of paramount importance to [the dealer’s] reputation within the industry that it be seen to be able to protect client confidentiality’. In response, the opposing lawyers argued that disclosure would be ‘in the interests of preserving the integrity of the art market in London’.
The court rejected those client confidentiality explanations and arguments: ‘The general custom of confidentiality relied upon has not been shown to be an absolute obligation. It appears to be a market custom adopted by art dealers regarding voluntary disclosure’. In its judgment, the court was ‘not satisfied that confidentiality is good reason why this [disclosure] order should not be made … arguments on confidentiality do not outweigh the interests of justice in allowing the claimant to make a good arguable case.’
Judicial scrutiny of art agents and dealers, and their client confidentiality, is significant and rare. Two key takeaways from Ant and Dec’s case, and its 2020 predecessor, are: art market client confidentiality is not an absolute obligation, but a voluntary custom and practice; and where a legitimate need for disclosure of information about a private sale is requested, art market professionals would be wise to cooperate, rather than refuse, unless and until a court orders compliance.
In artist/dealer relations, the dealer is the agent and the principal is the artist, to whom a legal duty of transparency is owed. Dealers often worry about risks of disclosing sales transaction details to artists they represent: they fear being excluded from future sales directly between their artists and client-buyers. Such concerns could be minimised or avoided through dealers signing a written contract with artists clarifying: whether client-buyers’ identities will be disclosed; and, if disclosed (or discovered), that the artist will not in future sell directly to those buyers; and, if they did so, any sales would require the artist to pay the dealer’s normal sales commission. Contracts could perhaps include a non-disclosure clause, whereby the artist undertakes not to reveal a client-buyer’s identity to a third party.
© Henry Lydiate 2026