Christie's

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Original synthesis to sit alongside the encyclopedia article below. Not part of Wikipedia; verify facts on Wikipedia when precision matters.

Christie's is one of the world's longest-running and most influential international fine art and luxury auction houses, founded in 18th century London and now operating sales and private advisory services across more than 40 countries. It facilitates public auctions and private treaty sales for categories spanning old master paintings, contemporary art, rare antiquities, high jewelry, luxury watches, vintage wine, and iconic cultural memorabilia.

Key moments

1766James Christie formally established the auction house in London, hosting its first recorded public auction sale later that year.
1973The firm listed on the London Stock Exchange, initiating a period of rapid geographic expansion outside the UK.
1998Christie's was acquired by the private holding group of French business leader François Pinault, ending its public listing status.
2020The firm rolled out fully integrated hybrid digital auction formats in response to global public health restrictions, permanently shifting its service model to combine in-person preview events with global remote bidding.

Christie's competes in the high-end global auction market, a space defined by a longstanding duopoly between itself and fellow legacy house Sotheby's, with smaller regional specialists and digital native platforms targeting lower and mid-tier collector segments. The firm has carved out a distinct market position by leaning into its centuries-long institutional heritage to build trust with legacy family collectors and institutional sellers, while prioritizing expansion into fast-growing East Asian luxury markets earlier than many of its direct competitors.

Sotheby's, Christie's closest direct rival, maintains roughly equal market share for top-tier modern and contemporary art lots, though Christie's has held a consistent competitive edge in categories of historic European art, royal provenance jewelry, and private collections sourced from long-established aristocratic and industrial family holdings.
Post-2020, Christie's hybrid online-offline auction infrastructure has allowed it to capture a larger share of younger high-net-worth bidders based in emerging markets who do not regularly travel to Christie's traditional flagship sales rooms in London or New York.
Niche smaller auction houses focused on specific categories (such as rare vintage cars or street art) have not meaningfully disrupted Christie's position for ultra-high-value lots, as most sellers of premium high-value assets still prioritize the global marketing reach and brand prestige of the two leading legacy auction houses to achieve maximum sale prices.

Overview

Christie's

area served
type	Subsidiary
founder	James Christie
founded	1766
hq location city	London
hq location country	England
key people	Guillaume Cerutti (chairman) Bonnie Brennan (CEO)
owner	François Pinault

industry	Art, auctions

revenue	US$6.2billion (2025)‡R1R‡

parent	Groupe Artémis

website	christies.com

Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, with additional salerooms in New York, Paris, Hong Kong, Milan, Geneva, Shanghai and Dubai.[2] It is owned by Groupe Artémis, the holding company of François Pinault.[3][4] In 2022, Christie's sold US$8.4 billion in art and luxury goods, an all-time high for any auction house.[5] On 15 November 2017, the Salvator Mundi was sold at Christie's in New York for $450 million to Saudi Prince Badr bin Abdullah Al Saud, the highest price ever paid for a painting.[6]

History

Founding

The official company literature states that founder James Christie (1730–1803) conducted the first sale in London on 5 December 1766,[7] and the earliest auction catalogue the company retains is from December 1766. However, other sources note that James Christie rented auction rooms from 1762, and newspaper advertisements for Christie's sales dating from 1759 have also been traced.[8] After his death, Christie's son, James Christie the Younger (1773–1831) took over the business.[9]

20th century

Christie's was a public company, listed on the London Stock Exchange, from 1973 to 1999. In 1974, Jo Floyd was appointed chairman of Christie's. He served as chairman of Christie's International plc from 1976 to 1988, until handing over to Lord Carrington, and later was a non-executive director until 1992.

Commissions

From 2008 until 2013, Christie's charged 25 per cent for the first $50,000; 20 per cent on the amount between $50,001 and $1M, and 12 per cent on the rest. From 2013, it charged 25 per cent for the first $75,000; 20 per cent on the next $75,001 to $1.5M and 12 per cent on the rest.[33]

As of 2023, Christie's commission (buyer's premium) is 26 per cent of the hammer price of each lot up to £800,000/US$1,000,000, plus 21 per cent of the hammer price from £800,001/US$1,000,001 up to and including £4,500,000/US$6,000,000, and 15 per cent on the rest.[34]

Locations

As of 2023, Christie's has offices in 46 countries worldwide, with salerooms in London, New York, Paris, Geneva, Milan, Amsterdam, Dubai, Hong Kong, and Shanghai.[2]

Europe

Christie's flagship saleroom is in London on King Street in St. James's, where it has been based since 1823. It had a second London saleroom in South Kensington which opened in 1975 and primarily handled the middle market. Christie's permanently closed the South Kensington saleroom in July 2017 as part of their restructuring plans announced in March 2017. The closure was due in part to a considerable decrease in sales between 2015 and 2016 in addition to the company expanding its online sales presence.[35][36]

In early 2017, Christie's also announced plans to scale back its operation in Amsterdam.[29]

Notable auctions

Paintings

In 1848 the sale of the contents of Stowe House after the bankruptcy of the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos was one of the first and most publicised British country house contents auctions. The sale raised £75,400 and included the Chandos portrait of William Shakespeare.[43]
The 1882 sale of the Hamilton Palace collection raised £332,000.[44]
In March 1987, Vincent van Gogh's Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers fetched an auction record of $39.9M at Christie's, making it the most expensive painting in the world at the time, at more than three times the price of the previous worldwide record for the highest paid for any painting.[45]

Criticism

Price-fixing scandal in 2000

In 2000, allegations surfaced of a price-fixing arrangement between Christie's and Sotheby's. Executives from Christie's subsequently alerted the Department of Justice of their suspicions of commission-fixing collusion.

Christie's gained immunity from prosecution in the United States as a longtime employee of Christie's confessed and cooperated with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation. Numerous members of Sotheby's senior management were fired soon thereafter, and A. Alfred Taubman, the largest shareholder of Sotheby's at the time, took most of the blame; he and Dede Brooks (the CEO) were given jail sentences, and Christie's, Sotheby's and their owners also paid a civil lawsuit settlement of $512M.[113][114][115]

Insufficient or invalid provenance for looted works

Blockchain Technology at Auctions

In 2018, Christie's began offering "digital passports" stored on the blockchain to a select number of private collectors purchasing art. These "certificates of ownership" gave the buyer a clear and transparent provenance record of the piece of art they were purchasing, a record that could never be erased or manipulated, and accessible worldwide.[133]

Six years later in October 2024, two Christie's auctions exhibited this block-chain technology in the most public events to date. In the first, on 2 October, Christie's New York showcased the work of Diane Arbus and Cindy Sherman in An Eye Towards the Real: Photographs from the Collection of Ambassador Trevor Traina – a former U.S. ambassador to Austria and founder of the web3 wallet provider Kresus. Eight days later, on 10 October, Christie's New York auctioned Ascend, a digital work created by Ryan Koopmans and Alice Wexell, marking the first time a piece inscribed on Bitcoin's Ordinals protocol had been sold in a live auction at Christie’s. Christie's sees this "integration of physical and digital ownership" as the future of art auctioning, and the most efficient way for buyers to know they've purchased a work with as accurate and secure a provenance as possible.[134]

Christie's Fine Art Storage Services (CFASS)

Christie's first ventured into storage services for outside clients in 1984, when it opened a 100,000 square feet brick warehouse in London that was granted "Exempted Status" by HM Revenue and Customs,[135] meaning that property may be imported into the United Kingdom and stored without incurring import duties and VAT. Christie's Fine Art Storage Services, or CFASS, is a wholly owned subsidiary that runs Christie's storage operation.

In September 2008, Christie's signed a 50-year lease on an early 1900s warehouse of the historic N.Y.D. Company[136] in Red Hook, Brooklyn, and subsequently spent $30M converting it into a six-storey, 250,000 square feet[137] art-storage facility.[135] The facility opened in 2010 and features high-tech security and climate controls that maintain a virtually constant 70° and 50% relative humidity.[138]

Educational and other ventures

Christie's Education previously offered master's degree programs in London and New York, but they were planned to be phased out in 2019. In 2020, in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, Christie's noted that there was a lack of racial diversity in the art world, and admitted that Christie's degree programs only exacerbated these inequities.[141]

However, Christie's continue to offer non-degree programmes in London, New York, Hong Kong and Amsterdam as well as online.[142] In addition they offer an Art Business Masterclass Certificate and the Luxury Masterclass Certificate.[143]

With Bonhams, Christie's is a shareholder in the London-based Art Loss Register, a privately owned database used by law enforcement services worldwide to trace and recover stolen art.[144]

Management

Since its acquisition by François Pinault, Christie's CEOs have been as follows:

1999–2010: Edward Dolman[145]
2010–2014: Steven Murphy [146]
2014–2017: Patricia Barbizet[147]
2017–2025: Guillaume Cerutti[148][149]

Bibliography

J. Herbert, Inside Christie's, London, 1990 (ISBN 978-0340430439)
P. A. Colson, The Story of Christie's, London, 1950
H. C. Marillier, Christie's, 1766–1925, London, 1926
M. A. Michael, A Brief History of Christie's Education... , London, 2008 (ISBN 978-0955780707)
W. Roberts, Memorials of Christie's, 2 vols, London, 1897
"Going Once." Phaidon Press, 2016. ISBN 978-0-7148-7202-5.

External links

Christie's page on Arcadja Art database with several auction catalogs
Bill Brooks – Daily Telegraph obituary
Christie's Fine Art Storage Services – Official website

References

Daniel Cassady. Christie's Ends 2025 With $6.2 B. in Sales as Confidence Creeps Back Into Art Market ARTnews, 17 December 2025, retrieved 22 March 2026^
Christie's Locations Christies.com, retrieved 2 April 2025^
Christie's Groupe Artémis

21st century

In 2002, Christie's France held its first auction in Paris.[18]

Like Sotheby's, Christie's became increasingly involved in high-profile private transactions. In 2006, Christie's offered a reported $21M guarantee to the Donald Judd Foundation and displayed the artist's works for five weeks in an exhibition that later won an AICA award for "Best Installation in an Alternative Space".[19] In 2007 it brokered a $68M deal that transferred Thomas Eakins' The Gross Clinic (1875) from the Jefferson Medical College at the Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia to joint ownership by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.[20] In the same year, the Haunch of Venison gallery[21] became a subsidiary of the company.[22]

On 28 December 2008, The Sunday Times reported that Pinault's debts left him "considering" the sale of Christie's and that a number of "private equity groups" were thought to be interested in its acquisition.[23] In January 2009, the company employed 2,100 people worldwide, though an unspecified number of staff and consultants were soon to be cut due to a worldwide downturn in the art market;[24] later news reports said that 300 jobs would be cut.[25] With sales for premier Impressionist, Modern, and contemporary artworks tallying only US$248.8M in comparison to US$739M just a year before, a second round of job cuts began after May 2009.[26]

In 2012, Impressionist works, which dominated the market during the 1980s boom, were replaced by contemporary art as Christie's top category. Asian art was the third most lucrative area.[17] With income from classic auctioneering falling, treaty sales made £413.4 million ($665M) in the first half of 2012, an increase of 53% on the same period last year; they now represent more than 18% of turnover.[27] The company has since promoted curated events, centered on a theme rather than an art classification or time period.[28]

As part of a companywide review in 2017, Christie's announced the layoffs of 250 employees, or 12 per cent of the total work force, based mainly in Britain and Europe.[29]

In June 2021, Christie's Paris held its first sale dedicated to women artists, most notably Louise Moillon's Nature morte aux raisins et pêches.[30]

In 2022 Christie's sold $8.4bn in art and luxury goods, an all-time high for any auction house.[5][31]

Christie's agreed to acquire American classic car auction house, Gooding & Company, in September 2024.[32]

Other

In November 1987, during the Royal Albert Hall auction, Christie's auctioned a Bugatti Royale automobile for a world record price of £5.5M.[95]

In June 2001, Elton John sold 20 of his cars at Christie's, saying he did not drive them often because he was frequently out of the country. The sale, which included a 1993 Jaguar XJ220, the most expensive at £234,750, and several Ferraris, Rolls-Royces, and Bentleys, raised nearly £2M.[96]

In 2006, a single Imperial Qing dynasty porcelain bowl, another item which belonged to Barbara Hutton, was auctioned by Christie's Hong Kong for a price of US$19.5M.[97][98]

On 16 May 2006, Christie's auctioned a Stradivarius called The Hammer for a record US$3,544,000. It was, at that time, the most paid at public auction for any musical instrument.[99]

In December 2006, one of the three versions of the Givenchy black dress worn by Audrey Hepburn in the film Breakfast at Tiffany's was sold for £467,200 at Christie's South Kensington.[100]

In 2006, controversy arose after Christie's auctioned artefacts known to be looted from Bulgaria.[101][102]

Over a three-day sale in Paris in February 2009, Christie's auctioned the monumental private collection of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé for a record-breaking 370M euros.[103] It was the most expensive private collection ever sold at auction,[104] breaking auction records for Brâncuși, Matisse, and Mondrian.[103] The "Dragons" armchair by Irish furniture designer Eileen Gray sold for 21.9M euros, setting an auction record for a piece of 20th century decorative art.[105]

On 18 April 2012, the silver cup given to the marathon winner, Greek athlete Spyridon Louis, at the first modern Olympic Games staged in Athens in 1896 sold for £541,250, breaking the auction record for Olympic memorabilia.[106]

On 11 November 2017, a Patek Philippe Titanium wristwatch Ref. 5208T-010 was sold for $6.226M (CHF6,200,000) in Geneva, making it one of the most expensive watches ever sold at auction.[107][108]

In March 2021, Beeple's Everydays: the First 5000 Days, his 13-year collage of a new piece of digital art by him every day for 5,000 days starting in May 2007, sold as an NFT for $69.3 million.[109] This was the highest price ever paid for an NFT, and the sale brought legitimacy to NFTs and exposure to the broader public.[110] This was also Christie's first offering of an NFT for sale, and its first acceptance of cryptocurrency as payment.[111]

In September and October 2022 at Christie's, the James Bond film franchise auctioned 61 lots of vehicles, watches, costumes, props, posters, and memorabilia from the 25 Bond films. The auction raised nearly £7M from 28 countries, and proceeds went to more than 45 charities.[112]

Christie's

BrandAI briefing

History

Founding

20th century

Commissions

Locations

Europe

Notable auctions

Paintings

Criticism

Price-fixing scandal in 2000

Insufficient or invalid provenance for looted works

Blockchain Technology at Auctions

Christie's Fine Art Storage Services (CFASS)

Educational and other ventures

Management

See also

Bibliography

External links

References

21st century

Americas

Asia

Jewellery

Sculptures

Documents

Fossils

Other