This article is taken from the April 2026 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Get five issues for just £5.
Exactly two years ago, I wrote about the continuing ascent of the contemporary art market and the gradual sidelining of what used to be called the traditional sector. And yet, over the past year and more, several notable galleries selling contemporary art have folded. Is the art market, like so many other economic areas, cyclical?
My favoured interpretation of the rise of contemporary art at the expense of the classic overlaps with the triumph of liberal democracy following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Although finding a link between collecting art and the prevailing political economy may be a fool’s errand, just as there is rarely a link between the motions of the stock market and the art market (interest rates are another matter, however).
The decades in which contemporary art expanded most dramatically were also those in which a liberal, democratic outlook seemed to dominate the global order. Those same decades were characterised by relatively low interest rates, abundant liquidity and the steady growth of an international class of collectors.
Contemporary art flourished within this environment. It was plentiful and often aligned, at least rhetorically, with the liberal values that defined the age.
Naturally, this general theory is an oversimplification of global art market movements, but it seemed to fit. But what of today’s art market? Are there noticeable shifts following the emergence of post-liberalism, realpolitik and the world of post-rules-based international order? Is it perhaps, then, no coincidence that contemporary art seems gradually to be losing momentum and attraction in the market? Could, possibly, the pendulum of taste be swinging back in the other direction, toward the classic?
The winter sales of Old Master pictures in London in December and in New York in February showed several signs of a return to desirability, with broad interest, good selling rates and some outstanding prices. Three works in particular are worth noting.
First, the sale of another magnificent painting by Canaletto, following the sale of a superb example last July in London, both celebratory views of Venice on Ascension Day. This painting had sold in London 2005 for £11.4m and now returned to Christie’s New York, selling for $30.5m.
Second, also at Christie’s, Michelangelo’s drawing, a study for a foot of the Libyan Sibyl, sold for a healthy $27.2m, underbid by art advisors Beaumont Nathan; tellingly, their clients are largely buyers of modern art. At Sotheby’s a drawing of a young lion resting, by Rembrandt, sold for a reassuring $17.8m.
But perhaps the strongest indication of how interest has increased were the results of the fascinating sale (at Christie’s New York) of the collection of the late Mrs Irene Roosevelt Aitken. This was a truly historic American collection of European art, with deep roots in the golden age of collecting, the 1950s and 1960s, housed in a Fifth Avenue townhouse apartment right opposite the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Previously married to John Aspinwall Roosevelt, Irene and her second husband, Russell Aitken, were generous benefactors of great New York art institutions: the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Frick Collection and the Morgan Library. Russell Aitken collected superlative examples of 16th, 17th and 18th century weaponry. Between Irene’s and his acquisitions and those of Russell’s first wife, Annie Laurie Crawford, the collection stretched to include great examples of French and English 18th century paintings, furniture, ceramics and other objects.
It bore all the hallmarks of a spectacular Gilded Age collection. Nearly 800 lots were sent to auction, to be sold at Christie’s to benefit those three great aforementioned New York institutions. Bringing such a quantity of “classic” art was certainly something of a test for an area of the market which has experienced challenging times, languishing in the shadow of its upstart siblings, contemporary and modern art.
Three “live” sales and two timed online sales were organised. The results indicate strong interest in this type of art: an astonishing 96 per cent sold by lot and a sold total of $28,869,005, representing an increase of 172 per cent above the low estimate.
Results showing this shift include a pair of Louis XV-period Chinese porcelain vases with gilt-bronze mounts which drew a final price of $698,500; and a masterful pair of portraits, extremely fragile pastels on canvas, by Maurice Quentin de La Tour, of the Maréchal and Duc de Belle-Isle and his wife, which reached $889,000.
Art and politics are never far apart, but here, not unlike the Rothschild collection sold in the same rooms just over two years previously, it was likely the brilliance of the collection, rarity of many of the objects, longevity and renown of the collectors and the tenacity with which the collection was presented which resulted in its success.
