The start to the Autumn has been busy and I was delighted to see the kind of rapturous bidding in the Karpidas sales that the market so keenly sought. Oliver Barker did a great job at the rostrum, but the real heroes were the works of art that were put together by the great Pauline Karpidas and her advisor Alexandre Iolas. The value of a great advisor has never been clearer! Totals for the sales were explosive with the evening sale fetching 74m GBP and the day sale brought 26.4m GBP – double its high estimate. The desire for market fresh works of art with a blue-blooded provenance makes for a very strong bidding war or two. I found the evening sale to be well attended with a vibrancy in the bidding from the room as well as the phones unlike anything in London this year. It does bode very well for the forthcoming major sales at Christie’s in London this October (they failed to host a June sale this term and will move their London sales to the Autumn instead).
As we all convene for a vast Frieze-week extravaganza (w/c 13th October) I reckon we shall be seeing more important works coming to market via the private sale platform over auction. With the sales so far in 2025 running a little cooler than planned there is a very good argument for selling via the convenience and lower-cost platform of a decent gallery or private dealer. Marketing is less obtuse, more private and more targeted. This patform also avoids the horror of a work going unsold at auction. An unsold painting at auction can lessen its value by at least 25% which is often why works of art are ‘withdrawn’ before an auction commences: as the risk of failure is too hard for consignors to bear. The market these days is drawn to selling at blue riband art fairs, especially now that the lesser calibre fairs have been put out of business. However, the days of potential buyers running to the best dealers to secure the works as soon as possible are long gone – fairs, these days, also give buyers time to think.
As ever, the market is getting ready for the major auction series in New York that will take place just one month after the Christie’s London sales and Freize week. It will be a hot pursuit for the auction house specialists in chasing great works of art in the business-getting period up to the mid-October deadline. Sotheby’s will boast new premises at the world-class Breur building (formerly the home of the Whitney Collection). Their sales will be fascinating with three superb Gustav Klimt paintings from the Leonard Lauder collection coming to auction amongst a special 24-lot sale of his collection including Picasso, Matisse et al. Klimt’s works are the main stars with a portrait of Elizabeth Lederer and two landscapes that are sublime examples of the Austrian Meister. Klimt’s record prices will be hard to break (remember the Anna Bloch Bauer ‘Woman in gold’ record of 135m USD!) but these are special works never seen on the market publicly.
Rather interesting to hear that a great Japanese corporate collection will go under the hammer this November as the firm was bought out by a Chinese rival – they are realising their newly purchased assets and putting the collection up for auction: including a fabulous Waterlilies by the great Claude Monet amongst other Impressionist works of art – watch this space! Perhaps this will be a watershed for corporate collections looking to realise some cash for their Impressionist collections and many Japanese corporations are full of world class works.
I hope to see you at Frieze and please do reach out if you need any advice on the art market. As ever, please do not spend significant sums on works of art without the help of a good advisor boasting Auction house and gallery experience.