James Christie: Art of the Auction

In 1766, a young Scotsman, James Christie, set up his first permanent sales rooms at 83-84 Pall Mall, London. His first sale held in these rooms included a pair of sheets, two pillowcases, two chamber pots, and four Indian works on glass. In his next sale a bespoke coffin, no longer needed by the recently recovered consigner, sold alongside live pigs and poultry. In a moment of characteristic ingenuity, Christie soon shifted focus from objects of practicality, general household items, to objects of desire and beauty. Less than half a year later, he held his first auction devoted entirely to pictures on 20 March 1767.

It was not merely the content of his sales that set Christie apart: he reinvented the atmosphere, instilled greater transparency to the auction process, and embraced a new attitude towards holding auctions. Before Christie, auctions were largely banal events – the role of the auctioneer considered merely administrative. Christie turned auctioneering into an art. For Christie, auctioneering was a performance, his rostrum was his stage, and he was rewarded with success.

Revolution and Revenue

Christie’s winning charisma ensured close friendships with the intellectual and artistic elite of his day including the British painter Thomas Gainsborough, who would paint Christie’s portrait in 1788 and Sir Joshua Reynolds, first President of the Royal Academy. Christie was the first to introduce artist studio sales and the five-day sale of the contents of Sir Joshua Reynolds’ studio realised £10,319 in 1795.

That same charisma ingratiated Christie into the social circles of international aristocracy and royalty. In 1778, Christie negotiated the sale of the collection of Sir Robert Walpole, the first “Prime Minister” od Great Britain to the Empress Catherine the Great. Sold by private treaty for £40,000 these paintings can now be seen at the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. It is at this time that Christie began holding single-owner sales, using the esteem of the consigner’s name to boost interest in and successful dispersal of their collection.

Despite Christie’s substantial early success, the real turning point for his blossoming auctioneering business was the fall-out from and turbulence of the French Revolution. In 1789 Christie capitalised on the opportunity as works of art were brought from Paris to London and he held numerous sales on behalf of French aristocrats and royals who were eager to liquidate their vast collections. In 1795, Christie auctioned the jewels of Madame du Barry, former mistress to King Louis XV, who had been guillotined in 1793, for £8,791 4s 9d – more than $2.7 million in today’s currency.

At his death in 1803 James Christie had held many notable sales in his 50-year career (he had begun his fledgling career with the auctioneer Mr. Annesely in Covent Garden in the early 1750s). His son, James Christie II, (1773-1831) took over the running of the company and in 1823, he moved Christie’s headquarters to No. 8 King Street, where it has remained ever since.

A new era for Christie’s demanded a new kind of auction, and over the course of the 19th century house sales experienced a surge in popularity. The sale of the entire contents of someone’s stately home, or a “house sale,” became a specialty at Christie’s, such as Stowe House, a forty-day sale in 1848, the longest in auctioneering history!

Going Global

During the 1960s and 1970s Christie’s proved that the innovative spirit of its founder was still a driving force in the now 200 year old company. In 1958, Christie’s opened a representative office in Rome, then in 1968 opened a saleroom in Geneva for jewellery sales, and a Paris office opened in Max Ernst’s old studio. In 1969, Christie’s held its first auction in Japan, and opened an office there in 1973. The 1970s and 80s were a period of great expansion during which time offices and salerooms were opened in Hong Kong, Bangkok, Amsterdam, Jakarta, Stockholm, Singapore, Monaco, Kuala Lumpur, Madrid, Seoul, New York, with a full sale room operation following in 1977. In 1975, Christie’s opened their second sale room in London, in South Kensington. In the early 2000 Christie’s expanded to the Middle East and since 2013 regular sales are being conducted in Mumbai. Today, Christie’s has 53 offices in 32 countries as well as 12 sale rooms.

Decades of Dominance: 1970s-1990s

The art market surged in the 1970s. Since the end of the 18th century, the overwhelming majority of buyers at Christie’s auctions had been gallery owners and dealers. Now, private collectors began to attend auctions. In 1973 alone, sales increased by 70 percent compared to the preceding year. In 1970, Velazquez’s Portrait of Juan de Pareja sold for £2,310,000 in London to the Metropolitan Museum in New York. It was the first work to sell at auction for more than £1,000,000 and what is more, it was sold to an American museum.

London sales in 1987 sold Van Gogh’s Sunflowers for £24.75 million and the 1988 sale of Picasso’s Acrobate et Jeune Arlequin for £21 million. However groundbreaking these sales were, no one was prepared for the outcome of the sale of Van Gogh’s Portrait of Dr. Gachet in 1990. Reaching a final bid of $82.5 million, the single work sold for the equivalent of all the objects sold at Christie’s in 1975 combined. In 1991 it was announced that sales in the previous year had totaled $2.0 billion, or ten times that of 1980.

In 1997, the sale of the collection of Victor and Sally Ganz became the most expensive private collection ever sold at auction. 58 modern and contemporary paintings sold for over $207 million dollars, a price that would not be surpassed until more than a decade later.

A New Millennium

The new millennium brought exciting changes to Christie’s. In 2006, Christie’s launched Christie’s Live™, allowing real-time bidding from anywhere in the world using the internet: no one could have anticipated the success of this pioneering move. 

In 2009 Christie’s continued to hold landmark sales, notably the Yves Saint-Laurent’s remarkable collection, which realised a total of £304.9 million, with the late fashion designer’s incredible taste producing the most valuable private collection ever sold at auction.

In 2011, Christie’s was the first international auction house to hold an online-only sale, offering 1,000 lots from the collection of Elizabeth Taylor. The two-week online auction ran in parallel to the four-day live auction of the star’s jewellery, fashion, furnishings and film memorabilia collections. The online-only sale component totalled $9.5 million – more than nine times the pre-sale estimate of $1 million. The entire collection of Elizabeth Taylor made £117.2 million.

Two significant records were set in May in New York last year: a new world auction record for any work of art sold at auction when Pablo Picasso’s 1955 masterpiece Les femmes d’Alger, (Version “O”), sold for $179.4 million followed by a new world auction record for any sculpture, set by Alberto Giacometti’s L’homme au doigt (Pointing Man), selling for $141.3 million.

The Next 250 Years

By staying true to the tenets established by the founder, James Christie I, that Christie’s remains so reliable an institution as a place to view the very best objects of desire and a place to buy and sell top-quality works of art. It can only look forward to the next 250 years.

(Reproduced with the consent of Christie’s auctioneers).