Sotheby's spectacular: art, catalogs and curiosities in the top -class auction house

Since its foundation in 1744, Sotheby's an indispensable part of the international art and auction market. When it was launched, it initially specialized in rare books; Later, the auction house expanded its offer to offer art, jewels and luxury collectors.

This made Sotheby's possible to maintain an outstanding presence in the art and auction sector over several centuries by adapting to changed market trends, technological breakthroughs and inquiries from all over the world.

Headlines full of records

Let's just look at a few headlines for the auction house in the young year 2025, we are already encountering records and superlatives:

• 05.03.25-Banksy painting for £ 4.3 million auctioned
• 06.02.25-Lagerfeld estate achieves ten times the estimation value
• 03.02.25 - Silver arrow auctioned 46.5 million euros after 14 minutes
• 01/25/25 - The Sotheby's auction house announces its sales figures for 2024. They are the highest in the industry.

Sotheby's - the oldest auction house in the world?

For most newcomers in the field of auction trade, the name Sotheby’s a special sound, it is not uncommon for the time -honored English auction house to be the oldest in the world. So Sotheby's has also classified itself for a long time.

Sotheby's is an old company, which is correct, but the oldest of its kind in the world is by no means:

Auctions are really not a very new invention, today you know about auctions that before 500 BC. BC took place. Because ancient Greek historians Herodotus, who around 490 BC. Born is born, knows about annually held bridal auctions to report when he tells his contemporaries of ancient Babylon.

In the Roman Empire, the war prey was auctioned (slaves and weapons), and forced auctions were already known, and 193 AD the entire Roman Empire was also auctioned, but not for the benefit of the purchaser, which was simply beheaded by the next conqueror. That only on the side. With the fall of the Roman Empire, auctions in Europe were no longer an issue in Europe until the 18th century. In Asia, this type of transaction was never able to spark a sustainable interest.

"cane auctions" were used in some parts of England . They did not have much in common with our form of the auction, but equipped the transfer of freedom of freedom and fiefs with a kind of random generator: At the beginning, a candle was lit, now higher prices were allowed to be offered for a fief, as the candle was still burning. The expression of the candle was the contract. Whose bid had just been handed over at this time won the auction and received the fief.

The oldest auction house in the world that was still in existence today , which organized auctions in the sense known today, was built in Sweden in 1674. It is the "Stockholms auction verk" , in which Swedish kings and August Strindberg offered its precious.

The foundation of the Dorotheum dated by Joseph I. The Habsburg prince and then emperor of the Holy Roman Empire originally achieved revenue "Vienna and question of Vienna" Even today, the traditional deposit shops are still handled in the building at Dorotheergasse 17 in the 1st Vienna district. However, it is now considered the largest auction house for art and applied art in German -speaking countries or Central Europe.

It was not until 1744 that Sotheby's was founded , the first owner named Sotheby did not even take over in 1778. Depending on the perspective, Sotheby's is today either the third oldest auction house in the world or even the fourth oldest, because if you see the second date as decisive, the traditional arch -rival Christie’s at the start with its first auction in 1766 earlier.

Sotheby's promotion to the global auction house

At the beginning it was not about art at Sotheby's, just about books

Only when England inherited the leading role in European art trade in the course of the French Revolution of France did auctions with the aim of the highest final price as a trade form for works of art became interesting.

The first of them took place in coffee houses and taverns, in the London art trade center every day. Catalogs were increasingly printed as advertising for the art objects offered. Especially in front of shops that were supposed to bring rare works or collector's art to the man, these catalogs were very artistically equipped with illustrations and descriptions of the expected art. They were already real little works of art themselves.

It is therefore not surprising that the founder of Sotheby's was a bookseller who had become aware auction business

He initially stayed with his core business. The first auction of this man named Samuel Baker on March 11, 1744 included several hundred rare and valuable books from the Sir John Stanleys library, the baronet of Alderley.

Other sensational accounts followed, e.g. B. the library that Napoleon had carried into exile in St. Helena; The book stocks of leading English dukes and the highly interesting collection of John Wilkes, the famous liberal enlightener, were also auctioned by Samuel Baker.

Via coins and medals to art

After Baker's death in 1778, his property was divided between his partner George Leigh and John Sotheby. In the absence of offspring, ownership finally reached the leadership of the Sotheby family. This expanded the auction house's business in the 19th century to coins and medals and occasionally art prints or stitches. For a long time, however, she did not try to generally prove herself in the trade in art.

But the art trade has an enormous appeal, which the Sotheby's could not resist. Soon you devoted yourself more and more to sell beautiful things, and a little later you were in the middle of dealing with Christie's.

Internationalization in the 20th century

In 1955 Sotheby's opened an office in New York City to expand its reach beyond London and to satisfy the constantly growing demand for visual art around the world. The takeover of Park-Bernet in 1964, the largest art auction house in the United States, made it possible to establish Sotheby's to establish itself as a dominant player on the North American market. The expansion of Sotheby's over several decades led to the foundation of offices in Paris, Hong Kong, Geneva and other locations.

The Sotheby's auction house was also an innovator in the field of auction technology and strategy. In 1958 the "Evening Sale" style was introduced, which has since become the industry standard for the presentation of important works of art. This structure was responsible for changing the way top -class art auctions were carried out.

In addition, Sotheby's wrote history in the 1960s by the as the first auction house satellite technology that made it possible to offer individuals in New York and London in real time. In the 1970s, Sotheby's continued to play an important role in the definition of the art market by promoting contemporary art and organizing groundbreaking auctions in which works of well -known living artists such as Jasper Johns , Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg were introduced.

On the hunt for records

In the course of its history, Sotheby's has contributed significantly to the development of the auction sector for contemporary art and continuously set new standards with record -breaking sales. It was in 2002 when the company wrote with the sale of "the massacre of innocent" by Peter Paul Ruben's story. The picture was sold for £ 49.5 million, which is a record for a painting of old master who is still preserved today.

Just two years later, Sotheby's reached another important milestone when Pablo Picasso Garcon à la Pipe was the first painting for more than $ 100 million auctioned. This success continued the position of the company as a dominant player on the art market.

The role of Sotheby's in the contemporary art world

The market for contemporary and modern art is still dominated by Sotheby's due to its leading position. Through record-breaking sales of works by artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat , Banksy and Yayoi Kusama, the company was instrumental in establishing the market for contemporary top artists.

It was in 2012 when Sotheby's Edvard Munch's "The Cry" sold for a price of $ 119.9 million, which made it one of the most expensive works of art that were ever auctioned at that time. This event is considered one of the most important milestones in the history of the art world.

In addition, Sotheby's broke records for basquiats works, such as the sale of his Unitled (1982) for $ 110.5 million in 2017, which is still the highest price that was ever paid for an American artist at an auction. Furthermore, the company has contributed significantly to the expansion of the market for modern street art artists . "Devolved Parliament" from Banksy was auctioned in 2019 for the record -breaking amount of £ 9.9 million and thus set a new benchmark for the artist at the time.

A moment that amazed the art world and led to a significant increase in value of the artwork under his new title "Love is in the bin" occurred in 2018. Sotheby's supported the now famous self -destruction of Banksy's "Girl with Ballon" . This event further strengthened the importance of Sotheby's in the history of the auctions.

Sotheby's has expanded its influence on the digital art market and, in addition to the traditional art market, is a leader when selling non-fungible token (NFTS) . worked Pak for the company's first non-fungable token (NFT) auction of the company, which took place in April 2021. The event that lasted three days was an important milestone in the connection of Sotheby's with digital art. It led to sales of $ 16.8 million and set many records.

So it is not surprising that Sotheby's also became a pioneer artificial intelligence The first work of art created by a humanoid robot, which is equipped with algorithms of artificial intelligence, was auctioned by Sotheby's in November 2024.

With AI God. Portrait of Alan Turing from 2024, the humanoid robot artist Ai-da Robot (Aidan Meller) created a portrait of Alan Turing. AI-DA is a humanoid robot, which was designed by Aidan Meller, an art dealer and gallery owner based in the United Kingdom. The robot was portrayed as a woman with a black bob haircut and wears a T-shirt and a jeans overall. By using a mixture of cameras in his eyes, algorithms of artificial intelligence and a robot arm, the robot is able to draw and paint.

Sotheby's eternal rivalry with Christie's

In 1913 Sotheby's was able to record a first significant success in the art trade when it came to selling a painting of Frans neck for 9,000 Guinen. In 1917 the company moved to the villa in the New Bond Street , where the London branch still sits today.

Sotheby's had now caught fire in relation to the art trade: the company quickly became a serious rival of Christie's, the previous leader of the London auction market ... and the London market was one of the most important markets in general. In 1954 the time had come: Sotheby's was able to outperform Christie's with his sales in the art trade.

Since then, the competitors have tried to achieve or maintain dominance through all possible business ideas and less business ideas: Sotheby's expanded z. B. as early as 1955 with the opening of a New York office in the USA, bought Park-Berlin (the then largest art auctioneer in the United States) in 1964 and had landed on the New York Madison Avenue in 1965.

Christie's only carried out his first auction in the United States in 1977, and they wanted to concentrate on business in Europe. At first without the desired resolved success: at the end of the 1980s, Christie's dominated just over 40 percent of the London auction market.

Christie's now attacked Sotheby's head -on by guaranteeing minimum prices for auctions in 1990 (completely contrary to traditional pricing policy), apparently successful, in 1996 Christie's was the first time in sales again.

It was a shame that Sotheby's had made a good $ 250 million profit in the crucial years of this fight. In the meantime, the worst competitor had to be satisfied with a lean 60 million (both profit before tax).

This is how it went back and forth: If Sotheby's had long been a well -known size in a certain trade area, Christie's galleries with a corresponding specialty bought to follow. If Sotheby's also worked in real estate trade, Christie's bought a big broker ring.

In between, both of them were sometimes scarce, which may not lead to the best business decisions. In 1997 Christies wanted to auction himself to an investor. Since nobody offered enough, the whole company was taken over in 1998 by François Pinault (art connoisseur, billionaire and owner of companies such as Gucci and the legendary Château Latour winery) Groupe Artémis SA. Since he has had to accept many losses with the auction house since then, a sale to Qatar is now in discussion.

Sotheby's had already passed into American hands, with the participations of US companies such as General Felt Industries or US financial sizes such as the hedge fund manager Steven A. Cohen. In between, Sotheby's also gave its owners considerable losses, and in between both houses with representations all over the world had also distributed themselves.

So in 2000 it was tried with a collaboration, but was defined by the FBI as a pricing and led to a tangible scandal. When the FBI examined the practices of both houses for secret agreements, it was the two managing directors of Sotheby's, A. Alfred Taubman and Diana Brooks, who stumbled into the scandal in the middle of the scandal: Because Diana Brooks fought her guilt in the hope of a little punishment, she also pulled Taubman into it.

He was then convicted by a New York court for conspiracy and spent 10 months in prison, while Brooks were sentenced to six months of house arrest and a fine of $ 350 million and Sotheby's a total of $ 45 million. Christia's employees were not invited in this legal proceedings, as a result of the four -year anti -antitrust investigation by the American Ministry of Justice, 130,000 buyers and sellers of the two auction houses raised an action for a class because they felt cheated by the price agreements.

In 2001, the responsible Court of Justice gave its final approval to an agreement on an agreement of $ 512 million for both companies whose sense was to save both companies (especially the listed Sotheby's) from bankruptcy.

Sotheby's - an English auction house in private ownership?

Originally, Sotheby's was an English auction house, that's right, and it has also remained an English house for almost 250 years. Private property, Sotheby's was almost or for a good two centuries, depending on how to start the founding date, with the first transaction of the founder Samuel Baker to 1744 or with the appearance of the first Sotheby in the company to 1778.

As early as 1977, however, Sotheby's went to the stock exchange, first as a British stock corporation, in 1983 a group of investors Sotheby's (including the already mentioned managing director at the time of the prices, the American millionaire Alfred Taubman) and privatized the company first in August 1983 as Sotheby's Holdings, INC. based in Michigan.

In 1988 Taubman Sotheby's brought the stock exchange. With the listing, Sotheby's became the oldest listed company on the New York stock exchange with the ticker symbol "BID" (auction trade).

At the time of the prize agreement scandal in 2000, 59 percent of the regular shares of the Baron Capital Group, the investment company of the American self-made millionaire Ronald S. Baron known for their long-term engagement. In 2006 the entire society was moved to the American tax paradise of Delaware.

Today Sotheby's is a multinational society with its headquarters in the United States , and it is by no means just a pure auction house for fine and decorative works of art.

Sotheby's business is divided into the three segments, finance and trade, and the company's services are divided into eleven different categories that probably cover every facet of the art market: private sale and financing, tax advice or handling of will, everything does Sotheby's for his customers when it comes to art.

A typical employee of Sotheby's

... is Cheyenne Westphal , but it is easy to show from her career at Sotheby's, which at Sotheby's today is the feeling of the market in addition to knowledge.

The Cheyenne Westphal, born in German southwest, has taken the stimulation of her father to take a look at the world after graduating from high school: First she studied art history and English at the St. Andrews University in Scotland, the university of Prince William and Kate Middleton, then the now art enthusiast was drawn to the University of California. In Scotland she had met rather historical art, in Berkeley she only needs to look at a photo of Cindy Sherman once to know that her heart belongs to contemporary art. After her master's thesis (via Anselm Kiefer), she wants to go to London, in 1990, not only in the art trade.

The first performance at Sotheby's is a success, and Cheyenne Westphal starts very well with catalog work and research. The team of the contemporary division of Sotheby's is only three men strong, and so she can start with customer care very quickly, in 1999 she was given responsibility for the entire European business of Sotheby's in the field of contemporary art. She had landed in the right place in London as an expert in the art of our time. Here the "Young British Artists", the "Tate Modern" and the mighty Charles Saatchi had ensured that London was considered a world center of contemporary art.

Cheyenne Westphal recruited the works that the bonus-prone bankers wanted to buy, the sales achieved records, some of the new artists were revered like a star. Cheyenne Westphal chooses one of these stars, Gerhard Richter, and maybe it even contributed a little to him if he is shown such an enormous appreciation.

An artist like Damien Hirst is also entirely like Cheyenne Westphal's taste. It was the one who helped in 2004 to arrange his first individual auctions in which work from the "Pharmacy" restaurant was sold, and because with her whole team she was working on Hirt's more effective and profitable "Red Charity" auction (2008) , she even received a graphic from the artist.

Cheyenne Westphal thought the idea was great to offer the artist's work without the inclusion of his gallery owners. When this work brought around 111 million pounds on the day of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, the gallery owners did not see a penny, they were probably not quite as enthusiastic.

Through this business, Cheyenne Westphal moved up 16 of the international “100 Power List” of the leading art magazine. It's a shame that the market cooled down and the next auction in 2009 only brought in around a fifth. In the period that followed, it was now a matter of refusing the customer to trust the customer again. Prices such as 2008 have not yet been called up today.

But Cheyenne Westphal is a good courage, new buyers from Russia and China are added, and Ms. Westphal was later committed to the reduced offer that she made for auction after 2008 by the London Times: she contributed to smoothing the art market crisis, said Times, and put it in 22nd place in the British "Art Power List" .

In the meantime, the prices slowly attract again, much to the delight of the Germans, who only treats themselves to “one work of art per year” so that the passion for collecting does not overhand. She is a fan of judge and deer, but mostly buy artists of her generation, such as: B. a wall sculpture by Tara Donovan.

Otherwise, Cheyenne Westphal is enthusiastic about fashion (she wears Prada at evening auctions, waiting under the desk Louboutin-Stilettos), meets with Gerhard Richter or Cy Twombly to dinner, likes to break breakfast with Lucian Freud or hits her old friend Damian Hirst, just like that.

If your parents want to talk them out of art again with reference to the "breadless art", it no longer has to be the case today. You just have to be ready to judge the market as an artist or art dealer.

Is Sotheby's the right auction house for your work of art?

Well, Sotheby's is definitely the right house for you if you have to offer a "Damien Hirst" or "Gerhard Richter" . It is certainly also the right house for you if you want to sell any work of a lesser known artist who has been celebrated (or teased) from the press at an exhibition. The Hamburger, who recently auctioned Andy Warhol

The Siberian tiger in beautifully bright earth colors, which Andy Warhol portrayed in 1983 in his typical pop art style, but in an impressive joy in detail, was found in the Hamburg auction house accompanied by baroque furniture and painting of old masters. It was probably not the most suitable environment. He was scheduled for an entry price of almost 30,000 euros and changed owners for just under 40,000 euros, while Warhol's tiger screen prints at Sotheby's sometimes 65,000 euros.

However, if you want to bring ancient furniture, old porcelain or historic jewelry to the man yourself, you are certainly in good hands in one of the respected Hamburg auction houses - among them are renowned companies that have been family -owned for a long time and are led by knowledgeable and enthusiastic people, and the auctions often take place in impressive villas on the Alster, in which such exhibits take place in wonderful stucco Showcaps are displayed exactly in the right atmosphere ...

However, if you want to offer your art object or antique in Hamburg, you have the choice: Here, over 20 well -known auction houses with very different ranges, and collectors , gallery owners and dealers know exactly what you are looking for in which house.

So you should also know that. Because they have better chances of achieving a really good price for their historical banknotes if they are offered, where other historical banknotes are auctioned and therefore many interested parties are present for historical banknotes.

The following also speaks for Hamburg. The Hamburg houses are networked via an auction portal, on which around 1.4 million visitors are looking for works of art, furniture, toys or wines that might be interested in.

This raised some of the most important points that should be taken into account when choosing the right auction house. In general, you can state that you will choose the right house more easily if you try to learn as much as possible about your own work of art. In addition, you should find out more about the company that is behind an auction house.

Of course, it also depends on the share of the provider's sales price, which can certainly be sums that reach up to a quarter of the sales price. Especially with works that will probably not bring huge sums, it can be more fun to offer them patiently via an internet portal like Kunstplaza. Here almost the entire purchase price ends up in your pocket.

You can find many more tips on choosing the right auction house in the article about "The Sudden attractiveness of art auctions" . Hopefully you will be able to avoid any wrong purchase or disappointing sale with this preparation and some care if you approach the auction market without specialist knowledge.

Lina cream

Passionate author with lively art interest

www.kunstplaza.de