The London sales opened with a record-setting £393.4 million night for Sotheby’s, led by the benchmark-shattering £273.6 million Lewis sale, which became not only the most expensive single-owner collection sold at auction but the highest result for an evening sale in Europe in more than a decade. It was a tough act to follow for the other major houses, particularly given that in 2024, Christie’s restructured its summer season in London, limiting its marquee sales to October and March. Its summer sales also integrate categories while emphasizing broader cross-collecting strategies rather than relying on blockbuster evening auctions built around a few star lots or artist names. Yet it did have one thing going for it: a major consignment from the Zabludowicz Collection—one of the most influential art holdings in the U.K., estimated at £15 million.
Anita and Poju Zabludowicz’s collection played a key role in the British art scene at a pivotal moment in its evolution. Today comprising more than 5,000 works, many acquired directly from artists’ studios, it is anchored in the British art scene of the 1990s and the rise of the Young British Artists, but extends to international artists the couple acquired early and who are now firmly established on the global stage. According to rumors, after years of championing emerging talent, they decided to sell as they grew apart from an art world whose dynamics they no longer recognized. (Or not. They and their daughter were spotted at Art Basel week, looking at work.)
The dedicated single-owner sale, Beyond Ordinary – Then. Now. Next. Works from the Zabludowicz Collection on June 25, squarely met its presale estimate, closing with a satisfying £15,448,081 ($20,453,259), with an 89 percent sell-through rate by lot and 97 percent by value, with three lots guaranteed and after three of the 56 lots were withdrawn (33, 37, 52). The top lot, Philip Guston’s 1977 work Mirror Head, sold just above its low estimate for £3.9 million.
Among the work by British artists, Antony Gormley’s Cloud XXXII, dated 2000 and acquired by the couple from his show at White Cube that same year, sold for £381,000, also just above its low estimate of £300,000, while Damien Hirst’s I Love You (1994-1995) squarely met its estimate, selling for £762,000. Mark Bradford’s Father South and Elsewhere also met expectations, selling for £1.27 million, as did Rashid Johnson’s Untitled Broken Crowd (2021), which landed at £952,500 against a £1.2 million high estimate. An additional Johnson sold a few lots later for £111,760, surpassing its £60,000-80,000 estimate. An iconic Richard Prince Cowboy, dated 1994, surpassed its high estimate, selling for £1,575,000. Originally debuting at Barbara Gladstone, the work was acquired by the couple from Thomas Dane for the Zabludowicz Collection in 2003.
The Zabludowicz sale opened with a work by Lubaina Himid—who’s representing the U.K. in Venice this year—which sold just above estimate at £33,020, followed by a Henry Taylor portrait that surpassed its high estimate to sell for £190,500. Doubling its estimate was the shimmering Hurvin Anderson abstraction from his celebrated Lower Lake series, which achieved £133,350 (est. £60,000-80,000), while the three-meter-long Rose Wylie landed around its high estimate after fees, selling for £292,100 and setting a new record for the artist. Records were also set for Anj Smith, whose work doubled its high estimate, selling for £35,560, and for Jakub Julian Ziółkowski, whose last lot sold for £56,680 against its £30,000 high estimate. That painting was included in Massimiliano Gioni’s Venice Biennale exhibition, “Il Palazzo Enciclopedico, Volume I,” as well as in a survey of Polish art at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw in 2014, before being acquired that same year by the Zabludowicz family from Hauser & Wirth.
The Post-War to Present sale that followed generated an additional £10,217,515, with 88 percent sold by value and an 81 percent sell-through rate across its 79 lots, after five withdrawals. Leading the sale was Cecily Brown’s The Haunter (2010), coming to auction just as the artist is being celebrated with a show at the Serpentine Gallery. The layered abstraction eventually sold close to its high estimate for £2.7 million.
The sale opened with a highly saturated Nicole Wittenberg that surpassed its high estimate, achieving £22,860, followed by a Nicolas Party still life that also performed very well, fetching £209,550 over a £40,000-60,000 estimate—presumably more than what the consignor paid when acquiring it in 2014 from Galerie Gregor Staiger in Zurich. One of Hockney’s highly sought-after iPad drawings, The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011 (twenty eleven) – 30 April, also performed extremely well, selling for £279,400 against its £150,000 high estimate, following the artist’s death just weeks earlier. Aligning nicely with the 2026 Wimbledon Championships, Jonas Wood’s Wimbledon #6 sold above estimate at £177,800, while Tracey Emin’s neon met its high estimate, selling for £101,600. A small, contained Antony Gormley that followed nearly quadrupled its estimate, fetching £406,400.
Among the other standout results was Vanessa Raw’s The Other Night (2026), which reached £25,400 against a close-to-primary estimate of £5,000-7,000. The lot was offered as part of a charity grouping benefitting Arts Emergency, a grassroots organization that opens doors for underrepresented young people with artistic ambitions by connecting them to a network of creative professionals.
Also selling at or above their high estimates were works by established artists such as Lee Ufan and Bridget Riley; a Julian Schnabel fetched £381,000 against a £120,000-180,000 estimate. By contrast, the highly anticipated Christo study for wrapping the Arc de Triomphe failed to find a buyer at its £400,000-600,000 estimate, as did a drawing by Basquiat estimated at £300,000-500,000. A surprise came in the form of Beauford Delaney’s Portrait of a Young Man, which fetched £101,600 against an £80,000 high estimate. The market for the American modernist has grown significantly over the past two decades as museums, collectors and scholars have reassessed his contribution to 20th-century art, particularly through recent surveys at the Knoxville Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Phillips Collection.
Some once-very-hot contemporary names also performed above expectations, including an Anthony Cudahy portrait, which doubled its high estimate, achieving £12,065. But many works went unsold, particularly in that segment, including pieces by Alex Israel, Semyon, Jordan Casteel, Julian Opie and Gilbert & George and, on the postwar side, Carl Andre and Sheila Hicks.
In total, the evening brought Christie’s a combined £25.7 million ($34 million)—the first sale making £15.5 million ($20.5 million) and the second £10.2 million ($13.5 million), short of its $11.4-16 million estimate even after fees.
A solid night for Phillips, with priority bidding securing buyers
The Phillips Modern & Contemporary Art Evening & Afternoon Sale on June 26 followed the same pattern: no fireworks, though Phillips was more diligent in securing sales and limiting unsold lots, with most works landing within estimates—most toward the low end rather than the high. The sale brought in £11,964,743 across its 90 lots, with 91 percent sold by value and an 84 percent sell-through rate, after four lots were withdrawn ahead of the sale. The priority bidding strategy is clearly still having an effect.
The top lot, the vibrant The Only One with Waves (1991), which David Hockney painted during his time in California, sold just shy of its high estimate for £2.4 million after fees, while the white Yayoi Kusama INFINITY-NETS (MAE), from 2013, surpassed its high estimate, fetching £1.5 million. Later in the sale, another 2019 Kusama, SPLENDOUR OF STARS CHANGING INTO BLUE, sold for £322,500.
Once-hot market stars who led evening sales during the fresh-paint speculation years—particularly at Phillips, which built a market around them—had more modest, or perhaps more reasonable, results. A 2024 painting by Jadé Fadojutimi, acquired by the seller from Gagosian, squarely met its estimate, selling for £425,700 (est. £300,000-500,000), despite the artist’s work having grown more institutionally grounded beyond market hype, with upcoming shows at the Hepworth Wakefield and the Liverpool Biennial. Meanwhile, Anna Weyant’s Chest reached its high estimate, selling for £206,400—a satisfying result if one overlooks that the consignor acquired it in 2022 at Phillips Hong Kong for HK$4,158,000, approximately £401,300 at current conversion rates, nearly double the latest result: a clear sign of the artist’s market adjustment.
There were exceptions among rising contemporary names that have become, and remain, inaccessible on the primary market. Francesca Mollett’s 2021 painting The Source fetched £33,540 against its £12,000-18,000 estimate, and a Rose Wylie painting—originally acquired at UNION Gallery by a Stockholm collection and commemorating Andy Murray’s heroic performance in the 2015 Davis Cup final in Ghent—rose to £167,700 against its £60,000-80,000 estimate. With paintings already in major public collections including Tate in London, the Arts Council Collection and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, Wylie became, earlier this year, the first British woman artist to occupy the Main Galleries for a solo retrospective at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.
Other surprises and new highs included Hsiao Chin’s energetically charged Inner Light (1966), which fetched £516,000, more than four times its £80,000-120,000 estimate. The painting was acquired by the current consignor at Sotheby’s Hong Kong in 2019 for HK$2,125,000, approximately £205,000 at current exchange rates. Another painting by Hsiao Chin, In the Depth of Darkness, sold at Bonhams Hong Kong on May 31, 2026, for $600,100. The current record for the Chinese-Taiwanese artist stands at HK$7,600,000 (approximately $963,000), set in 2018 at Sotheby’s for his 1964 masterwork La forza della meditazione.
Strong bidding also greeted a work by the highly sought-after Indian artist Maqbool Fida Husain, whose untitled canvas from 1970 achieved £412,800 against an £150,000-250,000 estimate. The consignor acquired it at Christie’s Hong Kong in April 2002 for HK$260,000 (around £25,114). A major inflection point in his market came with the $13.75 million result at Christie’s New York on March 19, 2025, for his 1954 nearly 14-foot painting, offered with a $2.5-3.5 million estimate. Recent results at the Indian auction house Saffronart—such as Untitled (Benares), which sold for ₹15.6 crore ($1.67 million) last April—confirm sustained demand for large, rare canvases with strong Indian subject matter.
The sale opened with a 2023 painting by Scottish “painter-storyteller” Andrew Cranston, which hit its high estimate, selling for £83,850 and setting a new record for the artist. Cranston has gained strong primary-market support in recent years through tastemaking galleries including Karma, Modern Art and Ingleby, where this canvas was acquired. Two further Cranstons later in the sale also exceeded their high estimates, selling for £19,350 and £33,540, respectively.
Tracey Emin’s market also held firm, with her survey still on view at Tate Modern until the end of August. Coming as the second lot, her gesturally animated canvas I hated you – I hated you – I hated you sold close to its high estimate for £193,500. Acquired from White Cube, the piece was included in the artist’s show at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris in 2019. One of her neons, More of You (2015), sold above estimate for £61,920.
Other established names performed well. Donald Judd’s bisected aluminum box lined with glowing green Plexiglass reached its high estimate, selling for £528,900, while Katharina Grosse’s abstraction O.T. surpassed its estimate, selling for £258,000. Emily Kam Kngwarray’s vibrantly tactile My Country (1995) also surpassed its high estimate, selling for £103,200, her market fueled by the recent Tate survey. All Banksy works exceeded their estimates, with Smiling Copper selling for £122,500 and the sculpture Bullet Hole Bust achieving £270,900.
Among the unsold lots were a Bridget Riley canvas, a sculpture by Thomas Houseago, paintings by Stephanie Heinze and Sterling Ruby, and sculptures by Erwin Wurm and Tatiana Trouvé.
The Phillips sale was strategically diverse, with particular attention to South and Southeast Asia and India, which attracted new buyers. “The results are a clear reflection of a global collecting audience with an unwavering appetite for quality and historical significance across genres and geographies,” said Olivia Thornton, deputy chairwoman, Modern & Contemporary Art, Europe.
