All posts tagged: Christie’s

Follower of Hieronymus Bosch Painting Leads Strong Old Masters Week in New York

Follower of Hieronymus Bosch Painting Leads Strong Old Masters Week in New York

Published by Jenni Sidey

A small painting of hell by a follower of Hieronymus Bosch led a string of surprise results during this week’s Old Masters sales in New York, selling for $537,600 at Sotheby’s against an estimate of $30,000 to $50,000. (All prices include buyer’s premium unless otherwise noted.) The result came as Christie’s Old Masters and 19th Century Paintings sale brought in nearly $7 million with a sell-though rate of 89 percent, while the similarly titled sale at Sotheby’s sale totaled $6.4 million with a slightly higher sell-through rate of 92 percent. Together, the auctions offered another reminder that collectors will fight for the right picture, especially when it comes with strong scholarship, a fresh attribution, or a good story. Related Articles The Bosch follower panel, titled Hell, was packed with the strange creatures, demons, and punishments that made the artist famous. In the bottom right, a ferociously grotesque “hell mouth” holds a platter in one hand and a pitcher in the other, while human figures writhe and suffer on its wicked tongue. Angels appear to be fleeing in …

Lucian Freud Spent Years Denying This Painting Was His. Now It’s Heading to a Museum

Lucian Freud Spent Years Denying This Painting Was His. Now It’s Heading to a Museum

Published by Jenni Sidey

A portrait Lucian Freud spent years insisting was not his will go on public display for the first time this summer after researchers uncovered evidence that appears to prove he painted it after all. The work, Man in a Black Scarf, will be shown in “Benton End: A Paradise of Pollen and Paint” at London’s Garden Museum, according to The Guardian. Freud painted the portrait in 1939 while studying at the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing in Hadleigh, Suffolk. The sitter is believed to be John Jameson, heir to the Jameson whiskey family.  Related Articles The painting’s journey to a museum wall has taken nearly four decades. In 1985, Christie’s cataloged the work as a Freud. Then Freud said it wasn’t, and the auction house changed its mind. He continued to deny the painting throughout his life.  Part of the dispute appears to have had less to do with paint and canvas than old grudges. According to Jon Lys Turner, who inherited the work, Freud had a falling out with Denis Wirth-Miller and Richard Chopping, fellow students at …

Why Billionaires Are Buying Dinosaur Fossils as the Next Trophy Collectible

Why Billionaires Are Buying Dinosaur Fossils as the Next Trophy Collectible

Published by Jenni Sidey

For years, the trophy object of choice for the ultra-wealthy was relatively predictable: the Picasso, the Rothko, the rare Patek Philippe watch, maybe a Basquiat large enough to dominate the living room of a newly purchased penthouse, or, more recently, Air Jordans worn by the legend himself at a championship game. But lately, another kind of status symbol has been muscling its way into auction catalogs, gallery exhibitions, and billionaire wish lists: dinosaurs. This summer, Sotheby’s will offer “Gus,” a 67-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton estimated at $20 million to $30 million, the highest estimate ever placed on a dinosaur fossil. The specimen, excavated over several years in South Dakota, stretches roughly 38 feet long and stands more than 12 feet tall. Sotheby’s is billing it as one of the largest and most complete T. rex specimens ever discovered. Related Articles On its own, that might sound like another attention-grabbing auction headline in an art market that increasingly runs on spectacle. But “Gus” arrives on the crest of a much larger wave. Dinosaurs are no longer …

Christie’s Names François-Henri Pinault Chairman

Christie’s Names François-Henri Pinault Chairman

Published by Jenni Sidey

Last week, as much of the art world was focused on the marquee sales in New York, Christie’s announced a major change to its leadership in London. The auction house appointed François-Henri Pinault as board chairman and non-executive director. Pinault is the son of French billionaire François Pinault and the president of Groupe Artémis, the long-time parent company of Christie’s. Artémis is also the parent company of the Pinault Collection, the 10,000-work collection of the Pinault family, as well as several private museums: the Bourse de Commerce in Paris and the Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana in Venice. Related Articles François-Henri Pinault is known for turning the elder Pinault’s Pinault-Printemps-Redoute into the luxury giant Kering, which owns Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, and Balenciaga, among other brands. The elder Pinault purchased Christie’s in 1998 for $1.2 billion; he remains honorary chair at the company. Since 2023, the board chairman role has been held by Guillaume Cerutti, who served as CEO of the auction house from 2017 to 2025. After stepping down as CEO, Cerutti continued as board chairman, …

Bet on Basquiat and Monet with Kalshi

Bet on Basquiat and Monet with Kalshi

Published by Jenni Sidey

So-called prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket—sites for online gambling, though the companies say they are a form of derivatives trading—have gamified modern life to a previously unforeseen degree. Users can bet not only on events bettors have traditionally gambled on, like sports, but also on bizarrely trivial matters like whether US president Donald Trump will use the expressions “big beautiful bill” or “rigged election” at the annual Thanksgiving turkey pardon. They can take a position on other seemingly comical but potentially hugely consequential outcomes too, like whether the US government will confirm the existence of alien life by the year 2027. On a darker note, some successful bets on life-and-death events such as war in Iran and the abduction of former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro have raised questions about whether bettors are trading on insider knowledge. Related Articles Now Kalshi has launched a new category that will let users bet on phenomena like the prices of individual artworks at auction as well as total sales values at particular art auctions. “The markets give …

Anita and Poju Zabludowicz to Sell .1 M. in Art at Christie’s

Anita and Poju Zabludowicz to Sell $20.1 M. in Art at Christie’s

Published by Jenni Sidey

Anita and Poju Zabludowicz, two art collectors who regularly appear on the ARTnews Top 200 Collectors list, are set to sell £15 million ($20.1 million) at Christie’s next month via an in-person auction in London on June 25 and an online sale. The top lot of the 106 works headed to auction is a Philip Guston painting. Titled Mirror Head (1977), it comes to sale with a high estimate of £5.5 million ($7.38 million). Also headed to auction are works by Beatriz Milhazes, Rose Wylie, Damien Hirst, Richard Prince, Takashi Murakami, Henry Taylor, and Charline von Heyl. Related Articles Once one of the most visible collecting couples in Europe, the Zabludowiczes appear to have in recent years scaled back some of their operations, closing their private museum in London in 2023 after more than a decade and a half in operation. The museum said at the time that it would continue to run a permanent space on the Finnish island of Sarvisalo, and that the main focus was to loan out works rather than to …

Kiran Nadar Museum of Art Brings South Asian Art Survey to Christie’s London

Kiran Nadar Museum of Art Brings South Asian Art Survey to Christie’s London

Published by Jenni Sidey

India’s Kiran Nadar Museum of Art is taking its collection to Christie’s London this summer, though don’t expect any of its artworks to be for sale. From July 16 to August 21, the New Delhi institution will stage “The Meeting Ground,” a non-selling survey of works from its 16,000-work collection at the auction house. The show will place Indian modernists like M.F. Husain, S.H. Raza, K.G. Subramanyan, and F.N. Souza, alongside contemporary South Asian artists, practitioners of Indigenous art traditions, and artists from the diaspora. Admission to the exhibition is free. Related Articles The Christie’s—Kiran Nadar linkup arrives amid an inflection point for the Indian and South Asian art markets. South Asian modern and contemporary sales at Christie’s and Sotheby’s have grown in size and value in the last five years, with such sales becoming an increasing focus of Asia New New York, as Karen Ho reported for ARTnews in 2024. Auction records have been broken repeatedly recently: In March 2025, Christie’s New York sold M.F. Husain’s monumental Untitled (Gram Yatra) (1954) for $13.8 million—a new auction …

Marian Goodman’s .1 M. Richter Leads Christie’s 2.7 M. Trio of Sales

Marian Goodman’s $35.1 M. Richter Leads Christie’s $162.7 M. Trio of Sales

Published by Jenni Sidey

Led by a $35.1 million Gerhard Richter canvas, Christie’s New York notched a $162.7 million across a trio of evening sales of postwar and contemporary art that just barely meet expectations at its crowded Rockefeller Center salesroom on Wednesday night. The auction was expected to bring in between $129 million and $191 million on 42 lots (after a Kerry James Marshall was withdrawn); the hammer total, before the house’s fees, came to $133.6 million, just a few million above the low estimate. Wednesday night saw the highest total for an equivalent sale in five years; last year’s equivalent sale notched $96.4 million with fees on 39 lots. Related Articles Just one work, an Ed Ruscha canvas estimated at up to $5.5 million, failed to sell. Auctioneer Yü-Ge Wang effortlessly shifted from English to Mandarin, German, and French as she took bids, mainly from Christie’s staffers who bid on behalf on clients talking by phone.  Revered art dealer Marian Goodman’s collection of eight Richter paintings was estimated to fetch in the region of $65 million; all …

Marian Goodman’s Gerhard Richter ‘Candle’ Painting Sells for .1 M.

Marian Goodman’s Gerhard Richter ‘Candle’ Painting Sells for $35.1 M.

Published by Jenni Sidey

A Gerhard Richter painting from the estate of the late dealer Marian Goodman sold at Christie’s Wednesday evening for $35.1 million (with fees). The sale fell well below Richter’s record of $46.3 million, which was set over a decade ago. The lot, Kerze (Candle), from 1982, came to auction with an estimate of $35 million to $50 million, with the high being around $3.7 million higher than his current record. Ahead of the bidding, auctioneer Yü-Ge Wang described the work as being from his “greatest series” and as a “quiet message of hope.” Bidding started at $22 million and seemed to rise quickly in $2 million increments, but then almost just as quickly plateaued. After less than two minutes of anticlimactic bidding, the painting, which had a third-party guarantee, sold for a hammer price of $30 million to a hushed salesroom. Related Articles The Christie’s lot essay describes Richter’s “Kerze” series, begun after he showed the first of “Abstraktes Bild” paintings at Documenta 7 that year, as “a discreet series that combines the past and …

Behind Christie’s B. Blockbuster Result the Market Still Looks Uneven

Behind Christie’s $1 B. Blockbuster Result the Market Still Looks Uneven

Published by José Betancourt

Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in On Balance, the ARTnews newsletter about the art market and beyond. Sign up here to receive it every Wednesday. Before this week, the last time more than $1 billion worth of art ripped through an auction house in one night was back in 2022, when Christie’s New York unloaded the Paul G. Allen collection. The sale brought in a staggering $1.5 billion, still one of the biggest single-night hauls the market has ever seen, and marked the peak of the euphoric, post-pandemic art market. (All prices include fees unless otherwise noted.) Related Articles Anyone who’s seen the headlines or watched the Instagram clips of Christie’s hammering down Jackson Pollock’s Number 7A, 1948 (1948) for $181.2 million to a room erupting in applause, alongside the flurry of other records smashed on Monday night, could be forgiven for thinking that frothy market is back with a vengeance. After a few sluggish years, strong results in New York’s marquee sales last November and the London evening sales in March have raised hopes that we are in full-on …