In a tense saleroom defined by long, silent moments and anxious pauses—at times resembling a courtroom where all eyes remained fixed on auctioneer Tom Eddison—Sotheby’s London conducted a steady contemporary art sale on Thursday evening. Bringing in a total of £46.1 million ($61.1 million), the auction played out before a full room of collectors, advisors, and onlookers. While the atmosphere carried a palpable sense of deliberation, the evening was anchored by a strong top lot: a £9.8 million ($12.9 million) Willem de Kooning abstraction that claimed the highest price of the night.
The overall event carried a pre-sale estimate of £41.7 million to £58.6 million ($55.3 million to $77.8 million). However, the hammer total before the house’s buyer’s premiums reached £36.9 million, ultimately falling just shy of the low end of expectations.
Operating as a trim, fast-paced one-hour event, the auction featured 34 catalogued lots, 10 of which were secured with financial guarantees. Ahead of the auctioneer’s first call, three works—created by Damien Hirst, Anselm Kiefer, and Leon Kossoff—were withdrawn from the lineup. Meanwhile, several other major lots failed to find buyers, including pieces by Banksy, Georg Baselitz, Jadé Fadojutimi, Lucian Freud, Gerhard Richter, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. By the end of the night, the results fell slightly below last year’s equivalent contemporary art sale in London, which totaled £47.6 million ($63.3 million) and was led by a Francis Bacon triptych that fetched £13 million ($17.5 million).
Thursday’s Sotheby’s event arrived on the heels of a healthy, if somewhat safe, evening at Christie’s held just one night prior. That competing auction totaled £218.6 million ($289.4 million) across two distinct sales, more than doubling its figures from the previous year. The major auction house events coincided with London’s bustling fair week, which saw prominent cultural figures and celebrities, including Tilda Swinton and Raf Simons, streaming into the annual Frieze art fair. During the fair, numerous international commercial galleries reported robust and steady sales.
Despite the broader enthusiasm across London’s art week, market observers noted a distinct climate of prudence inside the auction room. "I would say the market is very cautious," art historian and consultant Ivana Miloradovic told ARTnews during the Sotheby’s sale. She observed that the majority of the evening’s offerings either underperformed or realized prices situated at the lower end of their estimates.
The auction was undeniably led by Willem de Kooning’s untitled abstract painting from 1977, which had carried an estimate of £8 million to £12 million ($10.6 million to $15.9 million). Spanning five feet in width, the powerful canvas sold well within its expectations, hammering down at £8.2 million and climbing to a final price of £9.8 million ($12.9 million) with fees included. The painting possessed a notable auction history, having last traded hands at Sotheby’s New York in 2015, where it realized $6.1 million.
Coming in second place for the evening was Gerhard Richter’s expansive, eight-foot-wide Abstraktes Bild (1992). Estimated between £6 million and £8 million ($7.9 million to $10.6 million), the Richter hammered below its expectations at £5.4 million, ultimately bringing in £6.7 million ($8.9 million) with buyer’s premium. The seller of the piece had originally acquired it at Christie’s London in 2011 for £3.6 million, which translated to roughly $5.7 million at the time.
Following the Richter was an untitled, dark-hued Mark Rothko abstract from 1969. Estimated between £3 million and £4 million ($4 million to $5.3 million), the Rothko hammered at its low estimate to fetch £3.8 million, or just shy of $5 million, including fees. The painting’s market journey stretched back decades; it last appeared at public auction in 1992 at Christie’s New York, where the evening’s seller purchased it for $264,000.
Additional works by Georg Baselitz, David Hockney, Albert Oehlen, and Andy Warhol rounded out the upper tier of the sale’s top 10 lots, with Baselitz, Hockney, and Warhol each represented by two works in the elite group.
"British sales on British soil are always joyous," Miloradovic said, highlighting the enthusiastic local demand for David Hockney’s vibrant 10th–22nd June 2021, Water Lilies in the Pond with Pots of Flowers (2021) and Michael Andrews’s Butterfly Fish (1978). "Everybody knows the artist, the gossip, and the history. It was a homey atmosphere."
Indeed, one of the most surprising and dramatic success stories of the evening centered on Michael Andrews’s Butterfly Fish. Depicting the titular marine creature, the work sparked an extended bidding contest that drove the hammer price to £550,000—shattering its high estimate of £120,000. With fees, the total climbed to £704,000 ($933,117), setting a new record high for a work on paper by the artist.
While Andrews is less celebrated today by the general public than his contemporaries within the legendary School of London, such as Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud, he was deeply revered by the artists of his generation. "Mike is so economical," fellow painter Frank Auerbach once remarked of Andrews. "He paints only masterpieces."
Ottilie Windsor, head of contemporary art at Sotheby’s London, echoed Auerbach’s sentiments during a post-sale interview. "The paintings that he did make were often bought as they were being made by a group of collectors who followed his work really closely," Windsor told ARTnews. She noted that those loyal collectors have historically never needed to divest themselves of the works, resulting in a very sparse market supply. When an Andrews piece does manage to surface at auction, she explained, it invariably performs exceptionally well.
The evening also presented a mixed picture for the under-50 generation of contemporary artists. Louis Fratino’s intimate painting Kissing Couple (2019) achieved a within-estimate result of £320,000 ($424,144), while Adrian Ghenie’s The Wall (2019) likewise realized its projection, selling for £640,000 ($848,288). (Fratino currently enjoys strong commercial support, with a sold-out solo exhibition running at David Zwirner’s London showroom.) Conversely, highly anticipated contemporary pieces by Fadojutimi and Yiadom-Boakye failed to find buyers.
Successfully securing buyers for 28 out of 34 offered lots still represented a solid achievement, Windsor argued in the wake of the event. "Any dealer at the [Frieze] fair would be thrilled to sell nearly 30 secondary market lots," she noted. While underlying capital and active interest remain very much present in the upper echelons of the market, Windsor emphasized that buyers continue to exercise a high degree of selectivity, frequently surprising auction houses with the specific qualities they prioritize.
