Auctions

Did Vincent van Gogh get Gordina pregnant? Christie’s is selling her portrait

Coming up for auction on 28 February for £1m-£2m, the painting has been hidden in a private collection for 120 years

Diaryblog

Go Tintin: drawing of Belgian boy detective fetches more than €2m at auction

Work sets the world record for the most valuable original black and white drawing by illustrator Hergé

Celebrated Chicago museum co-founder’s vast Outsider art collection heads to auction

A cut of the sale’s proceeds will benefit the Intuit museum as it plans for expansion

Surrealist collection with ‘pioneering’ interest in exiled and women artists heads to Christie’s

Paintings by Remedios Varo, Leonora Carrington and Dorothea Tanning among the 25 works to be sold in London

The donating game: How artists like Tracey Emin are driving philanthropy in the art world

The British artist is among those who have donated millions of pounds’ worth of art to charities—perhaps we could all take a leaf out of her book?

'Wealthy collectors should put more money into art schools than auctions to keep the industry alive'

In stark comparison to recent staggering auction-house results, educators are struggling to maintain funding, says our columnist Melanie Gerlis

Early Freud beachscape painted on holiday with artist John Craxton—former friend, possible lover and bitter enemy—to be auctioned for £3.5m

Christie's will offer Scillionian Beachscape alongside a late garden scene by Freud, both of which were once in the collection of renowned patron Simon Sainsbury

Are charity art auctions, not donations, the new model for offsetting taxes?

Paul Allen’s estate has pledged proceeds of its $1.6bn Christie’s sale to unnamed philanthropic causes, while FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried vaguely promised to give away his fortune

Kim Kardashian buys amethyst cross worn by Princess Diana at Sotheby’s

A representative for the reality television star and entrepreneur emerged victorious from a five-minute bidding war

Another monumental Munch painting once hidden from Nazis in a barn heads to the block

Heirs of Jewish art critic forced to sell the work estimated at $15m now set to benefit from Sotheby’s auction

Art marketpreview

From a gruesome Old Master to a potential million-dollar superhero: our pick of the highlights from January's sales

Plus, a pair of Thornton Dial assemblages, a rare Chinese bowl and a work made out of flip-flops and suede

Paris auction house Artcurial reports best year of sales—despite a downturn in trade of 20th- and 21st-century art

A record year for the French market was shored up by a particularly strong crop of Old Master work

Was a Vienna auction's €6,000 'copy' of the Sistine Chapel's ceiling actually by Michelangelo?

My heart-stopping research saga to find out if Dorotheum’s part-painted cartoon by a "follower" was in fact a sleeper

‘An absolute art market record’: Christie’s posts $8.4bn in sales for 2022

Single-owner collections and millennials boost auction house’s revenues despite “challenging macro environment”

Black American women artists represent just 0.1% of auction sales, report shows

New data shows there has been little real progress in fighting sexism and racism between 2008 and 2022

First wooden sculpture by Die Brücke founder Erich Heckel offered at auction goes on sale in Munich for €600,000

It comes to the block alongside another wooden sculpture by Heckel's contemporary Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Marlene Dumas donates Mouth painting about women's rights for Amnesty International sale

Ai Weiwei and Richard Serra have also given works to the auction taking place at Sotheby's Paris

Poland says Kandinsky painting sold at Berlin auction house was stolen from the National Museum in Warsaw

Authorities are now taking legal steps to recover the work after it made €387,500 at Grisebach

Damaged Salvator Mundi copy by unknown artist sells for €1m at Christie's

Dated to a century after Leonardo's death, the work does not come from the artist's studio

Auctionspreview

From a Dutch Golden Age still-life to a Nobel Prize medal: our pick of the highlights from December's sales

Plus, a Modernist landscape by Ferdinand Hodler and a sumptuous Old Masters Madonna

Queen Elizabeth II portrait makes $853,000 in Toronto—a record for a Warhol print at auction

Healthy bidding at Canadian auction house Heffel also achieved strong results for painter Lawren Harris

Dogsnews

Who let the lots out? A pack of 19th-century dog paintings is coming to auction

Collector Frances Scaife is selling 14 dog portraits by English and American artists at Hindman auction house in Chicago

Auctionsanalysis

Hong Kong's autumn auctions for modern and contemporary art saw a 38% drop from last year—but why?

Closed borders have impacted the selection of offerings this season, specialists say

Is Qatar's Fifa World Cup a lesson in artwashing?

Plus, how long left of the good times in the New York auction world? And abstract Black figuration

Hosted by Ben Luke. With guest speakers Hannah McGivern and Georgina Adam. Produced by David Clack, Aimee Dawson and Henrietta Bentall
Sponsored byChristie's

Five years since the $450m Salvator Mundi sale: a first-hand account of the nonsensical auction

At the record-breaking sale at Christie's New York on 15 November 2017, the audience gasped and whooped as if they were at a very exclusive firework display

The five year warranty on the Salvator Mundi by Leonardo is about to run out—could the buyer have asked for their money back?

Warranties of authenticity offered to buyers can be hard to enforce when auctioneers can fall back on the “generally accepted opinion of scholars and experts”

Revealed: When lightning struck, rescuers of Van Gogh's works were rewarded with a drawing

Coming up at Christie’s and estimated at around $4m, the sketch given to neighbours who doused the fire and saved the Van Gogh family home and collection in 1941

a blog by Martin Bailey