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After Christie’s produced its best numbers for a Frieze Week auction in seven years the previous night, Sotheby’s found itself with great expectations to fill on October 16 in London. When all the lots were tallied, Sotheby’s Contemporary Evening Sale raked in £47.6 million ($63.3 million), across 27 lots, near the upper end of its presale expectations of £32.6 million to £48.3 million. The total marked a 25 percent increase from the equivalent sale last year. However, the result paled in comparison to Christie’s 20th/21st Century Evening Sale which more than doubled its closest competitor with £106.9 million ($142.9 million) in total turnover.

Francis Bacon: Portrait of a Dwarf

Francis Bacon, Portrait of a Dwarf, Executed in 1975, oil on canvas. Photo: Sotheby’s

The centerpiece of Sotheby’s evening sale was Francis Bacon’s Portrait of a Dwarf, 1975, which sold well above its estimate band of £6 million–£9 million for £13.1 million ($17.6 million), after nearly 20 minutes of bidding between four phone specialists and dealer Emma Ward of Ward Moretti. The psychologically charged painting was executed in Paris four years after the death of George Dyer and was retained by Bacon for his personal collection until 1981.

Originally conceived as the right-hand section of a larger canvas, the painting was separated at Bacon’s direction when he decided the two halves carried conflicting narratives. He retained the present portion, which he later exhibited as “property of the artist” at Galerie Claude Bernard in 1977.

The subject fuses traits drawn from several of Bacon’s intimates: the hairline of George Dyer, the features of photographer Peter Beard, the torso of Lucian Freud, and the artist’s own foreshortened legs. This composite body, set against a shuttered blue-black interior, evokes Bacon’s long dialogue with Diego Velázquez, whose court dwarfs provided a point of reference for the pose and the figure’s elevated pedestal.

Other Top Lots: Basquiat, Warhol & Fontana

Lucio Fontana, Concetto spaziale, Attese, Executed in 1964, water-based paint on canvas. Photo: Sotheby’s.

Beyond the Bacon, results for the upper tier of the Sotheby’s sale were solid but far from stunning. Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled (The Arm), 1982, achieved £5.53 million ($7 million), squarely within its £4.5 million–£6.5 million ($5.8 million–$8.4 million) estimate, while Andy Warhol’s Four Pink Marilyns (Reversal Series), 1986, sold for £4.33 million ($5.5 million) against a £3 million–£5 million ($3.9 million–$6.6 million) target. A blue Concetto spaziale, Attese, 1965, by Lucio Fontana, distinguished by its fourteen vertical slashes, came in slightly above estimate at £2.8 million ($3.7 million) following competitive bidding from four collectors.

Elsewhere, results were mixed. Hurvin Anderson’s Marlene’s Big Sister was the only work to carry a house guarantee and it was bought in. For its part, red-chip favorite Matthew Wong’s The Visit, 2017, fell short of its £1.5 million ($1.9 million) to £2 million ($2.6 million) guidance, in selling for £720,000 ($920,000). Yves Klein’s Untitled Fire Colour Painting (F.C. 28) was another casualty, as it failed to meet its £1.8 million ($2.3 million) low estimate despite an irrevocable bid and went unsold.

Overall, the sale achieved a healthy 89 percent sell-through rate by lot, indicating that well-curated, correctly priced works continued to attract competition.

White-Glove Result for hockney’s iPad Drawings

David Hockney, The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011 (twenty eleven) - 19 February, Executed in 2011. iPad drawing printed in colors. Photo: Sotheby’s

The most complete showing for Sotheby’s came the following evening, October 17, with The Arrival of Spring, a dedicated single-owner sale of 17 iPad drawings by David Hockney that achieved £6.2 million ($8.3 million). The result doubled its aggregate high estimate and concluded with a white-glove result. The digital works were created in 2011 on Hockney’s iPad and printed on paper and were first exhibited at London’s Royal Academy in 2012 where their experimentation with a new medium attracted wide public attention. Modest in scale compared to his large-format paintings, the series captures the changing landscape around Hockney’s Yorkshire home: hedgerows, trees, and fields awakening after winter.

All 17 drawings were sold to benefit the David Hockney Foundation, which supports visual arts education and the preservation of the artist’s work and archives. Bidding was active across Europe and the United States, with American buyers accounting for approximately 40 percent of total purchasers.

Phillips Posts Year-Over-Year Decline

Emma McIntyre, Seven types of ambiguity, Executed in 2021, oil and oilstick on linen. Photo: Phillips.

Rounding out London’s Frieze Week auctions, Phillips staged its Modern and Contemporary Art Evening Sale on October 16, achieving £10.3 million ($13.9 million) across 22 lots. In contrast to both Christie’s and Sotheby’s who managed to break out of a downtrend, the total represented a 32 percent decline year on year.

Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled (Pestus), 1982, topped the sale at £2.37 million ($3.19 million), while Emma mcintyre’s Seven Types of Ambiguity, 2021, more than doubled its high estimate to reach £167,700 ($225,000), a new record for the artist.  Despite some quality lots that attracted attention, the overall result for Phillips was relatively weak. Four lots failed to sell and another four were withdrawn prior to the auction, resulting in a 64 percent sell-through rate. Works by Banksy and Sigmar Polke were among those that went unsold.

Next Stop: Paris

The focus now shifts to Paris, where Sotheby’s will host two noteworthy auctions to coincide with Art Basel Paris which runs from October 24-26: Modernités and Surrealism and Its Legacy. Two Amedeo Modigliani portraits unseen for five decades will lead the Modernités auction. Bust of Elvira, 1918–19, and Raymond, 1915, are each estimated at €5.5–7.5 million ($6.4–8.7 million). The Surrealism and Its Legacy session will feature René Magritte’s La magie noire, 1934, which carries an estimate of €5–7 million ($5.8–8.1  million), alongside works by Paul Delvaux, Joan Mitchell, Lucio Fontana, and Andy Warhol.

Taken together, the London evening auctions at Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and Phillips generated approximately £165 million ($216 million), up about 22 percent from last year’s combined total of roughly £135 million ($165 million). While modest by historic standards, the mild rebound suggests the market may finally be reversing trend after several years of contraction.

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