[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Old-Masters-Evening-Sale-at-Sothebys-London-July-2026-Credit-Rayan-Bamhayan-Courtesy-Sothebys-46.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 London on Wednesday, Sotheby\u2019s Old Master & 19th Century Paintings and Sculpture sale brought in \u00a337.8 million ($50.2 million), a solid result that masked a sharply divided market. Record prices, a flurry of bidding for museum-quality works, and a \u00a313.6 million sculpture suggested demand for trophy property remains strong. At the same time, 10 lots failed to sell, exposing a market that has become increasingly unforgiving for more ordinary material. (All reported prices include the buyer\u2019s premium.)<\/p>\n \n\tComing less than 24 hours after Christie\u2019s equivalent sale topped its high estimate, Sotheby\u2019s reinforced what is quickly becoming the defining story of London\u2019s summer auctions. Collectors are still willing to compete fiercely for exceptional Old Masters. They\u2019re just becoming far more discerning about everything else.<\/p>\n \n\tThe evening\u2019s top lot was the Hamilton Laoco\u00f6n, a monumental Neoclassical marble by Auguste-Jean-Marie Carbonneaux after the celebrated ancient sculpture. After a 15-minute bidding battle involving four collectors from Asia and Europe, the work sold for \u00a313.62 million ($18 million), becoming the second-highest price ever paid for a pre-modern sculpture at auction.<\/p>\n Alex Bell<\/strong>, chairman emeritus of Sotheby\u2019s UK and Old Masters worldwide, said the work succeeded because it combined scale, rarity, impeccable provenance, and immediate visual impact. \u201cYou had all the elements there of different types of collectors finding this object,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \n\tAmong the paintings, Rembrandt\u2019s\u00a0Let the Little Children Come Unto Me<\/em>\u00a0realized \u00a38 million ($10.6 million), squarely within its estimate. That result may have been less dramatic than some of the evening\u2019s records, but it was revealing in its own way. The picture was nearly three-quarters finished when the artist died in 1669, leaving passages that expose his working process. Rather than igniting a speculative bidding war, it sold at exactly the level specialists had anticipated\u2014a reminder that the market\u2019s consensus around great masterpieces remains remarkably disciplined.<\/p>\n \n\tElsewhere, buyers showed they were perfectly willing to abandon discipline when the right picture appeared.<\/p>\n \n\tHans Memling\u2019s intimate\u00a0Virgin Mary Nursing the Christ Child<\/em>, one of the last important devotional panels by the artist still in private hands, climbed to \u00a33.51 million ($4.66 million), setting a new auction record. Bernard van Orley\u2019s\u00a0Virgin and Children<\/em>\u00a0reached \u00a32.04 million ($2.71 million), while Cosimo Rosselli\u2019s\u00a0Christ as the Man of Sorrows<\/em>\u00a0more than doubled its high estimate to sell for \u00a3960,000 ($1.3 million). A set of seven early 17th-century Flemish copper paintings illustrating the Seven Days of Creation soared to \u00a3768,000 ($1.02 million), nearly six times its high estimate, while Palma il Vecchio and Michiel van Musscher also established new auction records. Gainsborough\u2019s\u00a0Portrait of Mrs. Sloper<\/em>, estimated at just \u00a340,000 to \u00a360,000, brought \u00a3230,400 ($305,000), nearly four times its high estimate.<\/p>\n \n\tWhat united many of the night\u2019s strongest performers wasn\u2019t a single school or subject. It was that they offered collectors something memorable. \u201cI do think the works that visually resonate with new collectors\u2014and the works that tell stories\u2014are the ones that perform,\u201d said\u00a0Elisabeth Lobkowicz<\/strong>, a director and specialist in Sotheby\u2019s Old Master Paintings department. Bell agreed, arguing that no single ingredient explains success. Sometimes it\u2019s extraordinary condition. Sometimes it\u2019s a celebrated provenance. Sometimes it\u2019s sheer visual impact. More often, it\u2019s some combination of all three.<\/p>\n \n\tThat helps explain why the sale\u2019s final tally tells two stories at once.<\/p>\n \n\tTen lots failed to sell, a considerably higher number than Christie\u2019s posted the previous evening. Yet collectors weren\u2019t simply avoiding lower-priced works. Twelve pictures carrying high estimates of \u00a3200,000 or less found buyers, while five in that same price bracket failed to sell. Four additional buy-ins were estimated between \u00a3300,000 and \u00a3500,000.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe contrast with Christie\u2019s was instructive. Tuesday\u2019s sale produced just three buy-ins and set six artist auction records, led by Sir Thomas Lawrence\u2019s\u00a0Portrait of the Duke of Wellington<\/em>\u00a0and a pair of Jan van Huysum still lifes. Sotheby\u2019s generated another flurry of records\u2014including Memling, Van Orley, and Rosselli\u2014but it also produced more than three times as many unsold lots.<\/p>\n \n\tThe two evenings suggest collectors remain eager to compete for museum-quality pictures, even as they become increasingly demanding elsewhere in the market.<\/p>\n \n\tBell cautioned against drawing too broad a conclusion from the buy-ins. \u201cSometimes you\u2019ve got a very good picture where collectors weren\u2019t there on that particular day,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd then sometimes \u2026 the discount on the estimate needs to be greater than we had applied.\u201d Estimating an Old Master, he added with a laugh, is equal parts \u201cpsychology and economics.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIf the buyer pool is changing, advisors say that\u2019s no accident.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cTen million can\u2019t get you much as far as significant contemporary works go, but for that same price you can walk away with a small Rembrandt or a Titian,\u201d said\u00a0Mari-Claudia Jim\u00e9nez<\/strong>, a partner and head of Withers Art and Advisory. Before joining the firm, Jim\u00e9nez served as chairman and president of Sotheby\u2019s Americas, where she oversaw the auction house\u2019s Old Masters department. \u201cYoung collectors find the value proposition in Old Masters quite seductive. They can buy a 500-year-old work by a blue-chip master for the same price they would pay for a recently painted work that hasn\u2019t stood the test of time.\u201d<\/p>\n Philip Hoffman<\/strong>, chairman and founder of The Fine Art Group, said many of today\u2019s buyers are crossing over from other collecting categories. Contemporary collectors, private equity executives furnishing country houses, and even artists such as David Hockney and Jeff Koons have all helped broaden interest in the field. Rumor has it that other prominent Old Master collectors include Blackstone co-founder Stephen Schwarzman and\u00a0Law & Order<\/em>\u00a0creator Dick Wolf, though neither has been linked to this week\u2019s London sales. Even so, Hoffman argues the market remains highly concentrated.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThere are serious collectors of Old Masters, but very few of them,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a downhill struggle for the middle and lower end of the market.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tChristie\u2019s and Sotheby\u2019s summer buffet of Old Master pictures offered a useful snapshot of where that market stands today. Across two evenings, collectors chased Van Huysums, a Lawrence, a Memling, a Rembrandt, and the Hamilton Laoco\u00f6n, producing record prices and spirited bidding for works that combined rarity, scholarship, and visual appeal. But the auctions also showed that demand has become increasingly object-driven. In Old Masters today, the category itself is no longer enough. The picture has to give collectors a reason to fall in love.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/market\/london-sothebys-christies-old-masters-sales-1234791036\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Old-Masters-Evening-Sale-at-Sothebys-London-July-2026-Credit-Rayan-Bamhayan-Courtesy-Sothebys-46.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 London on Wednesday, Sotheby\u2019s Old Master & 19th Century Paintings and Sculpture sale brought in \u00a337.8 million ($50.2 million), a solid result that masked a sharply divided market. Record prices, a […]<\/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-2022137","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\/2022137","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=2022137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2022137\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2022137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2022137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2022137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}