Christie’s Momentum Falters in 2025

Christie’s carried its 2024 momentum into early 2025 with the sale of a big-ticket Mondrian and a Magritte from Louise and Leonard Riggio’s collection but the auction house’s overall performance stalled despite an uptick at the end of the year.

In 2025, Christie's slipped from C+ to C- on the HENI Auction Index and was the only one of the big three auction houses to record a dip.

The highly anticipated sale of the collection built by the late Barnes & Noble founder and his wife proved a bit of an anticlimax in May. Amid muted bidding, their Magritte, L'empire des lumières (1949), sold for $34.91m, a zero percent return. It last sold at auction in 2023 for the same amount, also at Christie's.

This year the auction house saw a pick up in its sales of fine art. It sold $3.17 billion of Old Master to ultra-contemporary works across New York, Europe and Asia—an increase on 2024, but there were fewer lots on offer.

Sales total and volume of lots remain well below historic norms, down 35% and 42% respectively.

The HENI Auction Index benchmarks single auctions and groups of sales against 10+ metrics. Among them are the percentages of lots selling above their low and high estimates. Both were in line with the average since 2016.

The same was true for the average hammer to mid-estimate ratio at 1.3.

Christie’s index grade was negatively affected by the percentage of weak guarantees and irrevocable bids, which rose to the highest level on record, according to HENI News data.

On a more positive note, the percentage of lots bought-in continued to decline and was 6 percentage points below average.

While falling short of high expectations, the $272m Riggio sale was solid in the circumstances.

Their Mondrian, Composition with Large Red Plane, Bluish Gray, Yellow, Black and Blue (1922), led the sale and fetched for $47.56m, with fees. Estimates were undisclosed and the work was backed by a guarantee.

In November, amid a market rally, the Weis collection totaled $218m, with fees, again a solid rather than spectacular result.

It was led by the Pennsylvania collectors’ Rothko, No. 31 (Yellow Stripe) (1958), which sold for $62m with fees, well above its $50m low estimate, and so can be counted among the auction house’s strong guarantees.

Christie’s put the best spin 2025 in its end-of-year statement. The company stressed that its total auction sales were up 8% globally, of which $234m was from its newest category: automobiles.

Methodology: for how the HENI Auction Index classifies sales, see here