Slimmer auctions and a lack of masterpieces worth more than £20m contributed to a 27% dive in the value of sales at Christie’s in the first half of 2016. “The appetite to buy continues to be very high, but supply is less than demand,” says Jussi Pylkkanen, Christie’s president of Europe and the Middle East.
In total the privately owned auction house made £2.1 billion ($3 billion) compared with £2.9 billion ($4.5 billion) in the same period last year. The number of lots selling for more than £5m fell from 47 to 29.
Pylkkanen says a number of factors caused collectors selling “once in a lifetime works” to pause, including tumbling oil prices, troubled financial markets and political unrest. When masterpieces were available, they sold well; Henry Moore’s Reclining Figure Festival made a record £24.7m in Christie’s 250th anniversary sale in June.
The traditionally strong post-war and contemporary department saw a 41% drop, bringing in £547m compared with £927.7m in 2015. Christie’s still has market share in this category. Impressionist and Modern art fell from £771.6m to £412.8m, a slump in value of 47%. Conversely, Old Master paintings, 19th-century and Russian art saw a 27% increase in sales in the first half of 2016, from £71.1m in 2015 to £90m. Christie’s attributed this to a strong performance in New York’s Classic Week in April.
However, with the advance of “curated” sales, traditional art historical categories are now “a thing of the past”, Pylkkanen says, noting that the art world community is ever broadening. “Our focus is on tight, curated sales that are profitable to clients. We will keep less of an eye on size and more of an eye on calibre.”
Although sales were scaled back, sell-through rates across categories were higher than usual, not dropping below around 80% on average, according to Pylkkanen. Less expensive works—priced between £1m and £5m—attracted 36% more new buyers, while “e-commerce” sales grew by 96%.
“The summer sales allowed us to say the market is back on its feet. There hasn't been a drop in prices, we haven't seen a percentage decrease in the value of a Renoir or Picasso,” Pylkkanen says.
Meanwhile, the value of auction sales at rival Sotheby’s fell 24% to $2.4 billion in the first half of 2016, but these numbers do not include private sales, which are included in Christie’s results. Sotheby’s is due to release those figures in August.
