The art market rebounds: Sotheby's London sale breaks European records
Old Masters and Impressionists lead the recovery as auctioneers chase the "winner takes all" effect—and modest galleries are left behind.
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Sotheby's London auction house set a new European single-night record last week, clearing over 550 million Canadian dollars in sales from the collection of Joe Lewis and his daughter Vivienne. The sale signals a possible rebound for the global art market after difficult pandemic years, though the recovery is deeply uneven.
Amedeo Modigliani's Nu assis au collier (1917) sold for over 90 million Canadian dollars. Gustav Klimt's Portrait of Gertrud Loew (1902) fetched more than 65 million. A single Monet Water Lilies painting generated nearly 90 million dollars on its own. The Lewis collection—worth an estimated 1.5 billion dollars total—confirmed the family's status as a quasi-unparalleled global collector.
Joe Lewis, a finance magnate now in his late eighties, was convicted of insider trading in the U.S. in 2024 and subsequently pardoned by President Trump. The family is based in the Bahamas.
Global public-auction sales rose 4 percent in 2025, the first rebound after two consecutive years of decline, according to the Art Basel and UBS Art Market Report published in March. The worldwide art market now totals 85 billion Canadian dollars, with 50 billion from public sales.
But gains mask sharp disparities. Auction sales jumped 9 percent while gallery sales rose only 2 percent. The auction surge is driven almost entirely by exceptional works—the top 1 percent of 1 percent of global art patrimony. Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings alone surged 47 percent last year. Old Masters rebounded 30 percent after two years of decline. Contemporary work (post-1945) fell 2 percent to 6.4 billion.
The market increasingly follows a "winner takes all" rule: blockbuster works command astronomical prices while emerging artists and modest galleries fight for scraps. Sales of works exceeding 10 million U.S. dollars jumped 40 percent in 2025 compared to 2024.
