Christie’s London brought in £218.6 million ($289.4 million) across two evening sales Wednesday, more than doubling last year’s total and offering an encouraging sign for the art market ahead of the New York auctions next month.
Seven auction records were set, including five during the sale of British businessman Peter Simon’s collection, while a Wassily Kandinsky painting fetched £31.6 million ($41.8 million) in the evening’s second auction. (All prices reported include buyer’s premium.)
The two sales, which coincide with Frieze London and Frieze Masters, achieved a combined sell-through rate of 91 percent by lot and 96 percent by value. The Simon collection, which several market insiders described to ARTnews as the real attraction in London this week, accounted for £107.5 million ($142.3 million) of the total, making it the highest-value single-owner collection ever sold at Christie’s London. The subsequent 20th- and 21st-century sale brought in £111.1 million ($147 million).
There was, however, some confusion about when the festivities were supposed to begin. Although the Simon sale started at 6 p.m., in some places Christie’s live-auction website advertised a 7 p.m. start time. At least three market professionals, including an adviser with a global clientele, had understood that the sale would begin at the later hour. Whether the hiccup caused anyone to miss bidding remains unclear.
Even still, Christie’s was packed when the “Monsoon: The Peter Simon Collection” sale began. Assembled by the founder British retailer Monsoon who has appeared on each edition of ARTnews’s Top 200 Collectors list since 2005, the collection sold 98 percent by lot and 99 percent by value, with only one of the 41 works failing to find a buyer.
One of the evening’s biggest surprises came from Russian avant-garde painter Liubov Popova, whose Painterly Architectonic sold for £7.64 million ($10.1 million), more than three times its £2.5 million ($3.3 million) high estimate. Setting a new auction record for the artist, the work saw nearly eight minutes of bidding both in the room and on the phones.
Other records set Wednesday came for Bridget Riley’s Streak 2, which £5.21 million ($6.9 million), and David Bomberg’s San Miguel, Toledo, Afternoon, which brought £3.26 million ($4.32 million). The bidding for the Bomberg work had the room cheering, and the auctioneer even asked for a closer inspection of the painting. Further records were achieved for Portia Zvavahera and Barbara Hepworth.
The Simon collection’s most expensive work, Francis Bacon’s Figure in Movement, fetched £17.19 million ($22.8 million), selling to a bidder in the room, while Piet Mondrian’s Composition A, with Double Line and Yellow brought £9.71 million ($12.86 million). Joan Miró’s Peinture (Les amants – Adam et Eve) sold for £8.56 million ($11.33 million), and Hurvin Anderson’s Last House brought £5.7 million ($7.5 million) against an estimate of £2 million–£3 million ($2.6 million–$3.9 million).
Philip Hoffman, chairman and founder of the Fine Art Group, told ARTnews before the sale that a handful of works in Simon’s collection would race ahead while much of the rest would sell with relatively little competition. Buyers at Frieze Masters, he said, had been holding back money in anticipation of the auction.
Afterward, Hoffman called the two sales a clear indication of a solid market, though he cautioned against reading too much into the totals, especially since 29 of the 41 lots in the Simon evening sale carried third-party guarantees, meaning much of the financial risk had already been accounted for before bidding began.
“These auctions are staged, managed, and already pumped up to the max for the best guarantees they can get,” he told ARTnews.
By the time the auction’s final two paintings, Glenn Ligon’s Large Silver In Show Business and Beatriz Milhazes’s O Rapaz (The Boy), each sold for £192,000 ($250,000) against low estimates of £400,000 ($529,000) and £300,000 ($397,000), respectively, the room was mute.
In the short break before the 20th/21st Century evening sale, the energy returned, with two Josef Albers works exceeding their estimates, followed by René Magritte’s Le seize septembre, fetching £3.26 million ($4.3 million), well above its £1.8 million ($2.4 million) high estimate.
The zing of the Brits could be felt when David Hockney’s Dog Painting 17 came under the hammer. The painting, appearing at auction for the first time, prompted applause and a spirited contest involving Christie’s London specialist Edmond Francey and at least three other specialists bidding by telephone. It eventually fetched £3.51 million ($4.64 million).
The patriotic spirit continued with British painter Flora Yukhnovich’s Capriccio, which fetched £2.2 million ($2.9 million), against a high estimate of £1.5 million ($1.98 million).
But silence fell over the room for Mondrian’s Composition III (1920), as spectators and bidders alike took out their cameras to record the moment the painting sold for £25.2 million ($33.4 million), squarely in the middle of its £20 million–£30 million ($26.5 million–$39.7 million) estimate.
Though the Mondrian was expected to achieve the highest price going into the auction, Kandinsky’s Das bunte Leben proved to be the bigger attraction. Auctioneer Adrien Meyer described it as “the most important early work by the artist to ever come to auction.” Nearly 20 bids ricocheted across the room, with Christie’s specialists Amelia Walker, Katharine Arnold, and Maria Los competing for the work. Los ultimately secured the painting on a £27 million ($35.7 million) hammer bid, bringing the final price to £31.56 million ($41.79 million), against a £25 million high estimate. The painting had been restituted to the heirs of Hedwig Lewenstein-Weyermann in 2023.
As with the first sale, the mood changed again toward the end of the auction. At the 27th lot, Warhol’s Mona Lisa (Reversal Series), which ultimately sold for £1.5 million ($1.98 million), Meyer stepped away from the rostrum and Yu Ge Wang took over. What followed was a difficult stretch, with works by Cy Twombly, George Condo, Alberto Giacometti, and Lucian Freud among those failing to find buyers. By 8:52 p.m., the sea of polished loafers and designer handbags had started to disappear.
Even a charitable cause could not entirely revive the room. Igshaan Adams’s The certainty of being a rose (ii), a sculpture made of beads, thread and textile, fetched £96,000 ($127,000) despite the auctioneer reminding bidders that proceeds would benefit environmental charities. The result nevertheless established an auction record for the artist.
The second sale finished with an 85 percent sell-through rate by lot, well below the Simon collection’s 98 percent. Yet with two works selling for more than £25 million, the combined results gave Christie’s plenty to celebrate ahead of its New York sales, which begin November 17.
For Hoffman, the evening’s results were encouraging but not necessarily conclusive, and the extensive use of guarantees should be taken with a grain of salt. He added that he waiting for the sale of the Antonio Homem Sonnabend collection, estimated to bring more than $50 million and offered without guarantees, for a clearer reading of the market.