Auction Analysis Spotlight: London’s Modern and Contemporary Autumn Auctions

Victoria Kleiner, Head of Art Due Diligence and Digital Art Expertise

Over the past week London has seen much market activity, with Frieze and the satellite fairs taking place, alongside a busy auction schedule. While Sotheby’s had kept it’s June 20th Century sales in place, focusing on Post War and Contemporary Art this October, Christie’s had skipped the June sales to focus its efforts on October, and presented sales including Impressionist and Modern works. See below some of our specialist’s impressions from the auctions.

In total the 4 main houses took a premium total of 179 million GBP in sales. 738 lots were offered altogether, although 18 lots were withdrawn prior to sale.

Phillips saw a total of 15,132,040 GBP premium, with a sell through rate of 77%. Whilst lower than this time last year, this figure was higher than their premium total for June, 13,054,965 GBP. However, this was overall not a very strong sale. Younger artists such as Jenna Gribbon and Michaela Yearwood-Dan, market darlings of previous years, struggled to achieve strong performances, continuing the recent trend of a slight pull-back within this previously very strong segment of the market.

Christie’s took a premium total of 81,980,050 million GBP, a solid performance which was higher than this time last year, which took 44.7 million GBP. The decision made by the house to cancel their June 20/21 auctions to focus on Frieze week sales ensured a strong line up of works.

Particularly notable at Christie’s was the record made for Leon Spilliaert’s ‘Phare sur la Digue’, which sold for a premium price of 982,800 GBP. Given that the estimate of 800,000-1.2 million GBP was already much higher than the previous Spilliaert record price of 432,180 GBP in 2015, this was an extremely strong performance.

At Christie’s a group of works consigned by Damien Hirst did fairly well, in particular ‘Stack 8, Viridian Green’ by Annie Morris.

Sotheby’s Evening sale took a premium total of 37,582,816 GBP. At Sotheby’s, the reliability of David Hockney’s market was proved by the sale of his 1968 oil, ‘L’Arbois, Sainte Maxime’ for a premium price of 13,150,000 GBP against an estimate of 7,000,000-10,000,000 GBP. This was the top lot of the week.

Overall, Christie’s posted the strongest results, a validation of their decision to cancel their June 20/21 sales, which meant that they had a greater variety of consignments than Sotheby’s or Phillips. Christie’s also did well in its day sales, in particular that of the Impressionist and Modern Art Works on Paper Sale, which saw an exceptionally strong start thanks to a group of Chagall works from the estate of the artist. All at ‘come get me’ estimates, these works performed extremely strongly against their estimates, ensuring that 8 of the top 10 lots by hammer ratio for the week were taken by these Chagall works on paper. One of the main takeaways here is that attractive estimates lead to strong prices.