What if one of the world’s most expensive paintings had a 125year old NFT built in?

For the purposes of this article, I’d like you to do one relatively simple thing – suspend disbelief.

You see, to demonstrate an important utility of NFT smart contracts, we’re about to do a 250-year round trip.

Let’s imagine French artist and post-Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne had the ability to add an NFT smart contract to his painting The Card Players. As you’ve quickly realised, suspending disbelief allows us to skip some of the technical questions like “Did he use Foundation or OpenSea?” “Eth or Solana?” “Was he Mac or PC?” etc.

Created in the late 1890s, the oil painting, which some say depicts a pair of Aix-en-Provence farmhands engaged in a game of cards (others suggest it’s actually Paul and his father) is one of five pieces. Either way, little does Cézanne know at the time, this particular painting will go on to become one of the world’s most expensive pieces of art.

Parisian art dealer and aspiring gallery owner, Ambroise Vollard (who also opened Cézanne’s first one-man show) buys the painting for 250 francs. His business ledgers show he then made a rather tidy profit a few years later, selling it for 4,500 francs. A precedent for future sales is set. Maybe it was the novel NFT attached to it that inspired such a lucrative secondary sale. Hmmnnnn.

Talking of which. When writing his late 1890s smart contract, Cézanne stated that 10% of all secondary sales of The Card Players go to The Académie Suisse in order to help them continue nurturing tomorrow’s artists. After all, they had quite the track record considering alumni included Delacroix, Manet, and Claude Monet.

Let’s head back to the future. 2012 in fact. And to quote Forbes…

“Cézanne’s Card Players Shatters Record For Highest Price Ever For A Work Of Art”

“Qatar just shed its art rookie status for good. The world’s richest nation has purchased Cézanne’s The Card Players for more than $250 million, nearly doubling the previous auction record for a work of art.”

In our rather fictional take on actual events, it’s safe to say Académie Suisse are quite pleased the smart contract bequeaths them $25m.

However, let’s say the Qatar sale was in fact the tenth secondary sale (ss) since Ambroise Vollard sold the piece. And this is where the fractional ownership of NFT contracts gets interesting.

You see, 10% of 10 sales (see our valuation estimates below) across a 112-year period generates an income of over $44m for Académie Suisse. All thanks to fractional ownership within one NFT smart contract.

It goes without saying that time travel and retrofitting NFTs to classics is of course impossible. But the utility-based possibility for fractional passive income is, from this day on, very possible indeed!

Vive la NFT Révolution!

(*our maths are based on: ss1 $10k, ss2 $100k, ss3 $500k, ss4 $1m, ss5 $5m, ss6 $10m, ss7 $25m, ss8 $50m, ss9 $100m, ss10 $250m)