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<\/p>\nThe latest outbreak of war in the Middle East has done little to deter wealthy art buyers in London, judging by the packed crowd at Sotheby’s Modern and contemporary evening sale last night (4 March). \u201cI can\u2019t recall the last time I saw a London auction so full,\u201d said the advisor Pauline Haon upon exiting the New Bond Street salesroom. \u201cThe art market can exist in a bubble. But two years on, I think people are more used to insecurity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kicking off the 2026 auction year, the sale not only signalled stability amid geopolitical tremors but also a renewed vitality for the London trade, which is still suffering a prolonged bout of the post-Brexit blues. The evening\u2019s 54 lots totalled \u00a3106.4m (\u00a3131m with fees), falling comfortably within the pre-sale estimate of \u00a396.1m to \u00a3136.4m (all estimates are calculated without fees). This is more than double the \u00a363m (with fees) it made from last year\u2019s equivalent sale and just shy of the \u00a3136m (with fees) made in 2023. <\/p>\n
Its sell-through rate was a near-perfect 98% by lot, with just one work, a 2004 Robert Ryman white painting (est \u00a3500,000-\u00a3700,000), withdrawn prior to the sale.<\/p>\n
The crowds had gathered, in part, for a small trove of School of London paintings from the collection of the billionaire currency trader Joe Lewis, whose family trust owns Tottenham Hotspur football club. The four works\u2014all unguaranteed\u2014 included the evening\u2019s top lot, Francis Bacon\u2019s 1972 self-portrait, which the artist had once gifted to his doctor as a thank you for stitching up his face after a drunken brawl. The painting made \u00a313.5m (\u00a316m with fees) against an \u00a38m to \u00a312m estimate, going to a phone bidder via specialist Lucius Elliot.<\/p>\n
However, it was another Mod Brit darling, Leon Kossoff, who emerged as the night\u2019s star. The late artist\u2019s lively, impastoed Children’s Swimming Pool, Autumn Afternoon (1971) (est \u00a3600,000-\u00a3800,000), is one of five depicting the Willesden Green swimming pool near Kossoff\u2019s home in north London, with other works from the series held in the collections of Tate, the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, and Arts Council England.<\/p>\n
Compared to some of his heavyweight peers (such as Freud and Bacon, as well as Frank Auerbach), Kossoff’s market is underdeveloped\u2014until yesterday his record stood at \u00a31.4m. Last night served as a course correction, with the painting chased by around ten bidders, including three in the room, before hammering at \u00a34.5m (\u00a35.2m with fees) to a phone bidder via Alex Branczik.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Alex Branczik bidding on Leon Kossoff’s Children’s Swimming Pool, Autumn Afternoon (1971)<\/p>\n
Courtesy of Sotheby’s<\/p>\n
\u201cExceptional works command exceptional prices,\u201d says the London dealer Offer Waterman. \u201cCompletely fresh to the market and belonging to one of the most celebrated and pivotal series in Kossoff\u2019s oeuvre, its superb provenance\u2014formerly in the Saatchi Collection and more recently part of the collection of Joe Lewis\u2014made the opportunity to acquire it even more compelling.”<\/p>\n
At the last minute, Sotheby\u2019s, evidently sensing this demand, swapped the order of the evening\u2019s lots to place the Kossoff at the start of the Lewis collection, hoping to inject some energy into the proceedings. Nonetheless, the fervour failed to hold for a disquieting nude by Freud, which hammered around its \u00a36m low estimate.<\/p>\n
Another single-owner collection, all guaranteed in house, brought a group of Lucio Fontanas to a more lukewarm reception. The star lot, one of the Spatialist titan\u2019s Concetto spaciales, a hulking, craterous 1960 canvas in black and jade green, carried the evening\u2019s highest estimate of \u00a38.5m to \u00a312m, and went at its low estimate to its third-party guarantor. \u201cFontana\u2019s market hasn\u2019t been strong since 2016,\u201d Haon notes. \u201cDespite his historical significance, he is not fashionable with the younger collectors who are driving the market. Considering the retreat from Minimalism, I am pleasantly surprised Sotheby\u2019s could still find a buyer at this price level.\u201d<\/p>\n
By the sale\u2019s second half, a stodgier pace, more resemblant of the London evening sales of late, had returned to the saleroom, with most works hammering around or below their low estimates. A 1986 Basquiat painting that did not sell initially\u2014due to a clerical computing error, Sotheby\u2019s said\u2014 was brought back later in the sale to make just \u00a33.6m, well below its \u00a36m low estimate (the house will be pleased to have not guaranteed this work).<\/p>\n
The flight to certainty endures amid this shakier market, and the sale was heavily weighted towards classic tastes: post-Impressionist, Modern and highly established contemporary works by mostly Brits and Europeans. In a testament to just how much the ultra-contemporary market has cooled, not a single work offered during the sale was by an artist below the age of 60. The youngest artist represented was Damien Hirst.<\/p>\n
The post-sale mood among Sotheby\u2019s specialists appeared buoyant, and hopeful that the worst of London’s doldrums might indeed be over. \u201cIt\u2019s been a lean few years,\u201d said Ottilie Windsor, Sotheby\u2019s head of contemporary art, London, shortly after the auction closed. She cited the presence of three single-owner collections in the sale as evidence of a return to form and renewed confidence among consignors. \u201cBeginning from the Pauline Karpidas sale in September, we\u2019ve had a string of positive results. Some works sold below estimate tonight, but there were multiple buyers across all levels, and that reassures sellers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nonetheless, it will take more than a few good seasons to recover the significant losses the city has faced in recent years. For a point of comparison, no consignment this month at any auction house has surpassed an estimate of \u00a315m, while during the 2019 March sales season, five works were valued at \u00a320m or more. Christie\u2019s 20\/21 Century evening sale tonight will reveal whether this positive mood can last a whole week, let alone a year. After all, the first bout of sunshine is often a false spring. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The latest outbreak of war in the Middle East has done little to deter wealthy art buyers in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":369960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[267],"tags":[13204,365,362,363,364,171182,51589,366,18,117,19,17,171183,35507],"class_list":["post-369959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-art-market","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-auction-report","tag-auctions","tag-design","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-leon-kossoff","tag-sothebys"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116179190752673441","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/369960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}