Fine-art market sees buyers return

The winter of 2024/2025 ran on for an unusually long time in the fine-art market, which really only woke from its hibernation as summer got going. In May, as the flowers were blooming, Alberto Giacometti’s sculpture Grande tête mince (1955), which had been valued at $70million, sent chills through the auction market when Sotheby’s found wealthy buyers were still sleeping. Then, the fine-art market woke up.

In July, Canaletto’s Venice, the Return of the Bucintoro on Ascension Day (1730s) sold for £31.9million with Christie’s in London to set a new high-price record for the artist. It’s perhaps no coincidence that the summer was also when the stock market took off and as the year progressed, wealthy collectors didn’t look back. Nine of the top ten most expensive artworks sold at auction in 2025 were sold last autumn.

In November, Mark Rothko’s No. 31 (Yellow Stripe) (1958) sold for $62.2million with Christie’s, which helped the auction house to its most profitable sales series in New York in three years, with a total of $964.5million. November was also the month rival Sotheby’s brought the hammer down on the most expensive artwork of the year – Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (1916 – pictured) by Gustav Klimt, which sold for an eye-watering $236.4 million to set a new high-price auction record for a work of modern art and the second-highest price fetched for any artwork sold at auction ever. It was a standout year for works by the Austrian painter. Paintings by Klimt also fetched the second- and third-highest prices for artworks sold at auction in 2025. It was the perfect way to toast what was the opening night of Sotheby’s new headquarters in New York.

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Fine-art market bidders get younger

In the end, what had looked to be another humdrum year at the start turned out to be anything but. Projected global fine art sales at Sotheby’s rose 15% from a year earlier to $4.3billion and across all departments auction sales rose 26% year-on-year to $5.7billion. The corresponding projected figure for Christie’s is $4.7billion, an 8% rise on 2024. And Phillips, the third of the “big three” auction houses, reported $725million in auction sales and global sales (with private sales added in) rose by a tenth from the previous year to $927million.

All three also reported rising demand from younger buyers. A third of buyers at Phillips last year were making their first purchases, while “Millennials and Gen Z” (aged 45 and younger) accounted for 40% of purchases at the auction house’s Dropshop online marketplace. Similarly, at Christie’s 46% of new bidders were “Millennials or younger”, a 5% year-on-year increase, while the auction house’s female client base grew by 10%. New buyers were mainly drawn to the luxury goods sales, including jewellery, handbags and wine, accounting for 38% of purchases – a trend confirmed by Sotheby’s, where 29% of bidders were aged under 40, although, perhaps surprisingly given prices, this cohort also accounted for 17% of buyers of fine art. It’s a trend the auction houses will like to see continue in 2026.

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