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.