Fine art results of $4.8bn for Sotheby's auctioneers

SOTHEBY’S HAS announced results for 2010 that confirm the strength of the international art market.

The global fine art auctioneering house said its sales increased by 74 per cent to $4.8 billion (€3.5 billion). Net income was $161 million – the second highest, after 2007 – in the company’s 267 years of selling fine art. Sotheby’s shares – which are traded on the New York Stock Exchange – hit a new 52-week high of $49.22 on Monday.

At US lunchtime yesterday they were trading at $46.66. The share price has a 52-week low of $22.06.

Last year, Sotheby’s auctions established new world record prices in a number of categories.

In February 2010, a Brazilian billionaire paid $104.3 million for Alberto Giacometti's Walking Man I– the highest price ever paid for a sculpture.

A copy of John James Audubon's sumptuous Birds of Americasold for $11.5 million, establishing a new world record price for any printed book at auction. The three-volume 19th-century classic contains hand-coloured plates depicting 435 species – in life-size.

A world auction record for any diamond and any jewel was created when jeweller Laurence Graff paid $46.2 million for a Fancy Intense Pink diamond, weighing 24.78 carats, which he immediately dubbed “The Graff Pink”.

The most astonishing result was the sale of a single, standard-size bottle of wine (an 1869 Château Lafite) for $232,692, which one auction-goer noted worked out at over $44,000 per glass.

Sotheby’s sells fine art, antiques, wine and other collectables at auctions in New York, London and seven other cities worldwide, as well as through private sales. In 2010, 609 individual lots sold for over $1 million at auction, compared with 307 in 2009.

Bill Ruprecht, chief executive of Sotheby’s, said “the positive momentum continues in 2011”, with recently concluded London sales of impressionist, modern and contemporary art making $390 million. He said the recovery of the global art market was aided, in part, by the increased buying activity of clients from new markets.

Sotheby's will hold its 17th annual Irish sale in London on March 29th, with paintings by Sir John Lavery, Roderic O'Conor and Jack B Yeats among the highlights. The most expensive Irish painting sold at auction by Sotheby's in 2010 was The Gold Turban, a portrait of his wife Hazel by Sir John Lavery, which fetched £481,250 in London last May. It was bought by a private European collector.