Sothebys and Christies: A Comparison of the Biggest Auction Houses

Table Of Content

• Discover & bid on great art
• LONDON
• Auction Houses Are Doubling Down on Asia by Opening New Headquarters and Expanding Their Teams
• Highest-Grossing Christie’s Auctions of All Time
• Five reasons why Rolex collectors love the Daytona
• Trends We Spotted at London’s 1-54 Art Fair That Could Eclipse the Market’s Penchant for Figuration

A royal carpet of scarlet leaves winds through a stand of maples in the deep of fall. A quiet country road bears its hidden splendor before the snows that will hide its brilliant chromatic display until next year. Christie’s has been a cornerstone of the art world for centuries, but nothing demonstrates this better than looking at the masterworks they have sold. Below are the seven highest-grossing items ever sold by Christies (with inflation-adjusted numbers in parentheses), and number one doubles as the most expensive artwork ever sold. F)     this lot listing is only provided to you and you may not share this with any other party. That isn’t stopping Christie’s from trying to lure in buyers from the region.

Discover & bid on great art

Sotheby’s, on the other hand, was held accountable to release information to its shareholders. Shareholders could thus openly complain when they were unhappy with returns on capital. Until July 2019, they differed in what kind of institution they are. Scott Reyburn of the NY Times paper has explained that Christie’s is privately owned by French billionaire François Pinault, while Sotheby’s was a publicly listed company. Baker and his successors all formed connections with major libraries that helped them sell rare items. When Napoleon died, they sold the books he took with him in exile to St. Helena.

LONDON

A French native, Cartier-Stone is now based in London—find out more about her favorite silver collectibles here. We usually have a wide range of 18th- and 19th-century ceramics from different factories and in different styles. Buyers from the Americas spent $4.55 million at Christie’s, accounting for about 40 percent of the house’s total revenue, while buyers from Europe, Middle East, and Africa made up 34 percent of sales, at $1.8 billion. The Asia-Pacific region is the only one that saw a dip in participation from last year, bringing in $833 million, 20 percent less than in 2021. The year’s success was propelled by high-profile sales of museum-worthy art.

Auction Houses Are Doubling Down on Asia by Opening New Headquarters and Expanding Their Teams

A glance across the board makes the two look like copies- With just a few differences in color and format attached. After reading the history of both houses, you can say that they both have major connections that helped them skyrocket to success in common. New York’s MET museum also made its first connection to the London market through Christie’s, sending them its first lot for sale there in 1958. Christie’s Timeline shows that James Christie made his first sale in 1766 in a saleroom in Pall Mall, London. By 1778, he had built his way up to negotiating art sales with Catherine the Great. According to Sotheby’s own Our History web page, it was founded in 1744 by Samuel Baker.

Inside the cutting-edge collection of Rosa de la Cruz, who ‘saw into the future of what art could be’

In 2024, Christie’s will open a 50,000-square-foot, four-story Asia-Pacific headquarters in Hong Kong. Absentee biddingTo leave absentee bids, go to the pages of the lots you’re interested in and select ‘Place bid’. Telephone and in-room biddingIf you’d like to register for a telephone bid or to attend the auction in person, please contact Client Services. Christie's Fine Art Storage Services, or CFASS, is a wholly owned subsidiary that runs Christie's storage operation.

Christie's Withdraws Breastplate from Auction Amid Provenance Concerns - ARTnews

Christie's Withdraws Breastplate from Auction Amid Provenance Concerns.

Posted: Wed, 31 Jan 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]

Christie’s auctions span more than 80 art and luxury categories, at price points ranging from $500 to over $100 million. Christie’s is also committed to advancing responsible culture throughout its business and communities worldwide. To learn more, browse, bid, discover, and join us for the best of art and luxury at christies.com or by downloading Christie’s apps. Nude, Green Leaves, and Bust is a large portrait of Picasso’s interwar mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter, painted in 1932. Originally sold to the painter’s friend and dealer Paul Rosenberg, it was moved out of France in anticipation of World War II, and displayed at one of his gallery spaces in New York until 1951. At that point, it was bought by the Brody family of art collectors and was hidden from the public eye for nearly 60 years except for a single showing on Picasso’s birthday in 1961.

This collection included insightful books on a variety of topics, including but not limited to medicine, law, math, and theology. As you’ve seen from my other blog posts, there are a wealth of places both on the web and in person where one can procure high quality art. Places like Studio6, Lumas, 1stdibs, Martin Lawrence Galleries, and others cater to the needs of virtually all collectors, offering the new, the old, originals, reproductions, valuable rarities, and budget-friendly space-fillers. They are both whimsical and functional, often mixing high Victoriana with Chinese and Japanese aesthetics.

Trends We Spotted at London’s 1-54 Art Fair That Could Eclipse the Market’s Penchant for Figuration

Private sales made up $1.2 billion of the house’s grand total, with the remaining $7.2 billion coming from live and online auctions. Unsurprisingly, Christie’s 20th and 21st century art category accounted for the bulk of earnings coming in at $6.2 billion, up 21 percent from last year. Luxury goods, an emerging category that includes handbags, sneakers, watches, and wine, and has proven to be a key entry point for Millennial buyers, came in second, earning the company $988 million.

We look forward to welcoming you to Christie's Los Angeles art space. Christie’s added that the sale represents a sequel to a 2016 auction of wines from the Avery family’s collection. Total sales in that auction topped £2.1m, including buyer’s premium, as reported by Decanter at the time. By Jacqueline MartinezBA English WritingJacqueline Martinez graduated with her BA in English (Writing & Rhetoric, to be fancy) in 2019.

Phillips, which was also founded in the same era in 1796, is known for helping artists spark their careers. It’s a smaller rival, but it has recently talked about emphasizing quality over quantity in its contemporary art department. The private nature of Christie’s means that it’s legally allowed to only reveal its final sales to the public. Christie’s has guaranteed minimum prices for pieces through 3rd party agreements, but they aren’t obligated to show these deals to the public. Christie’s, British auction firm especially known for the sale of art.

We used to wander the house together, identifying the marks on each piece and pricing them in Kovels’ (a pre-internet guide). It was all great fun and inspired me to study art history, concentrating on antique ceramics and glass. I chose New York University for its fantastic art history program and proximity to museums and auction houses. Due to the nature of selling by auction, the prices that each painting, necklace, or mirror goes for varies wildly. Luckily, if you want to determine how much it would cost to be a cosigner or buyer, you can reference a few rules of the auction houses. In 1964, Sotheby’s expanded itself by buying Parke-Bernet, the USA’s largest fine art auction house at the time.

Sotheby’s art and luxury sales ended up making only $6.8 billion, down 7 percent from later year. I don’t know how this app keeps getting updated but keeps getting more bugs and worse UI changes. It’s updated frequently and every time I open it I like it less.I highly prefer browsing auction catalogs on my phone, and I use most major auction houses apps. I have to use the Christie’s website in my browser because this app is so difficult to use. Christie’s buyer premium schedule (as of February 2019) has posted new commission rates for its hammer prices. They vary by location and apply to every category except wine, which has a different fee table.

I was lucky enough to handle a number of its elements while working in Paris. Tell us a little about your career…I left France at 19 to study law in London at King’s College before returning to the Sorbonne in Paris to complete my French law master. However, I soon realized that I was never going to make a great barrister and that decorative arts, especially silver, was my calling.

My goal as a nature photographer is to show you views of our natural world in ways that you may not have seen them before through careful composition, attention to detail and the creative use of beautiful light. The entire collection of my work is available in the form of fine art prints using only the highest quality printing and mounting processes available today. For obvious reasons, I’m very partial to French silver and especially to the French Régence. One of my favorite goldsmiths is Elie Pacot, active in Lille, France, at the turn of the 18th century. He worked for the English army, which was occupying Lille at the time, and one of his new patrons was the Duke of Marlborough who commissioned him to make several pieces, including a magnificent surtout de table made between 1709–10. Isabelle Cartier-Stone, Specialist, Gold Boxes & Objects Vertu Silver, Silver, Christie’s London, has handled a number of priceless historical pieces.

Canadian Entrepreneur Miles Nadal bought nearly the entire lot for $850,000. The only shoe pair left behind was the 1972 Nike Waffle Racing Flat Moon Shoe, which is expected to sell for $160,000. From Museum Quality Lumachome Acrylic to Chromaluxe Metal Prints and the worlds top digital photo papers, you can rest assured knowing the entire body of work on this site is produced using the finest gallery quality materials available today.

The “holy-grail” of Minton garden seats was probably a majolica example we sold in 2017. Only two examples are known, and it was likely the example exhibited at the Paris Universelle Exposition of 1867. It made an impressive $52,000, but most garden seats start the low thousands. Meanwhile, Christie’s sold one of the few statues of King Tut that exist for $6 million. The statue was previously owned by Prince Wilhelm von Thurn and Taxis, who kept it in the 1960s and 1970s before it was sold to a gallery owner in Vienna. The Egyptian government believes that the statue was stolen from the Karnak Temple near the ancient city of Luxor in the 1970s.