Sotheby's

auction house

Auctionsanalysis

Selective buying leaves 35% of lots unsold at Sotheby's Old Master sale in London

The £39.4m auction was led by a 15th-century painting by the Master of the Baroncelli Portraits at £7.9m, while a new record was set for a work by William Hogarth—albeit sold to a single bid

Art marketanalysis

Sultry Klimt portrait smashes European auction record, selling for £85.3m in London

The night's star lot made up nearly half of the £190.3m total for Sotheby's Modern and contemporary evening auction

Diaryblog

Damien Hirst on painting river views, aiding assistants and why Sensation was just too silent

The artist's spin painting of musician Pete Townshend will be sold for charity at Sotheby's

Gustav Klimt's last portrait has highest estimate ever put on a painting in Europe at over £65m

Lady with a Fan (1917) was last sold for $11.6m in 1994 and will be offered at Sotheby's in London on 27 June

Sotheby’s will pay $100m for the Whitney Museum’s Marcel Breuer building

The auction house expects to move into the Madison Avenue building in 2025, vacating its current York Avenue headquarters

Carlie Porterfield. , with additional reporting by Scott Reyburn

Propelled by Marie Antoinette's poodle, mid-season Old Masters auctions in New York fetch nearly $13m

Specialists at Christie’s and Sotheby’s dismissed concerns about a decline in the Old Masters market

Louise Bourgeois's record-breaking $32.8m Spider crawls to top of Sotheby's contemporary art sale

A double-header night of The Now and contemporary art auctions set ten new artist records, boosting confidence after a lacklustre Christie's sale of the Gerald Fineberg collection

The oldest Hebrew Bible in existence breaks auction record for a manuscript at Sotheby's

The price for the Codex Sassoon surpassed the sum Bill Gates paid for a Leonardo da Vinci codex in 1994

Works by Klimt and Magritte lead Sotheby’s stolid Modern art sales in New York

The firm’s Modern art evening sale and single-owner Mo Ostin auction brought in a below-estimate hammer total of $363.9m, or $427m with fees

Art marketfeature

Auction houses anticipate $2.2bn from New York spring sales despite cooling market

Demand for ultra contemporary works may have eased but there is little sign of a sales slump, say the New York firms

On eve of the coronation, Sotheby's offers document in which Charles II set out his vision for restoration of the British monarchy

"Transformational" signed 1660 copy of The Declaration of Breda leads mixed-category sale featuring manuscripts, royal portraits, medals and memorabilia

‘Duplicative’ or discarded? Whitney's sale of more Hopper works from historic bequest comes under scrutiny

Questions resurface over New York museum’s rationale for consigning works by the artist to auction

Auction Queen: hammer to fall on Freddie Mercury’s art collection at Sotheby’s

More than 1,500 lots, including original lyrics and Victorian paintings, from the rockstar’s London home will be sold in September by former girlfriend and close friend Mary Austin

Rare Gustav Klimt lake landscape to make auction debut in New York

The painting is estimated to sell for around $45m next month at Sotheby's

Towering Louise Bourgeois Spider sculpture could reach $40m at Sotheby’s

The ten-foot-tall metal arachnid is being sold by a Brazilian foundation and could reset several auction records

Battle of the Basquiats: Christie’s and Sotheby’s both have big, eight-figure paintings lined up for marquee spring sales

'El Gran Espectaculo (The Nile)' and 'Now’s the Time' are estimated to sell for $45m at Christie’s and $30m at Sotheby’s, respectively

Gauguin, Renoir and Cézanne works restituted by Musée d'Orsay head to auction at Sotheby's

Four works recently returned to heirs of the influential French dealer Ambroise Vollard will go under the hammer in New York next month

Art marketanalysis

Is art once again becoming a lifestyle choice rather than an asset?

Results from the recent auction season, where young, “red-chip” artists surpassed expectations, while big names of Modern art went unsold, point to a shift in how collectors think

Art marketcomment

Backroom deals for wet paintings: why contemporary art is driving private sales for auction houses

Shortening art market cycles and the politics around "flipping" artworks are leading collectors to conduct business away from public scrutiny

Sotheby's to offer rare Hammershøi painting with highest-ever estimate for the artist

"Interior. The Music Room, Strandgade 30", expected to sell for between $3m and $5m, was painted in the artist's most productive period

After fallout, Sotheby’s seeks to fix ‘glitch’ in its NFT sale by including more women

Auction house faced online backlash over male-dominated digital art sale

NFTnews

New York court dismisses case over ownership of ‘world’s first NFT’ sold for $1.5m at Sotheby’s

Lawsuit is one of the first in the US to examine how blockchain technology affects the ownership of digital art

Works worth more than $20m accounted for nearly half of auction sales in 2022, according to new Sotheby's report

Report also highlights how Asian, Millennial and Gen X buyers are changing the demographic of the market

Venus Williams and Adam Pendleton team up for charity auction to fund restoration of Nina Simone’s childhood home

The legendary civil rights activist and musician was born in the North Carolina house and spent the first years of here life there