Mark Rothko’s Brown and Blacks in Reds sold for $85.8 million at Sotheby’s white glove auction (100% sold by lot) of the collection of Robert Mnuchin in New York last night. It was the second highest price for a Rothko at auction. The Mnuchin collection made $166.3 million. The Now and Contemporary auction at Sotheby’s last night totalled €266.8 million, a 110% increase on last years sale. The combined total was $433.1 million. There were artists records for Kenneth Noland, Ding Shilun, Joseph Jaeger, Yu Nishimura and Florian Krewer.
The Mnuchin collection was characterised by deep bidding, averaging 12 bids per lot, with bidders participating from 24 countries. Artworks from the collection of Jean and Terry de Gunzburg totalled $50.7 million. The standout results continue a strong wave of 100% sold sales in recent months at Sotheby’s around the world, starting with the sale of the Karpidas collection in September last year, followed by six white-glove sales at Sotheby’s New York last season and further white-glove sales of Modern and Contemporary Art in Hong Kong and London in March.
(See posts on antiquesandartireland.com for April 5 and May 2, 2026)
Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) – Number 7A, 1948 at Christie’s
So far in 2026 the rebound in the art market which began in the second half of last year has continued. In a world full of new uncertainties the big New York art sales this month look set to continue the trend. In a market where the premium is on rarity and quality there are some amazing offerings.
In the late 1940’s Jackson Pollock pioneered a revolutionary painting style that was utterly baffling to most people. Nowadays the art of ‘Jack the Dripper’ is unbuyable unless you happen to be one of the growing global band of billionaires – whose numbers now approach 4,000 from a figure of just 140 in 1987. The largest example of Jackson Pollock’s monumental drip paintings left in private hands, Number 7A, 1948 – from the collection of legendary Condé Nast co-owner S I Newhouse – is at Christie’s on May 18.
The first and only large scale drip painting ever to appear at auction was last seen at an exhibition at the Whitney Museum in 1977.
Constantin Brancusi (1867-1957) – Danaïde, 1913 at Christie’s.
Another great rarity from the S I Newhouse collection is Danaïde, conceived and cast in 1913 by Constantin Brancusi. Of the six bronzes cast of this model four are held in institutional collections, the Pompidou in Paris, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Tate London and Kunst Museum, Winterthur. This sculpture is the only gilded example left in private hands.
Both works are estimated at around $100 million. The Newhouse collection, which includes masterworks by Bacon, Johns, Matisse, Miro, Mondrian, Picasso, Rauschenburg and Warhol, is poised to become only the second collection ever to surpass the $1 billion mark established in 2022 with the sale the collection of Microsoft founder Paul G Allen.
At Sotheby’s on May 14 the collection of financier Robert Mnuchin featuring Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko is expected to make around $130 million. Sotheby’s Modern evening auction on May 19 is headed by Arlequin (Buste) painted by Picasso in 1909 and estimated in the region of $40 million. There are just ten works at this sale, which offers art by Georgia O’Keeffe, Wassily Kandinsky, Degas, Monet and Matisse.
Elizabeth Peyton (b1965) – Earl’s Court (Liam + Noel) at Sotheby’s. UPDATE: THIS MADE $1.9 MILLION
With masterworks from the last 80 years the Now and Contemporary evening auction at Sotheby’s in New York on May 14 is led by Basquiat’s Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown) (1983). There is art by by Rothko, Fontana and Calder from the collection of Jean and Terry de Gunzburg. Earl’s Court (Liam + Noel) December 1995 and dated 1996 by Elizabeth Peyton captures Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher kissing his brother Noel on the cheek. By appropriating a photograph from two concerts at Earl’s Court in London in November 1995 at the height of their fame she contrasts their strained relationship, unprecedented success with their care and appreciation as siblings, their glories with their faults. The estimate is $1.5 million – $2 million.
Later last year it became apparent that major collectors are becoming more picky. The upcoming New York sales offer lots of rich pickings for the super rich.
Mark Rothko No. 1 (1949) at Sotheby’s. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR $20.8 million
This storied self portrait by Francis Bacon leads one of the finest groups of School of London paintings ever brought to market. No less than four museum quality works by Bacon, Freud and Kossoff are at Sotheby’s Modern and Contemporary evening auction in London on March 4. The Bacon portrait was painted in 1972 in the shadow of a devastating personal loss. Struggling to cope following the death of his partner George Dyer, he obsessively painted himself again and again. Two career-defining portraits by Lucian Freud, and Leon Kossoff’s Children’s Swimming Pool—widely considered the artist’s masterpiece—complete the group. The School of London was a small group of free spirited artists who pursued their separate but related visions. Fully engaged with the world around them, they up-ended tradition and created a completely new path forward for figurative art.
Lucio Fontana – Teatrino 1964. UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD
No less than five seminal works by Lucio Fontana from a private German collection, along with pieces by Alberto Giacometti and Sam Francis, will lead the Contemporary evening sale at Sotheby’s in London on March 4. The seven works have a combined estimate of £15 million.
Sotheby’s describe it as the most complete survey of Fontana’s groundbreaking research to come to market in recent memory.
The breadth of Fontana’s experimentation during his most revolutionary years is exposed in work ranging from early punctures that questioned the confines of the picture plane to the dramatic cuts that transformed gesture into a three dimensional space. Most were acquired through the avant garde Galerie Schmela in Dusseldorf, where the inaugural 1957 exhibition included the then unknown 29 year old Yves Klein. Fontana’s first solo exhibition here in 1960 was as influential as it was innovative. His language quickly resonated far beyond Europe, informing the work of artists like Klein, Anish Kapoor, Robert Irwin, Olafur Eliasson and James Turrell. In their own way each extended the spatial and perceptual possibilities opened by Fontana.
Pieter Brueghel the Younger – The Census at Bethlehem c1604. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £5.2 million
The Census at Bethlehem by Pieter Brueghel the Younger places the Holy Family within a bustling Flemish winter landscape. Villagers queue to register for the census, children skate, throw snowballs and drag sledges across the frozen ground and drinkers gather around a makeshift tavern carved into an oak tree. The sacred is blended into the everyday as the Holy Family at the centre pass quietly through the crowd in a moving nod to the Nativity. The c1604 work exemplified Brueghel the Younger’s ability to capture the divine in the rhythms of ordinary life and is one of the largest known depictions of the subject.
The composition derives from a painting of the same name made in 1566 by the artist’s father, Pieter Brueghel the elder now in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. It is one of the most revered works of the Northern Renaissance. Brueghel the Younger was only a child at his father’s death and he devoted much of his career to preserving and re-interpreting these masterful inventions with his own acute observation of daily life and meticulous detail. The Nativity has always been a favourite subject for artists and this work sold for an above estimate £5,164,000 (€5,903,300) at Sotheby’s Old Masters and 19th century paintings auction in London this month.
Gustav Klimt – Blumenwiese (Blooming Meadow) sold for $86.9 million in November
Sotheby’s announced projected consolidated sales of $7.0 billion for 2025, a 17% increase on 2024. Auction sales rose 26% year-over-year to $5.7 billion, with sales accelerating significantly in the second half of the year, up 59% versus the second half of 2024. Private sales reached $1.2 billion, down slightly from the prior year. Both the Global Fine Art and Luxury categories posted strong gains, with Global Fine Art sales increasing 15% to $4.3 billion and Luxury sales up 22% to $2.7 billion.
The company sold the most valuable collection of the year for the sixth time in the last seven years – the Leonard A. Lauder Collection – and sold seven of the year’s top ten auction works globally. The company inaugurated its new global headquarters at the Breuer with six white-glove (100% sold) sales totaling $1.17 billion, including the highest total for Modern art sold in one week at Sotheby’s ($843 million), the highest value work of art ever sold at Sotheby’s (Gustav Klimt’s Bildnis Elisabeth Lederer (Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer) for $236.4 million) and the largest Contemporary Day sale ever.
Sotheby’s executed its most valuable single-owner sale ever staged by Sotheby’s in London and in Europe with Pauline Karpidas: The London Collection realising a combined total of $137 million.
Hans Eworth – Portrait of Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk (1538-1578). UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £3,212,000
One of the most significant Tudor portraits remaining in private hands is at Sotheby’s Old Master and 19th century paintings evening auction in London on December 3. Painted in 1562 by Hans Eworth, the leading English painter after Hans Holbein, it depicts Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, one of the most powerful noblemen at the court of Elizabeth I. A second cousin to the Queen and heir to one of England’s greatest dynasties, he was the son of Henry Howard, the ‘Poet Earl of Surrey’, and the grandson of the formidable 3rd Duke of Norfolk. Yet even his towering status could not shield him from political peril: he fell from favour and was executed for treason in 1572 – just ten years after this portrait was painted – following a conspiracy to replace Elizabeth I with Mary, Queen of Scots.
Born in Antwerp and active in London from the 1540s, Hans Eworth emerged as England’s leading portraitist in the years following Holbein’s death.
Frida Kahlo’s 1940 self portrait The Dream, the Bed sold for $54,660,000 at Sotheby’s in New York last night to become the most expensive work ever by a female artist. It surpassed the record for Georgia O’Keeffe’s Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 which sold for $44.4 million in 2014.
The painting shows Kahlo asleep in a wooden, colonial-style bed that floats. Above the bed lies a skeleton figure wrapped in dynamite. The artist depicted herself and her life. Injured in a bus accident aged 18 she began to paint whilst bedridden with a damaged spine and pelvis. She wore casts until her death in 1954 at age 47. The buyer’s identity was not revealed.
Gustav Klimt – Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer – sold for $236.4 million.
Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer by Klimt made $236.4 million at Sotheby’s in New York last night to become the most expensive auction sale of a modern work of art. This was the second highest price ever paid for a work of art at auction. The most expensive artwork sold at auction this year was from the collection of Leonard Lauder, philanthropist, cosmetics magnate and legendary collector who died aged 92 last June. He donated his $1 billion Cubist art collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
The $706 million total for the night included the white glove sale of 24 lots from the Lauder collection which brought in $456.2 million. The first Sotheby’s auction at the Breuer Building made the highest total ever achieved by Sotheby’s for a one night auction. The Now and Contemporary sale brought in $178.5 million.
The record for a work of art sold at auction is Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, sold by Christie’s for $450.3 million in 2017. In 2022 Andy Warhol’s Shot Sage Blue Marilyn sold for $195 million at Christie’s and this record has now been surpassed.
(See post on antiquesandartireland.com for November 1, 2025)
Gustav Klimt – Portrait of Elizabeth Lederer at Sotheby’s. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR $236.4 MILLION
With Klimt, Calder, Kahlo, Magritte, Rothko and Van Gogh among headliners at sales by Christie’s and Sotheby’s in New York this month the global art market is not short of exciting promise. Leading lights like this ensure that the market for art will never be dull even when it is in a state of flux.
There is resilience in the face of global uncertainty and looming threats like war, inflation and market collapse. The November sales have been carefully assembled. Many of the major works on offer have been exhibited at leading museums or come from major collections like that of Leonard Lauder at Sotheby’s. This reflects the fact that the focus of the market is less speculative than in headier times.
A masterpiece by Klimt – the striking full length ‘Portrait of Elizabeth Lederer’ – leads the auction series and could bring in as much as $150 million. The sale of the Lauder collection on November 18, described by the auctioneers as a once in a generation collection of 20th century masterpieces, will inaugurate Sotheby’s new global headquarters at the Breuer Building, formerly the Whitney Museum. The cosmetics magnate, who died aged 92 last June, donated around $1 billion worth of Cubist art to the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
Painted Wood by Alexander Calder at Christie’s. UPDATE: THIS MADE $20,415,000
Painted Wood, the most significant constellation work by Alexander Calder, is a leading highlight at Christie’s 20th Century evening sale on November 17. Measuring nearly seven feet in height and width it is the largest of his early painted wood mobiles to come to auction. The wood, string, wire and paint construction made in 1943 is guiding at $15 million – $20 million (€17.25 million – €25.87 million) the highest ever auction estimate for a Calder.
Sotheby’s will offer the Cindy and Jay Pritzker collection of Modern and Impressionist art with Van Gogh’s Romans parisiennes (Les Livres jaunes) – Parisian novels (the yellow books) – from 1887 at its heart. The collection features a monumental triptych by Matisse of Leda and the Swan and a Pont-Aven canvas by Gauguin. Frieda Kahlo’s psychologically charged El sueno (La cama) – The Dream (the bed) – is an intimate meditation on identity and mortality from an important private collection of Surrealist art. There are pioneering visions by Dorothea Tanning, Kay Sage, Remedios Varo and Valentine Hugo and other artists whose work expanded the range of Surrealism.
Frieda Kahlo El Sueno (La Cama) – The Dream (the bed) at Sotheby’s. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR $54.7 MILLION
Picasso, Mondrian, Rothko, Matisse, Franz Kline, Miro, Max Ernst and Braque feature in the Weis collection in a dedicated sale at Christie’s on November 17. This will precede the 20th century evening auction celebrating vangard artists from the Parisian studios of the Impressionists to the downtown lofts of post war New York. The sale offers masterpieces by Monet, Renoir, Chagall, Picasso, Leger, Calder, Richard Diebenkorn and David Hockney with monumental sculptures by Henry Moore, Isamu Noguchi and David Smith.
The 21st century evening sale at Christie’s on November 19 offers masterworks from the past 60 years including standout works by Richard Prince, Ed Ruscha, Jeff Koons and Andy Warhol.
Piet Mondrian – Composition with red and blue 1939-1941 from the Weis collection at Christie’s. UPDATE: THIS MADE $23,060,000
