Christie’s Old Masters evening sale in London sold Canaletto’s Venice, the Return of the Bucintoro on Ascension Day (circa 1732) for £31.9 million with fees ($43.7 million), surpassing its £20 million estimate. The work, once owned by Robert Walpole, drew five bidders and sold to an anonymous phone bidder via Christie’s international director Alice de Roquemaurel; it set a new Canaletto auction record at Christie’s London and is the second-highest Old Master price there after Rubens’s Lot and His Daughters.
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Canaletto — Venice, the Return of the Bucintoro on Ascension Day — £31.9 million with fees ($43.7 million)
The Art Newspaper reports that Taiwanese pop star Jay Chou purchased Henri Matisse's 1924 painting La Séance du Matin for $20m (including fees) at Sotheby’s New York. Chou previously owns works by Peter Doig and Jean-Michel Basquiat and has spoken about devoting earnings to art collecting.
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Henri Matisse — La Séance du Matin — $20m (with fees)
The article reports Sotheby’s London achieving a record £393.4 million ($520.7 million) across a two-sale evening led by billionaire Joe Lewis. The single-owner sale of Lewis’s estate brought £296.3 million ($392.6 million) with 24 of 25 lots sold, making it the most valuable single-owner collection sale in London’s history; the crown jewel was Modigliani’s Nu assis au collier (1917–1918).
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Amedeo Modigliani — Nu assis au collier — £48.2 million
Claude Monet — Nymphéas — £40.8 million ($54 million)
Edgar Degas — Petite danseuse de quatorze ans — £25.1 million
Gustav Klimt — Bildnis Gertrud Loew — £36.2 million
In London's Classic Week, Sotheby's Old Master and 19th century paintings and sculpture evening sale totalled 37.8 million pounds with 78 percent of 45 lots sold, well above the previous year's 14.5 million pound equivalent, while Christie's evening sale totalled 38.9 million pounds with 90 percent of 39 lots sold. The Hamilton Laocoon (1817), a bronze after the antique cast by Auguste-Jean-Marie Carbonneaux, made 13.6 million pounds, Thomas Lawrence's portrait of the Duke of Wellington (1820) made 9.7 million pounds, Rembrandt's Let the Little Children Come unto Me made 8 million pounds, Jan van Huysum still lifes made 6.5 million and 5.5 million pounds, Edwin Landseer's Scene in Braemar made 5.9 million pounds, Louis-Leopold Boilly's Thirty-five Expressive Heads made 914,400 pounds, and Pablo Picasso's Le Peintre et son modele (1970) made 508,000 pounds.
The article discusses how Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Achebe, and other notable figures honor Ghanaian artist El Anatsui, highlighting his use of found objects in art and his influence on future generations. The event included the unveiling of a book about Anatsui's life and achievements, with various prominent guests attending.
George Condo returns to Hauser & Wirth for 2027 Paris and Palo Alto shows, restoring the gallery’s worldwide representation of the artist. The move follows his 2025 career survey at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris and prior shifts to Sprüth Magers and Skarstedt. The artist’s market remains robust, with an auction record of $6.8 million for Force Field (2010).
Hadassah Magazine reported that the 2025 HEAR Act, signed into law in April 2026, removes procedural defences such as statutes of limitations that had blocked Nazi looted art claims from being heard on their merits. The article cites the Stern heirs' suit to recover Vincent van Gogh's Olive Picking (1889) held by the Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation in Athens, and David Cassirer's long running effort to recover Camille Pissarro's Rue Saint-Honore, Apres-midi, Effet de Pluie from Madrid's Thyssen-Bornemisza museum.
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Camille Pissarro — Rue Saint-Honoré, Après-midi, Effet de Pluie
El Anatsui, an 82-year-old Ghanaian artist, outsold peers at Frieze New York 2026 with two works sold by White Cube for a combined $4.1 million. The sales were LuwVor I (2025) for $2.2 million and MivEvi III (2025) for $1.9 million, making White Cube the top-selling gallery of the week.
The Art Newspaper reported that Christie's posted 4.5 billion dollars in total first half 2026 revenue with public auction sales of 3.5 billion dollars, up 71 percent year on year, while Sotheby's reached an all time high 4.4 billion dollars in total revenue with public auction sales of 3.4 billion dollars, up 59 percent. Top lots cited include Jackson Pollock's Number 7A (1948) at 181.2 million dollars, Constantin Brancusi's Danaide at 107.6 million dollars, and a Mark Rothko abstract at 98.4 million dollars, alongside Sotheby's June sale of the Joe Lewis collection in London at 406.2 million dollars.
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Claude Monet — Pommiers, Vétheuil — $19.6m
Constantin Brancusi — Danaïde — $107.6m
Jackson Pollock — Number 7A — $181.2m
Mark Rothko — No. 15 (Two Greens and Red Stripe) — $98.4m
Robert Rauschenberg Foundation donates three Gluts sculptures by Robert Rauschenberg to ARTIST ROOMS, to be shown at Tate Modern from 20 September 2026. The works entering the collection are G-I Glut (1986), Rasputin’s Revenge Early Winter Glut (1987) and Mobile Cluster Glut (Neapolitan) (1987).
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Robert Rauschenberg — G-I Glut
Robert Rauschenberg — Mobile Cluster Glut (Neapolitan)
Robert Rauschenberg — Rasputin’s Revenge Early Winter Glut
The Art Newspaper reported that the German state of Bavaria approved measures to move provenance research out of its museums into an independent entity attached to the Institut fur Zeitgeschichte in Munich and to create an evaluation panel led by Raphael Gross. Culture minister Markus Blume also announced the restitution of Pablo Picasso's 1905 bronze bust Fernande, also known as Beatrice, to the heirs of the Jewish dealer Alfred Flechtheim after Bavaria had rejected the claim in 2024.
Pierre Soulages’s 1958 abstraction Peinture 161 x 200 cm, 14 novembre 1958, sold for just under $5 million at Christie’s during an evening sale from the Weis family collection. The new lawsuit, filed in New York State Supreme Court, alleges the work was stolen from the Zeckendorf family between 1977 and 1980 and seeks proceeds from the sale. Plaintiffs include William Lie Zeckendorf, Arthur W. Zeckendorf, James Nicholson, and Leslie Nicholson; defendants are Patricia Weis’s estate representatives.
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Pierre Soulages — Peinture 161 x 200 cm, 14 novembre 1958 — $4,955,000 (including buyer’s premium)
Pierre Soulages painting Peinture 161 x 200 cm, 14 novembre 1958, oil on canvas, 63 3/4 × 79 3/8", sold at Christie’s last fall for just under $5 million, is the subject of a new lawsuit filed by the Zeckendorf family alleging it was stolen from them decades ago; the Christie’s sale was part of the estate of Patricia G. Ross Weis and Robert F. Weis. The lawsuit seeks the proceeds from the sale but not the artwork itself.
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Pierre Soulages — Peinture 161 x 200 cm, 14 novembre 1958 — just under $5 million
The Whitney Museum of American Art will open “Roy Lichtenstein: Like New” on October 11, 2026, bringing together more than 130 works spanning six decades. The exhibition will also reunite all eight paintings from Lichtenstein’s landmark 1962 debut at Leo Castelli Gallery for the first time.
Colby College Museum of Art has acquired Henri Matisse’s “Océanie, le ciel,” a silk-screened linen panel conceived in 1946 and printed in 1948. The work joins two other Matisse pieces in the collection, is the museum’s first of such monumental size and importance, and will be used in courses across multiple disciplines.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present “Krasner and Pollock: Past Continuous,” bringing together works from more than 80 institutions and private collections in 12 thematic chapters. The exhibition, which examines the artists’ distinct but connected development, will run at The Met Fifth Avenue from October 4, 2026, through January 31, 2027.
A signed original David Hockney lithographic print, discovered inside a donated 1980 copy of Paper Pools at a Salvation Army charity shop in Norwich, sold for £41,160 on eBay. The source says the print remained inside the book for 46 years, the charity researched and confirmed its significance, and the proceeds will support its community work.
Werner Bronkhorst’s From Every Corner (2026), a 48-player football scene marking his debut at a major international auction house, sold for $283,800 against a $100,000–150,000 estimate in Phillips’ 16 July New York sale.