I sent a painting of david bowie to the original art shop in

Hello, my name is XXXXX XXXXX it is my pleasure to assist you with your question today. What would you like to achieve in this situation, assuming the painting may never be traced?

Please note I am travelling at the moment so may not be able to respond immediately but I am going to have a permanent connection later this evening, thanks

Ok thank you, XXXXX XXXXX with me I will get my response ready and post back on here within a couple of hours – thanks

Many thanks for your patience. There is certainly a potential case to pursue the shop for negligence because you entrusted them with an item of value and they have lost it. However, before you consider going any further you must check if you were subject to any terms of service when you decided to use their services. For example, if you had agreed to work with them under a specific agreement with terms that limited their liability then it is actually possible that they cover themselves against potential legal action because you would have specifically agreed to exclude their liability in the circumstances.

In the absence of such exclusion of liability clauses, you may consider taking the matter further for potential negligence, where they owed you a duty of care to look after the item in their possession but breached that duty by losing it, which in turn resulted in losses for you.

The next issue is what level of compensation you may be able to recover. The law does not easily recognise sentimental value and it rarely compensates for that, so you would generally only be looking at the commercial value of the item in terms of potential compensation. So you would need to consider what that value may be before deciding on the risks of pursuing this any further, considering the potential costs of doing so.

you are most welcome, I hope you manage to resolve matters directly with the shop rather than having to go further than that