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

Since its founding in 1744, Sotheby's an indispensable part of the international art and auction market. Initially specializing in rare books, the auction house later expanded its offerings to include art, jewelry, and luxury collectibles.

This has enabled Sotheby's to maintain a prominent presence in the art and auction sector over several centuries by adapting to changing market trends, technological breakthroughs, and requests from around the world.

Headlines full of records

If we look at just a few headlines about the auction house in the still young year 2025, we already encounter records and superlatives:

• March 5, 2025 – Banksy painting auctioned for 4.3 million pounds
• 06.02.25 – Lagerfeld estate fetches ten times its estimated value
• 03.02.25 – Silver Arrow auctions off 46.5 million euros after 14 minutes
• January 25, 2025 – The auction house Sotheby's 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 to the world of auctions, the name Sotheby's a special ring to it; it's not uncommon to even assume that this venerable English auction house is the oldest in the world. And that's how Sotheby's has long viewed itself.

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

Auctions are by no means a new invention; we know of auctions that took place before 500 BC. Even the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, born around 490 BC, reported on annual bride auctions when he told his contemporaries about ancient Babylon.

In the Roman Empire, war booty (slaves and weapons) was auctioned off; forced auctions were also known, and in 193 AD, the entire Roman Empire was even auctioned off, though not to the benefit of the buyer, who was simply beheaded by the next conqueror. That's just a side note. With the fall of the Roman Empire, auctions ceased to be a feature in Europe until the 18th century. Incidentally, this type of transaction never managed to generate lasting interest Asia

During the 17th and 18th centuries, so-called "candle auctions" common practice in some parts of England. These had little in common with our modern form of auction, instead employing a kind of random number generator to determine the transfer of vacant estates and fiefs: A candle was lit at the beginning, and bids for a fief could be raised as long as the candle was still burning. The extinguishing of the candle marked the winning bid. Whoever's bid was made at that precise moment won the auction and received the fief.

The oldest auction house in the world still in existence today , which held auctions in the modern sense, was founded in Sweden in 1674. It is the "Stockholms Auktionsverk ," where Swedish kings and August Strindberg have offered their treasures.

Dorotheum was founded in 1707 by Joseph I. The Habsburg prince and then Holy Roman Emperor originally generated revenue primarily through forced auctions at the "Pawn and Auction Office in Vienna ." Even today, the traditional pawnbroking business is still conducted in the building at Dorotheergasse 17 in Vienna's 1st district. However, it is now considered the largest auction house for art and applied arts in the German-speaking world and Central Europe.

Sotheby's was only founded in 1744 , and the first owner named Sotheby didn't take over until 1778. Depending on the perspective, Sotheby's is therefore either the third oldest auction house in the world or even the fourth oldest, because if one considers the second date decisive, its traditional arch-rival Christie's already up and running earlier with its first auction in 1766.

Sotheby's rise to a global auction house

Initially, Sotheby's wasn't about art, only about books

Only when England inherited the leading role in the European art trade from France during the French Revolution did auctions with the aim of achieving the highest final price become an interesting form of trade for works of art.

The first of these took place in coffee houses and taverns, and daily in London's art market. Catalogues were increasingly printed to advertise the artworks on offer. Especially in front of shops selling rare works or collectible art, these catalogues were elaborately decorated with illustrations and descriptions of the art to be expected. They themselves became miniature works of art.

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

He initially stuck to his core business. The first auction held by this man, named Samuel Baker, on March 11, 1744, comprised several hundred rare and valuable books from the library of Sir John Stanley, Baronet of Alderley.

Other sensational book auctions followed, such as the library that Napoleon had taken with him into exile on St. Helena; Samuel Baker also auctioned off the book collections of leading English dukes and the highly interesting collection of John Wilkes, the famous liberal Enlightenment thinker.

From coins and medals to art

After Baker's death in 1778, his estate was divided between his partner George Leigh and John Sotheby. Lacking heirs, the estate eventually passed entirely into the hands of the Sotheby family. While they expanded the auction house's business in the 19th century to include coins and medals, and occasionally art prints or engravings, they refrained for a long time from establishing themselves in the art market in general.

But the art market has an undeniable allure that even Sotheby's couldn't resist. They soon devoted themselves more and more to selling beautiful things, and a little later still, they were embroiled in a battle with Christie's.

Internationalization in the 20th century

In 1955, Sotheby's opened an office in New York City to extend its reach beyond London and meet the ever-increasing global demand for fine art. The 1964 acquisition of Parke-Bernet, the largest art auction house in the United States, enabled Sotheby's to establish itself as a dominant player in the North American market. Sotheby's expansion over several decades led to the establishment of offices in Paris, Hong Kong, Geneva, and other locations.

Sotheby's auction house was also an innovator in auction technology and strategy. In 1958, it introduced the "Evening Sale" style, which has since become the industry standard for presenting important works of art. This structure was responsible for changing the way high-profile art auctions were conducted.

Furthermore, Sotheby's made history in the 1960s by being the first auction house to use satellite technology, enabling real-time bidding between individuals in New York and London. In the 1970s, Sotheby's continued to play a vital role in defining the art market by promoting contemporary art and organizing groundbreaking auctions that featured Jasper Johns , Andy Warhol , and Robert Rauschenberg

Off to the hunt for records!

Throughout its history, Sotheby's has significantly shaped the development of the contemporary art auction sector, consistently setting new benchmarks with record-breaking sales. It was in 2002 that the company made history with the sale of Peter Paul Rubens "The Massacre of the Innocents ." The painting sold for £49.5 million, a record for an Old Master painting that still stands today.

Just two years later, Sotheby's reached another significant milestone when Pablo Picasso's Garçon à la Pipe became the first painting to sell for more than $100 million at auction. This success further solidified the company's position as a dominant player in the art market.

The role of Sotheby's in the contemporary art world

The market for contemporary and modern art continues to be 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 has been instrumental in establishing the market for top contemporary artists.

It was in 2012 that Sotheby's Edvard Munch's "The Scream" for $119.9 million, making it one of the most expensive works of art ever auctioned at that time. This event is considered one of the most significant milestones in the history of the art world.

Furthermore, Sotheby's has regularly broken records for Basquiat's work, such as the sale of his Untitled (1982) for $110.5 million in 2017, which remains the highest price ever paid for an American artist at auction. The company has also significantly contributed to expanding the market for contemporary street artists . Banksy 's Devolved Parliament sold for a record-breaking £9.9 million in 2019, setting a new benchmark for the artist at the time.

A moment that astonished the art world and led to a significant increase in the value of the artwork under its new title "Love is in the Bin" occurred in 2018. Sotheby's supported the now-famous self-destruction of Banksy's "Girl with Balloon." This event further solidified Sotheby's importance in auction history.

Sotheby's has expanded its influence in the digital art market and is a leader in the sale of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) . For its first NFT auction, held in April 2021, the company collaborated with renowned digital artist Pak . The three-day event marked a significant milestone in Sotheby's engagement with digital art, generating $16.8 million in sales and setting numerous records.

It is therefore not surprising that Sotheby's also became a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence . The first artwork created by a humanoid robot equipped with artificial intelligence algorithms 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 designed by Aidan Meller, a UK-based art dealer and gallery owner. The robot is depicted as a woman with a black bob haircut, wearing a T-shirt and denim overalls. Through the use of a combination of cameras in its eyes, artificial intelligence algorithms, and a robotic arm, the robot is able to draw and paint.

Sotheby's eternal rivalry with Christie's

In 1913, Sotheby's achieved its first significant success in the art market when it sold a painting by Frans Hals for 9,000 guineas. In 1917, the company moved to the villa on New Bond Street , where its London branch is still located today.

Sotheby's had now caught fire in the art market: The company quickly became a serious rival to Christie's, the previous leader of the London auction market… and the London market was, after all, one of the most important markets in the world, especially in the art world. By 1954, the moment had arrived: Sotheby's had overtaken Christie's in art sales.

Since that time, competitors have tried to gain or maintain dominance through all sorts of business ideas, and less business-like ones at that: Sotheby's, for example, expanded into the USA as early as 1955 with the opening of a New York office, bought Parke-Bernet (then the largest art auctioneer in the United States) in 1964 and landed on Madison Avenue in New York in 1965.

Christie's held its first auction in the USA only in 1977, as it wanted to concentrate on its business in Europe. Initially, this did not bring the desired resounding success: even at the end of the 1980s, Christie's controlled just over 40 percent of the London auction market.

Christie's then launched a frontal attack on Sotheby's by suddenly guaranteeing minimum prices for auctions in 1990 (completely contrary to traditional pricing policies), seemingly successfully, as by 1996 Christie's had regained the lead in sales for the first time since 1954.

The only downside was that Sotheby's had made a profit of around $250 million during the crucial years of this battle. Meanwhile, its fiercest competitor had to make do with a meager $60 million (both figures are pre-tax profit).

And so it continued back and forth: If Sotheby's was already a well-known name in a particular area of ​​the market, Christie's would buy galleries with a corresponding specialization in order to follow suit. If Sotheby's was also active in the real estate market, Christie's would buy a large real estate agency.

At times, both likely experienced financial difficulties, which perhaps didn't lead to the best business decisions. In 1997, Christie's attempted auction to an investor. Since no one offered enough, the entire company was acquired in 1998 by François Pinault's (art connoisseur, billionaire, and owner of companies such as Gucci and the legendary Château Latour winery) Groupe Artémis SA. As he has since suffered significant losses with the auction house, a sale to Qatar is now under discussion.

Sotheby's had by then become firmly in American hands, with holdings from US companies like General Felt Industries and US financial heavyweights like hedge fund manager Steven A. Cohen. At times, Sotheby's also caused its owners considerable losses, and at other times, both auction houses had established offices all over the world.

So, in 2000, they tried a collaboration for a change, but this was defined by the FBI as price fixing and led to a major scandal. When the FBI investigated the practices of both auction houses for collusion, it was the two managing directors of Sotheby's, A. Alfred Taubman and Diana Brooks, who stumbled into the heart of the scandal: Because Diana Brooks admitted her guilt in the hope of a light sentence, she also implicated Taubman.

He was subsequently convicted of conspiracy by a New York court and spent 10 months in prison, while Brooks received six months of house arrest and a $350 million fine, and Sotheby's was fined a total of $45 million. Christie's employees were not called as witnesses in this trial; however, as a result of the four-year antitrust investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice, 130,000 buyers and sellers of the two auction houses filed a class-action lawsuit, claiming they had been cheated by the price-fixing.

In 2001, the relevant court gave its final approval to an agreement for a penalty payment of $512 million for both companies, the purpose of which was to save both companies (especially the publicly traded Sotheby's) from bankruptcy.

Sotheby's – a privately owned English auction house?

Originally, Sotheby's was an English auction house, that's true, and it remained an English house for almost 250 years. However, Sotheby's was privately owned for almost or well over two centuries, depending on how one defines its founding date: either with founder Samuel Baker's first transaction in 1744 or with the appearance of the first Sotheby's within the company in 1778.

However, Sotheby's went public in 1977, initially as a British public limited company. In 1983, a group of investors bought Sotheby's (including the aforementioned managing director at the time of the price-fixing scandal, the American millionaire Alfred Taubman) and initially privatized the company, before re-establishing it in August 1983 as Sotheby's Holdings, Inc., headquartered in Michigan.

In 1988, Taubman took Sotheby's public. With the listing, Sotheby's became the oldest publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange, using the ticker symbol "BID" (auction trading).

At the time of the price-fixing scandal in 2000, Baron Capital Group, the investment company of American self-made millionaire Ronald S. Baron, known for its long-term commitments, already owned 59 percent of the company's common stock. In 2006, the entire company was relocated to the American tax haven of Delaware.

Today, Sotheby's is a multinational company headquartered in the USA , and it is by no means just an auction house for fine and decorative art objects anymore.

Sotheby's business is divided into three segments: auctions, finance, and trading. The company's services are further divided into eleven different categories, covering virtually every facet of the art market: private sales and financing, tax advice, or the handling of wills—Sotheby's takes care of everything for its clients when it comes to art.

A typical Sotheby's employee

… may not be Cheyenne Westphal , but her career at Sotheby's clearly demonstrates that, alongside knowledge, a feel for the market is the most important ingredient for a successful career at Sotheby's today.

Cheyenne Westphal, born in southwestern Germany, took her father's suggestion to see the world a bit after graduating from high school very seriously: First, she studied art history and English at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, the university of Prince William and Kate Middleton. Then, the now art-loving student moved to Berkeley, the University of California. In Scotland, she had been more familiar with historical art; in Berkeley, she only needed to glance at a photograph of Cindy Sherman to know that her heart belonged to contemporary art. After completing her master's thesis (on Anselm Kiefer), she planned to go to London, in 1990 one of the most fashionable addresses, not only in the art world.

Her very first presentation at Sotheby's was a success, and Cheyenne Westphal dutifully began with catalogue work and research. However, Sotheby's contemporary art team consisted of only three people, so she was quickly allowed to start working with clients. In 1999, she was given responsibility for Sotheby's entire European contemporary art business. As an expert on contemporary art, she had landed in exactly the right place in London. The Young British Artists, the Tate Modern, and the powerful Charles Saatchi had just established London as the world center of contemporary art.

Cheyenne Westphal recruited the works that the bonus-laden bankers wanted to buy; sales reached record highs, and some of the new artists were revered like stars. Cheyenne Westphal chose one of these stars, Gerhard Richter, as her specialty, and perhaps she even contributed a little to the immense esteem he enjoys.

An artist like Damien Hirst is also right up Cheyenne Westphal's alley. She helped arrange his first solo auctions in 2004, in which works from the restaurant "Pharmacy" were sold, and because she and her entire team worked for a year and a half on Hirst's high-profile and lucrative "RED Charity" auction (2008) , she even received a print as a gift from the artist.

Cheyenne Westphal loved the idea of ​​offering the artist's work without involving his gallery owners. When those works fetched around £111 million on the day of Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy, without the gallery owners seeing a penny, they were probably not quite so enthusiastic.

Cheyenne Westphal's sale propelled her to 16th place on the leading art magazine's international "100 Power List." Unfortunately, the market cooled, and the next auction in 2009 yielded only about a fifth of that amount. The immediate priority was to rebuild client confidence. Prices like those of 2008 are still unattainable today.

But Cheyenne Westphal is in good spirits; new buyers from Russia and China are joining her, and Ms. Westphal was later praised by the London Times for the reduced offering she put up for auction after 2008: she helped to successfully smooth out the art market crisis, the Times said, and placed her 22nd on the British “Art Power List” .

Prices are slowly rising again, much to the delight of Germans, who themselves only allow themselves “one work of art per year” to prevent their collecting passion from getting out of hand. She is a fan of Richter and Hirst, but mostly buys artists of her own generation, such as a wall sculpture by Tara Donovan.

Otherwise, Cheyenne Westphal is enthusiastic about fashion (she wears Prada to evening auctions, Louboutin stilettos are waiting under her desk), meets Gerhard Richter or Cy Twombly for dinner, likes to have breakfast with Lucian Freud or meets her old friend Damian Hirst, just because.

If your parents are trying to talk you out of studying art again, pointing to the fact that it's a "starving artist" profession, it doesn't have to be that way anymore. You just have to be willing to adapt to the market as an artist or art dealer.

Is Sotheby's the right auction house for your artwork?

Well, Sotheby's is definitely the right house for you if you have a Damien Hirst or Gerhard Richter to offer. It's certainly also the right house for you if you want to sell any work by a lesser-known artist that has just been praised (or panned) by the press at an exhibition. Even the Hamburg auctioneer who recently sold an Andy Warhol would most likely have been better off offering that artwork at Sotheby's.

The Siberian tiger, rendered in beautifully vibrant earth tones by Andy Warhol in 1983 in his typical Pop Art style but with impressive attention to detail, was presented at a Hamburg auction house alongside Baroque furniture and paintings by Old Masters. This was probably not the most appropriate setting. It was estimated at a starting price of just under €30,000 and sold for almost €40,000, while Warhol's tiger silkscreen prints at Sotheby's had already reached prices of €65,000.

However, if you yourself wish to sell antique furniture, old porcelain, or historically significant jewelry, you are certainly in good hands at one of Hamburg's prestigious auction houses – these include renowned companies that have long been family-owned and run by knowledgeable and enthusiastic people, and the auctions often take place in impressive villas on the Alster, where such exhibits are displayed in just the right atmosphere in front of wonderful stucco ceilings and in antique display cases…

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

You should also be aware of this. You have a better chance of getting a really good price for your historical banknotes if they are offered at auctions where other historical banknotes are also being auctioned, and therefore where there are many interested buyers for historical banknotes present.

Another point in Hamburg's favor is that the Hamburg auction houses are networked via an online auction portal where approximately 1.4 million visitors annually search for artworks, furniture, toys, or wines that might interest them.

This covers some of the most important points to consider when choosing the right auction house. Generally speaking, you will find it easier to select the right house if you try to learn as much as possible about your artwork. Additionally, you should thoroughly research the company behind the auction house.

Furthermore, it is crucial to consider what percentage of the sale price the seller wants; this can easily amount to as much as a quarter of the sale price. Especially with works that are unlikely to fetch huge sums, it can be more rewarding to patiently offer them on an online platform like Kunstplaza . Here, you receive almost the entire purchase price.

You can find many more tips on choosing the right auction house in the article about "The Sudden Appeal of Art Auctions" . With this preparation and a little care, you will hopefully be able to avoid any bad purchase or disappointing sale, even if you approach the auction market without prior knowledge.