Robust Sales at Sotheby’s, Phillips Suggest Art Market Upswing
3May 21, 2026
The May 19 evening sales at top auction housesSotheby’sandPhillipspulled in a combined $419.1 million, seeming to signal that the hitherto softening contemporary and modern artmarketis beginning to firm up again. Led by the record-breaking sale of a $48.4 million Matisse, the Sotheby’s evening sale took in $303.9 million, about 60 percent more than it garnered the previous year. ThoughPhillipsamassed a more restrained $115.2 million, the figure represented more than double its 2025 sales. The Sotheby’s and Phillips sales ended with 98 and 100 percent of lots sold, respectively.
Among the highlights of the Sotheby’s sale were the aforementioned Matisse, which commanded the second-highest price by the artist at auction:La Chaise lorraine, ca. 1919, had been estimated to bring in $25 million (all prices include fees, all estimates do not) andreportedlydrew some of the most fervent and sustained bidding of the night. Vincent van Gogh’s 1888 drawingLa Moisson en Provencecommanded $29.4 million, while Pablo Picasso’s 1909Arlequin (Buste)fetched $42.6 million. Mark Rothko built on theauction success of last weekwithUntitled, ca. 1959, selling for $9.3 million, well beyond its $7 million high estimate, and Russian Constructivist Varvara Stepanova’s 1921Two Figuresgot $2.3 million against a high estimate of $1.8 million/
Female artists, especially, made a strong showing at the Phillips auction, among them Lee Bontecou, Olga de Amaral, Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell, Georgia O’Keeffe, Pat Passlof, and Anna Weyant. An untitled pastel by Bontecou hammered for $4.3 million, setting a record for a two-dimensional work by the artist, while Mitchell’s 1989 Plain went for $6.8 million and Frankenthaler’s 1978 Paloverde got $2.2 million. Salman Toor and Joseph Yaeger also scored victories, with Toor’s Two Friends, 2020, commanding $335,400 against a $180,000 estimate, and Yaeger’s 2021 There Is a Light and It Always Goes Out fetching $477,300, far outstripping its lowly $60,000 estimate and sparking bidding that Artnews’s Julie Brener Davich described as “frenzied.”