When the hammer came down on Peter Doig’s 1994 painting Ski Jacket at Christie’s London on Wednesday evening after an extended bidding war, the room burst into applause at the £14 million ($19 million) result. That figure may be a far cry from Doig’s auction record of $40 million, but the painting blasted past its presale estimate of £6 million to £8 million and appeared to be a bright spot in an uneven market.
The Doig, which went to Canadian collector François Odermatt seated in the saleroom, was not the only high point at Christie’s 20th/21st Century evening sale in London. The auction totaled $142.9 million across 61 lots, the highest total for an October Frieze Week sale since 2018. It was, in fact, a 33 percent jump from last year’s equivalent sale, which brought in about $107 million on 52 lots. And it bears mentioning that the 2024 sale was itself an 83 percent jump from 2023, owing in part to Christie’s having backed away from the other major London sales season in June that year. This year’s sale achieved a 90 percent sell-through rate by value, a notable increase from last year’s 82 percent. (All prices are in US dollars and include buyer’s premium unless otherwise noted.)
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Jussi Pylkannen, the former global president of Christie’s and the founder of London-based Art Pylkkänen art advisory, told ARTnews in London after the sale that the result is “the clearest possible indicator that the auction market is back on its feet as we approach the New York sales.” Pylkannen added, “The private market at the top end has been very healthy and this confidence is now filtering down into quality works of lesser value that are appearing at auction.”
The biggest winner of the evening may have been Paula Rego, whose 1995 triptych Dancing Ostriches from Walt Disney’s Fantasia—the largest work by the artist ever to come to auction—reset her record at £3.4 million ($4.6 million). Her previous record, $3.74 million, was for a diptych from the same series that sold in October 2023. Records were also set for Suzanne Valadon, as well as living artists Annie Morris and Esben Weile Kjær.
Despite a fart machine going off in the back of the room during the Doig bidding—a prank that drew a few laughs from the audience—the auction had plenty of wind in its sails. The energy picked up with the second lot, René Magritte’s 1947 painting La voix du sang (Blood Will Tell). Multiple phone bidders battled with those in the room to push the result to £762,000 ($1.02 million), well above a presale estimate of £350,000 to £550,000. It’s not the first time the painting has outperformed expectations: the Christie’s consignor had purchased it at a Sotheby’s sale in 2010 for £163,250, on an estimate of just £25,000 to £35,000. That turned out to be a pretty good investment.
Two of the three early Lucian Freud paintings on offer—all held in the same undisclosed private collection for decades and all carrying a presale guarantee from Christie’s—sold comfortably within their estimates. Woman with a Tulip (1944) went for $4.29 million, and Sleeping Head (1961–71) for $3.22 million. The catalog’s cover lot, Self-Portrait Fragment (circa 1956), sold for a just-below-estimate $10.2 million.
Two results that came one after another toward the end of the sale underscored how tastes have shifted over the past decade or so. Mark Grotjahn’s 2011 face painting Untitled (Dropping Off and Falling Away Red and T Face 43.22) eked out bids to land within its estimate after little interest, selling for $2.15 million. The same went for an untitled 2015 painting by Joe Bradley, which sold for $289,000, below the low end of its estimate. Both works came from the collection of English photographer and art patron Hugo Rittson-Thomas, who founded the Silvie Fleming Collection (named for his mother) and acquired them around the time they were completed. Both markets have since softened. Bradley’s auction record was set in 2015, when a 2011 painting sold for $3 million at Christie’s. In 2017, a similarly sized Grotjahn face painting sold for $7 million, while his auction record of $17 million was achieved that same year, also at Christie’s.
Only one lot—Nicolas Party’s Tree Trunks (2015), also part of the Fleming Collection and estimated at £800,000 to £1.2 million—was withdrawn.
Five artworks failed to sell, among them Yoshitomo Nara’s large 1998 painting Haze Days, which carried a presale estimate of £6.5 million to £8.5 million ($8.7 million to $11.4 million). It stalled at £4.7 million, and auctioneer Adrien Meyer gave Christie’s Hong Kong’s Eric Chang ample time with his phone bidder—repeating the phrase “last chance” before finally acknowledging that the work had been bought in.
Still, the sale was overall a success, especially by today’s somewhat bleak standards. The last word went to advisor and newsletter publisher Josh Baer, who was sitting among the press reporting on the sale. “The market ain’t dead,” he observed.