Auctions

Hitler watercolours seized as suspected fakes

Three landscapes signed A. Hitler were offered for sale at Berlin’s Auktionshaus Kloss

Dutch Royal family’s decision to auction $2.5m Rubens drawing at Sotheby's sparks criticism

Calls are growing to give Dutch museums first refusal but Dutch prime minister says it is a ‘private matter’

Life lessons: what the art market learned from 2018

Georgina Adam speaks with three leading art world figures on the key events of last year and what 2019 may hold

A monumental work by Marie Antoinette’s portraitist will headline Sotheby’s Female Triumphant sale

Major works by 14 women artists are expected to dominate Sotheby’s Masters Week offerings and bring more 'diverse' collectors

2018 in the market: the price is right for pale males

David Hockney was latest white male artist to set a record this year

Market stunts predict the future… and evoke the past

The Leonardo and Banksy auction spectacles suggested a future in which marketing triumphs. But was it ever thus?

Van Gogh's portrait of a prostitute coming up for sale

Christie’s, more discreetly, entitles it “Portrait de femme”

a blog by Martin Bailey

Glenn Gould’s Bach hits the auction block

The late pianist’s 1981 annotated score of Bach’s Goldberg Variations is the first of his manuscripts to come to market

How a Roman sarcophagus—going on sale this week—was emptied for a pug

Skeleton of young man was evicted to make way for the body of the first Duke of Buckingham and Chandos's pet dog

Record set in Canada for Nobel Prize-winning doctor and artist Frederick Banting

A painting of the University of Toronto lab where he co-discovered insulin goes for ten times its high estimate in Toronto

Auctionsanalysis

The highs and lows of New York ‘gigaweek’

Hockney made the headlines, but other artists made waves—or flopped—at November’s auctions

Anna Brady and Margaret Carrigan. with additional reporting by Gabriella Angeleti and Nancy Kenney
Art marketcomment

Why the Christie's and Sotheby's duopoly is impregnable

The auction houses sell more than 80% of works priced over $1m at auction—can an underdog ever wrestle market share away from them?

Auction house pulls seven objects from American Indian sale amid protests

Native American official calls planned auction of the items “unconscionable”

Ben Uri museum advisory board resigns en masse over Sotheby’s sale of works from the collection

Nicholas Serota and Norman Rosenthal say that selling off the works is a “grave mistake”

Phillips and Bonhams see strong sales on smaller lots

The auction houses' bottom lines suffered from unsold lots, continuing a trend of top-lot discernment during New York’s fall sales

Podcastspodcast

David Hockney: exclusive interview with the world's most expensive living artist

We talk to David Hockney about Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), which broke an auction record this week, selling at Christie's New York for $90.3m with fees. Produced in association with Bonhams, auctioneers since 1793.

Nobel Prize-winning doctor’s painting of the lab where he discovered insulin goes on sale in Toronto

Dr Frederick Banting wanted to take up art full-time, but he was killed in a plane crash during the Second World War

African American artists sweep Sotheby’s contemporary evening sale in New York

With only two lots unsold, the auction house nets $362.6m in evening of avid bidding

Art marketpreview

How high will Hockney go and can his soaring market last?

A double pool portrait, estimated at $80m and offered at Christie’s with no reserve, could set a record for the most expensive work by a living artist

Record $91.9m sale of Edward Hopper’s Chop Suey buoys confidence at Christie’s American art sale

At $317.8m, the Ebsworth evening sale becomes one of the top five most valuable collections ever sold at auction

Top lots go unsold at New York's Impressionist and Modern sales, proving a discerning but 'not doomsday' market

Monet carries Christie's evening sale while a Magritte shines at Sotheby's, marking an auction record for the Surrealist painter

Guarantees: the next big art market scandal?

Third-party auction deals have made some people very rich—but they may be bad for the market in the long run

Anna Brady. , with additional reporting by Anny Shaw
Art marketcomment

Common mistakes of rookie auction guarantors

Guarantees can be lucrative, but in the face of savvy competition, novices can get burnt when backing works as a third-party

Holy grail of folk ceramics made by 19th-century snake handler breaks auction record

The “snake jug” shattered the previous record for Anna Pottery, a niche favourite of Americana collectors

Auctionscomment

Contemporary art’s value may be on the rise, but it comes at a greater cost

Chicago’s aborted effort to sell Kerry James Marshall’s public work teaches us something about the transactional nature of today’s culture

Lawnews

US court orders collector to repay Sotheby’s $1.2m for Parmigianino fake

The judgement comes after two experts found the painting was made with modern synthetic pigments

Sotheby’s withdraws painting that Pierre Bergé ‘maintained was by Manet’

The work was one of 18 to have been placed under a court order following a financial dispute unrelated to the auction

Villa Grisebach to sell founder’s collection to raise funds for new Museum of Exile

Two-day auction will include works by Picasso, Matisse, Egon Schiele, collected by Bernd Schultz over six decades