[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/venicecity.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
Editor\u2019s Note:<\/strong>\u00a0This story originally appeared in\u00a0On Balance,\u00a0<\/em>the ARTnews\u00a0newsletter about the art market and beyond.\u00a0Sign up here<\/em>\u00a0to receive it every Wednesday.<\/em><\/p>\n \n\tIn mid-March, just before Sotheby\u2019s modern and contemporary evening sale in London, the house\u2019s co-heads of UK private sales, James Francis Fox\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0David Rothschild\u00a0<\/strong>, ushered me into a stately backroom for a look at its invitation-only selling exhibition, \u201cThe Apartment.\u201d Around $40 million worth of art hung on the walls, including works by David Hockney, George Condo, Gerhard Richter, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, along with designer furniture by Rose Uniacke\u2014also for sale\u2014to complete the in-home tableau.<\/p>\n \n\tAs Fox and Rothschild told me, around half of the 12 works had already sold, with only two days to go. On one wall, there was conspicuous patch of white paint where a Warhol dollar sign had been removed by its new owner. Two hundred of Sotheby\u2019s top collectors were sent an invitation to the show that consisted of a key in a box.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWe wanted to create a buzz,\u201d Rothschild, who has since been promoted to global lead of private selling exhibitions, said. \u201cWe wanted to get big collectors to come and see the works in person, to imagine what they might look like in their homes.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe exhibition was just the latest invitation-only private sale hosted by Sotheby\u2019s; competitor Christie\u2019s has been holding its own two in recent years, too. Fox, who has since left Sotheby\u2019s, said that private sales are \u201cflourishing\u201d at the house, and that it sees such events as \u201ca new way to engage collectors.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIn 2020, Sotheby\u2019s announced that it generated a record $1.5 billion in private sales. While that intake was no doubt boosted by pandemic closures, the house said it has banked between $1.1 billion and $1.3 billion privately each year since, accounting for roughly a quarter of the house\u2019s total annual sales.<\/p>\n \n\tRothschild has been increasingly central to that category. Since moving from New York to London in 2024, he has curated four selling shows in London, including the first edition of \u201cThe Apartment\u201d sale in 2025\u2014which Rothschild described as \u201ca very successful financial venture\u201d\u2014as well its follow-up this March, roughly worth a combined $340 million. The other two were open to the public. Sotheby\u2019s has other private exhibitions in the pipeline later this year, including one in its new gallery in Zurich to coincide with Art Basel in June and another in Paris in October. The latter \u201cwill be magnificent,\u201d Rothschild said.<\/p>\n \n\tChristie\u2019s is also increasingly reliant on these stealthy transactions. According to the house, its three most expensive paintings sold in 2025 were sold privately. While Christie\u2019s refused to disclose the details of the deals, a spokesperson said that all three sales outpaced its top auction sale last year, Mark Rothko\u2019s 1958 painting, No. 31 (Yellow Stripe)<\/em>, which went for $62.1 million in New York. Christie\u2019s traded $1.5 billion in art privately in 2025, also accounting for just under a quarter of its global sales. Seventeen of those works went for north of $15 million, up from 13 works in 2024. Fifty percent of the house\u2019s private sales buyers were new to the channel, the house said.<\/p>\n Adrian Meyer<\/strong>, Christie\u2019s global head of private sales, outlined one idea for the increasing popularity of the sales channel.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThis growth is linked to increasing global uncertainty and general market volatility,\u201d he told\u00a0ARTnews<\/em>. \u201cIn that context, private sales offer a particularly suitable selling environment because they provide reassurance to clients. When you sell privately, you know what you\u2019re going to get. By contrast, at auction, the final price is uncertain. Security and confidentiality are key elements of the private sales model.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tRothschild similarly concluded that \u201cin periods of uncertainty\u2026 sellers value the ability to avoid conservative public estimates and the binary nature of auction outcomes.\u201d He added, \u201cDiscretion is important, but pricing security is the primary motivator.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tRaging conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, a US-led trade war, and worries about a global recession have taken their toll on the art market, though 2025\u00a0saw modest growth,\u00a0thanks to several trophy sales last November. But if the world was set right tomorrow, would private sales wane as an important channel?\u00a0 \n\tPhillips, too, has seen private sales surge, with a 66 percent increase last year, and a total that has doubled since 2020. However, the house doesn\u2019t host invitation-only selling exhibitions or closed auctions; all of its shows are open to the public.\u00a0<\/p>\n Miety Heiden<\/strong>, the house\u2019s chairman of private sales, told me that the post-pandemic art market, distinguished by \u201ca more thoughtful, measured approach to collecting,\u201d has been \u201cvery positive for private sales.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIt provides an alternative environment to auction. Collectors and sellers alike value discretion, flexibility, and certainty, and that\u2019s exactly where private sales excel,\u201d she said. \u201cThey allow us to meet the market where it is, in a tailored and efficient way.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAs\u00a0Artnet<\/em>pointed out\u00a0in its recent\u00a0Intelligence Report<\/em>, Christie\u2019s secretive, invite-only, single-lot private auctions have, ironically, been well-covered in past years by its columnist Kenny Schachter and the\u00a0Canvas<\/em>\u2019s Jeremy Hodgkin. These sales reportedly include Mark Rothko\u2019s 1951 painting\u00a0No. 6 (Violet, Green and Red)<\/em>for $195 million and Vincent van Gogh\u2019s 1888 painting\u00a0The Zouave\u00a0<\/em>for about $200 million.<\/p>\n \n\tMeanwhile, innovative new platforms like Fair Warning are also hosting their own exclusive, single-lot sales. It sold a Warhol portrait of Brigitte Bardot for $16.7 million last year, perhaps inspiring Sotheby\u2019s to include another portrait of the late actress by Warhol, estimated at $14 million\u2013$18 million in its May sale in New York. (Jussi Pylkk\u00e4nen<\/strong>, the former global president of Christie\u2019s and the founder of London-based Art Pylkk\u00e4nen art advisory, told me the Fair Warning price \u201ccertainly encouraged Sotheby\u2019s to quote a record estimate for their example.\u201d)<\/p>\n \n\tEarlier this month, the auction upstart added Saara Pritchard, a former Christie\u2019s and Sotheby\u2019s specialist, as a partner. On Wednesday, it\u00a0announced\u00a0a new format, \u201cNo Warning,\u201d where a work appears for sale with a single purchase price, for a short period of time.<\/p>\n \n\tNext, Christie\u2019s is hoping to continue the momentum from its strong 20th and 21st century March triple header in London, when it took $264 million, by hosting an invitation-only, private selling show at the opening of the Venice Biennale in May. It\u2019s titled \u201cGhost Pavilion: A Venice Revealed.\u201d Located at the Palazzo Ca\u2019 Dario, it will feature top works by J. M. W. Turner, \u00c9douard Manet, and Titian. There will also be contemporary works by Warhol, Louise Bourgeois, and Mark Bradford.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIt will be dramatic,\u201d Meyer said. \u201cThe venue is striking and the show reflects how we are constantly renewing our models and client experiences. The palazzo itself has a haunted reputation, so the exhibition theme explores dreams, nightmares, ghosts, and death.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIf hosting the most spectacular, experience-led, private selling exhibitions were a game of one-upmanship, Christie\u2019s Venice outing might just give it the edge over Sotheby\u2019s \u201cThe Apartment.\u201d The bar has been set. Watch this space.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tPylkk\u00e4nen, who sometimes takes to the rostrum for Fair Warning, told me that private sales are being boosted by a new upper tier of collectors that have become wary of buying at auction. This stratum, created over the last 15 years as the art market has globalized, focuses on acquiring masterpieces, he said.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThe market expanded dramatically and became truly global\u2014far beyond what even we at Sotheby\u2019s and Christie\u2019s anticipated,\u201d he explained. As private buyers and institutions from Russia, China, and the Middle East began collecting major, museum-quality works aggressively, the sale of pieces valued about $20 million became \u201crelatively standard,\u201d Pylkk\u00e4nen said. That shift, he added, pushed the market away from being \u201cvolume-driven\u201d and toward \u201cincreasing polarization at the top end.\u201d While such buyers dominated sales for masterpieces in the 2010s, that top tier of collectors now \u201cwant to mitigate the risks of buying at auction.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tPylkk\u00e4nen said that collectors are increasingly asking advisers which channel they should use to sell: public auction, private auction, or through a private sale. \u201cSelling has become a more complicated and more nuanced choice than it was ever before. Fifteen years ago, it was straightforward. You put a major painting to auction, or you sold it privately to an individual through one agent. Owners of major works are increasingly turning to advisers to decide which channel to use.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIn December, Sotheby\u2019s longtime head of private sales David Schrader\u2014nicknamed \u201cThe Trader\u201d to some\u2014left to form a\u00a0new secondary market gallery\u00a0with Pace and Emmanuel Di Donna. After joining the house in 2017, Schrader was credited with transforming its approach to backroom deals. Rothschild, who was hired by him, said that Sotheby\u2019s post-Schrader approach has been focused on \u201celevating the presentation and client engagement.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThat said, we still need the everyday, purely transactional deal flow that David was amazing at,\u201d he said. \u201cHe was focused on just getting as many pieces for sale as humanly possible.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tWhile both Rothschild and Meyer see private sales continuing to grow and possibly taking up an increasing share of their house\u2019s business, neither expects them to replace public auctions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/market\/private-sales-surging-auction-houses-christies-sothebys-1234782368\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/venicecity.jpg?w=1024″] Editor\u2019s Note:\u00a0This story originally appeared in\u00a0On Balance,\u00a0the ARTnews\u00a0newsletter about the art market and beyond.\u00a0Sign up here\u00a0to receive it every Wednesday. In mid-March, just before Sotheby\u2019s modern and contemporary evening sale in London, the house\u2019s co-heads of UK private sales, James Francis Fox\u00a0and\u00a0David Rothschild\u00a0, ushered me into a stately backroom for a look […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1898417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1898417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1898417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1898417\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1898417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1898417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1898417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Meyer was not so sure. \u201cWe have deep knowledge of who the active buyers are and what they\u2019re looking for, we can connect them with sellers organically.\u201d Rothschild echoed Meyer\u2019s sentiments.<\/p>\n