Oliver Barker Presides as Sotheby’s Spring Modern and Contemporary Sale Fills London

Sotheby’s Spring Modern & Contemporary evening sale in London, auctioned by Oliver Barker, totaled £130.6 million after buyer’s fees, a figure Artnet reported as the final sales total and other outlets rounded to £131 million. The ceremony ended with Barker presented with a white glove after the last lot hammered, Sotheby’s said, marking the sale as a white-glove event when Lucio Fontana’s Concetto spaziale, Teatrino sold for £332,800.

Artnet’s detailed results show 54 lots on offer, one withdrawn, 53 sold and a hammer total of £103.30 million, producing a sell-through rate of 98 percent overall and 100 percent excluding withdrawals. Artnet also listed a presale low estimate of £96.2 million and reported the hammer total exceeded that low estimate by £6.7 million. Observer supplied a presale estimate range of £95,650,000 to £135,700,000, and ARTnews described the final total as “a few million shy of the high estimate.”

The top seller was Francis Bacon’s Self-Portrait (1972), which sold for £16 million. ARTnews reported that the work, one of nine small self-portrait panels in the 14-by-12-inch format, had been gifted to the artist’s doctor before entering The Lewis Collection in 1994. In total, ARTnews and Observer noted that a group of London School works consigned from Joe Lewis’ Lewis Collection generated £35.8 million, led by Bacon and Lucian Freud.

Leon Kossoff’s Children’s Swimming Pool, 11 o’clock Saturday Morning, August smashed expectations, selling for £5.2 million after a 10-bidder contest, against a presale estimate of £800,000 and setting a new auction record for the artist; ARTnews reported the lot was sold through Sotheby’s Asia chairman Wendy Lin. Andy Warhol’s Four Marilyns (Reversal Series) fetched £4.3 million against a £3.2 million estimate, and Fernand Léger’s Les Hommes dans la Ville brought £4.8 million, ARTnews recorded.

The saleroom atmosphere was electric. George Nelson of ARTnews wrote, “When I slipped into the saleroom a few minutes late, it was packed with more than 300 people, and bidding on the opening lots was frenetic.” Artnet added that it was standing room only and that even CEO Charles Stewart “had to stay on his feet for the whole two hours.” Sotheby’s spokesperson told ARTnews before the sale, “We haven’t lost a single pre‑sale bid.”

Not all lots sailed through smoothly. Observer reported a complicated sequence for Jean‑Michel Basquiat’s Thin in the Old (1986), which “initially went unsold when bidding stalled at a £4.4 million last phone bid before returning a few lots later to sell for £3.7 million after the reserve had likely been renegotiated.” Artnet also noted that a 2004 Robert Ryman work was withdrawn before the auction began.

Compared with last March’s equivalent sale, which brought in £62.5 million, the room’s receipts rose sharply: Artnet calculated a 108 percent increase while ARTnews rounded to 110 percent, a difference driven by rounding of the totals. Sotheby’s followed the evening with a David Hockney sale of iPad drawings the next afternoon that Sotheby’s reported sold completely for £4.5 million.

The supplied coverage contained no specific jewelry or gemstone lots or results; to assess how diamonds and gem-set works fared during London’s spring sales would require separate reports from Sotheby’s jewellery department or the week’s dedicated jewellery catalogues. The Modern & Contemporary evening, however, provided a clear, art-focused signal: packed rooms, strong London School demand from the Lewis Collection and an auction house eager to point to white-glove momentum as the marquee sales week advanced.