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This year’s marquee spring London auctions put forward a noticeably streamlined set of offerings. Christie’s led the way with a marathon sale that included sought-after canvases of European Surrealism among the 72 total lots, while Sotheby’s and Phillips achieved more muted results on the back of Yoshitomo Nara, Joan Mitchell and reduced quantity of lots.

Auctioneer Adrien Meyer selling René Magritte’s La reconnaissance infinie, 1933, at Christie’s The Art of the Surreal Evening Sale on March 5, 2025. Photo: Christie’s.

Demand for Surrealism Drives Results at Christie’s Three-Hour Long Sale

Christie’s London achieved a combined total of £130.3 million ($166.6 million) (all prices including fees) at its back-to-back 20th/21st Century Evening Sale and The Art of the Surreal Evening Sale on March 5, 2025. The results, with 94% of lots sold by volume and 97% by value, were by far the strongest of the London auction season.

Surrealist works achieved noteworthy results, led by René Magritte’s La reconnaissance infinie, 1933, which sold for £10.3 million ($13.3 million). The work exceeded its high estimate of £9 million ($11.5 million) and marked the highest price achieved during the week of spring sales. The painting features Magritte’s trademark enigmatic imagery: a tableau of a neatly dressed man perched atop an enigmatic floating orb, shielding his eyes as he gazes thoughtfully across a stark mountainous landscape. It attracted active interest from collectors bidding via Christie's New York specialists.

Paul Delvaux, La ville endormie, 1938, oil on canvas. Photo: Christie’s.

Depth of bidding could also be found for three previously unseen paintings by Belgian Surrealist Paul Delvaux, held privately by hotelier Bruno Brasselle for over three decades. Leading this group was Delvaux’s La ville endormie, 1938, a large-scale canvas depicting nude, sleepwalking women amidst classical ruins. It surpassed its high estimate nearly threefold in realizing £6.2 million ($7.96 million). Collectively, the Delvaux trio – which also included Les belles de nuit (Comédie du soir ou La comédie), 1936, and Nuit de Noël, 1956 – brought in £12.9 million ($16.56 million), far exceeding their combined high estimate of £4.8 million ($6.12 million).

Christie’s broader 20th/21st Century Sale was steady, totaling £82.2 million ($105.2 million), comfortably within its pre-sale estimate range of £61.5–£93 million ($79.3–$120 million). Top lots included Francis Bacon’s compact Portrait of Man with Glasses III, 1963, and Tamara de Lempicka’s bold Portrait du Docteur Boucard, 1928, each selling for £6.64 million ($8.55 million), slightly above their pre-sale low estimates of £6 ($7.7 million) and £5 million ($6.4 million), respectively.

Other notable sales include Michael Andrews’s School IV: Barracuda under Skipjack, 1978, which achieved an artist-record price at £6 million ($7.8 million), and Amedeo Modigliani’s Portrait de Lunia Czechowska, which sold for £6.29 million ($8.1 million), comfortably above its low estimate of £4 million ($5.1 million). Egon Schiele’s Knabe in Matrosenanzug (Boy in a Sailor Suit), 1914, restituted to the heirs of Viennese cabaret star Fritz Grünbaum, more than doubled its high estimate to achieve £3.3 million ($4.2 million).

Some solid results were not enough to change the glaring fact that the evening’s total turnover was down 34% from the equivalent Christie’s sale in 2024.

Lisa Brice Breaks Record at an Otherwise Modest Sotheby’s London Sale

Lisa Brice, After Embah, 2018, tempera, gesso and ink on canvas. Photo: Sotheby’s.

Christie’s relative success stood in contrast to a more subdued performance at Sotheby’s, whose Modern and Contemporary evening sale on March 4, 2025, highlighted the ongoing pressures faced by the London market. With a turnover of £62.5 million ($79.5 million), Sotheby's saw less than half as much sales volume as Christie’s. The sale also had 34 fewer lots. The sluggish numbers signaled difficulties in sourcing premium consignments amid geopolitical tension and an auction calendar spread increasingly thin across New York, Paris and Hong Kong.

Among the sale’s highlights was Yoshitomo Nara’s striking Cosmic Eyes (in the Milky Lake), which sold for £9 million ($11.5 million), surpassing its £6–8 million pre-sale estimate. Painted in 2005, the work depicts a young cartoon girl partially submerged in milky water, her luminous eyes evoking innocence before the mystery of the cosmos. Buyer interest may have been boosted by an upcoming retrospective of the artist’s work at London's Hayward Gallery, set to open in June.

Yoshitomo Nara, Cosmic Eyes (in the Milky Lake), 2005, acrylic and glitter on canvas. Photo: Sotheby’s.

The auction’s most unexpected result came from South African artist Lisa Brice’s canvas, After Embah, 2018, which soared past its £1-1.5 million estimate to reach £5.4 million ($6.9 million), establishing a new auction record for the artist. The work is a provocative reinterpretation of classic paintings by Édouard Manet, infused with references to contemporary figures such as rapper Nicki Minaj. The sale of After Embah continues Brice’s market momentum; another iteration of the painting had set a previous artist record of $3.2 million in 2021.

Despite these standout results, the auction struggled to generate broader enthusiasm. Banksy’s anticipated Crude Oil (Vettriano), 2005, consigned by Mark Hoppus of blink-182, performed within expectations, selling for £4.3 million ($5.5 million) against an estimate of £3–5 million. Gerhard Richter's 1995 abstract, estimated at £5–7 million ($6.4–8.9 million), was withdrawn shortly before the auction, significantly weakening the evening’s overall offering. Sotheby’s “The Now” segment which focuses on ultracontemporary art was also noticeably absent from the program. The sale total for the evening represented a 24% decline compared to its 2024 equivalent.

Presale Estimates Misjudge Buyer Interest at Phillips

Henry Highley auctioning Joan Mitchell's Canada II, 1975, at Phillips Modern and Contemporary Evening Sale in London, March 6, 2025. Photo: Phillips.

Phillips's Modern and Contemporary Art Evening Sale on March 6 proved to be the most affected by market uncertainties, as it generated only £15 million ($18.9 million), well below its presale estimate band of £17 million-£24 million ($21-31 million). With two withdrawals and three unsold lots, the auction’s overall sell-through rate was 90%, yet most artworks struggled to exceed their mid-estimates.

Joan Mitchell’s Canada II, 1975, a substantial triptych created shortly after her Whitney retrospective, led the auction, though it sold for £2.7 million ($3.4 million), a few bids short of the £3–5 million estimate. Similarly, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s landscape Pattya, 1984, despite strong provenance, sold for an underwhelming £1.7 million ($2.1 million), against a low estimate of £2 million.

For this sale, Phillips echoed Sotheby’s omission of its “The Now” segment in deciding to move away from its typical focus on emerging artists. Instead, it prioritized more established Post-War names. Pablo Picasso’s Tête d’homme et nu assis, 1964, failed to find a buyer, while Josef Albers, an artist with a history of seven-figure sales, realized a price of £406,400 with Study to Homage to the Square: Consonant, 1957.

Art market attention will now turn to the upcoming May sales in New York to see if the trend of diminishing annual turnover can reverse.

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