Sotheby’s London Sales Lack Sparkle

3 min read · 20 Oct 2026

Willem de Kooning's Untitled (1977) sold for $12.95m, leading Sotheby's evening sale. Image courtesy of Sotheby's

A late Willem de Kooning abstract, painted in the Hamptons as he overcame alcoholism, provided a bright spot for Sotheby’s London during Frieze week.

His 1977 untitled canvas sold for nearly $13m, including fees, leading its sale on October 15. The last time the work appeared at auction, also at Sotheby’s just over a decade ago, it fetched $6m.

The auction house scored only a C- on the HENI Auction Index this fall, down from a B+ a year ago and the A+ and A- grades it achieved in the summer and spring, respectively.

Sotheby’s C- this fall was down from a year ago, when its London sales achieved a B+.

Last week’s sales totaled $75m, down from $88m last fall and 60% below the historic average. However, the 222 lots offered represented a nearly 4% increase compared with previous marquee sales.

This year, Sotheby’s moved its British and Irish sales to coincide with Frieze, but these are not included in this analysis, which focuses on comparable marquee weeks.

The HENI Auction Index takes into account more than 10 metrics to put sales into context, including the share of works that sold for above their high estimates. This was down 5 percentage points compared with previous marquee sales and the share of works that sold for above their low estimates was up 3 percentage points.

Total sales were down from last fall and 60% below the historic average, although the number of lots was slightly higher than the average.

The de Kooning was not among the 24 works backed by guarantees. One such work, Gerhard Richter’s Abstraktes Bild (1992), sold for $8.9m with fees, 11% above its low estimate.

The share of guaranteed works selling above their low estimates, such as the Richter, was down just over 2 percentage points, while the share of works with strong guarantees that sold above their high estimates was in line with the historic average.

Withdrawn works were down 4 percentage points. The 47 works that failed to find a buyer were up 4 percentage points, however.

Among the latter was a classic Banksy acquired directly from the artist. Grannies (2006) had featured in the artist’s Barely Legal exhibition in a Los Angeles warehouse the year it was spray-painted, but bidding failed to reach its reserve. The $1.5m work’s auction debut proved to be a damp squib.

The outlook was sunnier at Sotheby’s single-artist sale on October 16. David Hockney’s 20 Flowers from Normandy totaled more than $1m exceeding its presale high estimate. The sale was led by his typically vibrant still-life, 13th February 2021, Flowers in a Glass Vase (2021), which sold for $64,400 with fees, 94% above its low estimate.