Auctions

Newly attributed Michelangelo drawing expected to make €30m at Christie’s Paris next month

Formerly attributed to “the school of Michelangelo”, experts now say the nude sketch is by the master's own hand

Philip Guston painting could make $30m, potentially breaking the artist's auction record

The sale at Sotheby's New York in May will coincide with the delayed opening of the controversial exhibition Philip Guston Now in Boston

Has the art market recovered? A deep dive into the Art Basel/UBS report

Plus, an exhibition about wartime hideouts in Poland and Ukraine, and Mondrian’s final work Victory Boogie Woogie

Hosted by Ben Luke. with guest speaker Melanie Gerlis. Produced by Julia Michalska, David. Clack, Aimee Dawson and Henrietta Bentall
Sponsored byChristie's

A Van Gogh letter is coming up for auction: €250,000 for a single sheet of paper

Vincent writes philosophically about his mental illness, a year after mutilating his ear

a blog by Martin Bailey

Louvre suspends sale of Chardin's record-breaking strawberries

The French museum is now seeking funds to buy the still-life painting, which was sold last week by Artcurial to a US dealer for €24.3m

Degas, Monet and Rothko among Texan philanthropist Anne Bass’s trove, expected to sell at Christie’s for $250m

Only two of the 12 works have been guaranteed, an oddity in the recent string of high-profile single-owner sales

Art Basel/UBS report: Global art market bounces back to above pre-pandemic levels—but recovery is uneven

Asian spending continues to grow, particularly at auction, while the UK’s market share shrinks to historic lows as Brexit woes linger

Two lots withdrawn from Christie’s antiquities sale after possible ties emerge to dealers known to traffic in illicit artefacts

The artefacts were flagged by Christos Tsiogiannis, who has, since 2006, been identifying looted antiquities through photographic archives of suspected and convicted dealers in plunder

The original NFT? Sotheby's to offer a receipt for an invisible work by Yves Klein for €500,000

The French conceptual artist made nine "empty zones" in the last three years of his life, which could be purchased only with pure gold

Bonhams continues acquisitions spree with purchase of Danish auction house Bruun Rasmussen

The firm bags a second Scandinavian auction house as sector consolidation continues

Shotgun the Warhol: Christie's to sell Shot Sage Blue Marilyn for $200m

The painting, being sold by the Thomas and Doris Ammann Foundation, could become the most expensive 20th century work of art ever sold at auction when it is offered in New York in May

A Canova statue—lost in an English garden for decades and bought for £5,200—will be sold at Christie's London for £8m

The 19th-century work, executed just before the sculptor's death, has been rediscovered after languishing outside for more than 50 years

Major Surrealist paintings make auction debut at Sotheby's Paris, including Picabia's very modern muse

The 25-lot sale tomorrow includes works that reflect "how irrational, how ugly, and how challenging the modern world can be"

Picasso bronze deaccessioned by the Metropolitan Museum could bring $30m at Christie’s

The sale of the canonical early Cubist sculpture will bolster the museum’s acquisitions fund and at no great cost to its collection, which includes another edition of the work

Franz Marc's £42.6m Foxes leads Christie's marathon Shanghai-London auction of Modern and contemporary art

The sprawling 20th and 21st century sale took over five hours and spanned Boudin to Banksy

Revealed: Van Gogh landscape once owned by Yves Saint Laurent coming up for sale, valued at $45m

Christie’s is to offer the never-exhibited painting in a New York auction in May

a blog by Martin Bailey

Sotheby's unveils second $200m tranche of works from the Macklowe collection

The works, by artists such as Warhol, Richter and Giacometti, will be sold in New York in May

Rubens could become most expensive work of art ever sold in Poland

Portrait of a Lady by the artist and his workshop is expected to sell for up to £4m at DesaUnicum in Warsaw next month

National Australia Bank to sell off its $7.2m contemporary art collection next week

Proceeds from the auctions, at Deutscher and Hackett and Leonard Joel, have been earmarked for climate change programme, but questions arise over bank's motivations

Van Gogh’s depiction of two lovers—sliced out of a landscape painting—comes up for sale

Sotheby’s will auction the surviving picture of the strolling couple on 2 March, estimated at £7m-£10m

a blog by Martin Bailey
Art marketcomment

Botticelli: my worries about the Man of Sorrows

The painting, sold last week at Sotheby's for $45.4m, was listed among workshop and studio pictures in Ronald Lightbown’s 1978 catalogue of Botticelli’s work, before being included as an autograph work in an exhibition at Frankfurt's Städel Museum in 2009. Here, in a pair of opinion pieces, two Renaissance experts give their contrasting views on its attribution

Bacon and beasts: an in-depth look at the visceral new show at London’s Royal Academy of Arts

Plus, Botticelli in New York and gender in Asian art in San Francisco

Hosted by Ben Luke and Aimee Dawson. With guest speaker Georgina Adam. Produced by Julia Michalska, David Clack and Henrietta Bentall
Sponsored byChristie's
Art marketfeature

Jewish icons or anti-Semitic memorabilia? The growing market for Nazi-era artefacts—and the Israeli collectors buying them

On the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we spoke with Eyal Ilya, owner of Pentagon Auction House in Israel, about the trend for Second World War artefacts

Lucian Freud's portrait of muse and fellow artist Janey Longman to be auctioned for first time with £15m price tag

Painting, acquired by private British collector “from the easel” in 1987, will be sold at Christie's in London in March

Van Ham auction house to sell inventory of insolvent Galerie Michael Schultz

Schultz, who died last month, was arrested in 2019 on suspicion he cheated customers