In 2020 only 2 of the 10 most expensive works of art sold at auction went for prices exceeding $50 million. Then, the next year, driven in part by the sale of artworks from the collection of the divorced Harry and Linda Macklowe, all the top 10 lots surpassed the $50 million mark. In 2022, the bar rose once again: the least expensive piece in the top 10, a work by René Magritte, took in $79.8 million.
Now, that bar has lowered, with a significant drop in the prices of the most expensive works sold at auction in 2023.
Compare this year’s 10th most expensive work to that of 2022. Henri Rousseau’s Les Flamants (1910) sold this past May for $43.5 million, setting a new auction record for him. That’s a little more than half the price of the Magritte sold in 2022.
Signs of a downturn are evident in other ways too. This year, four of the works that generated the year’s top 10 prices overall went for under $50 million—many fewer than last year. Then, consider the most expensive work sold at auction: a Picasso painting that took in $139 million. In 2022, an Andy Warhol “Marilyn” sold for $195 million. That’s a 29 percent difference.
The total figures for the top 10 lots exhibit a similar loss—$660 million in 2023 versus $1.1 billion in 2022.
Below, a look at the most valuable lots sold at auction in 2023.
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Henri Rousseau, Les Flamants, 1910
Image Credit: Courtesy Sotheby's Sold for: $43.5 million
In May, when this painting sold for $43.5 million with fees during Christie’s 20th Century Evening Sale, it generated a new record for Rousseau. The price far surpassed his previous record of $4 million, set three decades ago, in 1993, with the sale of his 1909 painting Portrait of Joseph Brummer.
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Wassily Kandinsky, Murnau mit Kirche II (Murnau with Church II), 1910
Image Credit: Courtesy Sotheby's Sold for: $44.8 million
In March, this early abstract painting by Kandinsky sold at Sotheby’s London after being restituted to its original German-Jewish owners, Johanna Margarete Stern and Siegbert Samuel Stern. Kandinsky painted it during a period that researchers consider seminal for the Russian-born artist.
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Mark Rothko, Untitled (Yellow, Orange, Yellow, Light Orange), 1955
Image Credit: Courtesy Sotheby's Sold for: $46.4 million
Rothko’s Untitled (Yellow, Orange, Yellow, Light Orange) was one of the top lots in the November New York sales when it sold at Christie’s, even though it barely exceeded its $45 million estimate. Standing out as a top seller in its respective auction, and increasing in value some 20 percent from 2014, when it sold at Sotheby’s for $36 million, the price was considerably lower than the $86 million achieved by Lucian Freud’s Large Interior, W11 (After Watteau), 1981–83, when it appeared in a comparable sale.
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Richard Diebenkorn, Recollections of a Visit to Leningrad, 1965
Image Credit: Courtesy Christie's Sold for: $46.4 million
This Diebenkorn canvas showing the influence of Henri Matisse achieved a record for the American artist when it sold in November during a Christie’s 20th Century Evening Sale, hammering for $46.4 million, far above its $25 million estimate. The final sum surpassed the artist’s previous benchmark of $27.3 million, set in 2021 by his 1971 painting Ocean Park #40.
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Francis Bacon, Figure in Movement, 1976
Sold for: $52 million
Bacon made Figure in Movement a few years after the death of his partner, George Dyer, who was a recurring subject in his work. In November, after being held privately for five decades, the painting returned to public view when it sold during a Christie’s New York evening sale. Specialists had expected the dark canvas to sell for $50 million.
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Gustav Klimt, Insel im Attersee (Island in the Attersee), ca. 1901–02
Image Credit: Getty Images Sold for: $53 million
Once owned by art collector Otto Kallir, who helped popularize Austrian modernists in the United States, this painting went for $53 million during a Sotheby’s Modern evening sale in New York this past May. The work, which depicts a body of water in the Salzkammergut region of Austria, had never before appeared at auction. Ahead of the sale, it was expected pull in $45 million.
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Jean-Michel Basquiat, El Gran Espectaculo (The Nile), 1983
Image Credit: Courtesy Christie's Sold for: $67 million
This Basquiat triptych took the highest price in a Christie’s contemporary evening sale held this past May. The piece sets floating skulls and figures against scrawled phrases referencing ancient mythological texts. It came to auction from the collection of fashion designer Valentino Garavani, and was offered in the sale with an estimate of some $45 million.
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Claude Monet, Le bassin aux nymphéas, 1919
Image Credit: Getty Images Sold for: $74 million
Le bassin aux nymphéas exceeded its $65 million estimate when it went under the hammer at Christie’s New York this past November, generating $74 million with fees. The figure puts it among the most expensive Monet paintings ever auctioned.
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Gustav Klimt, Dame mit Fächer (Lady with a Fan), 1917
Image Credit: Getty Images for Sotheby's Sold for: $108 million
When Sotheby’s London announced that it was selling this painting, thought to be the last portrait Klimt painted, the house anticipated it might bring in £65 million ($80 million). No painting had ever received a higher estimate upon appearing at auction in Europe, and expectations ran high. The painting ended up surpassing that estimate to hammer at £74 million ($94.3 million); with fees, the total rose to £85.3 million ($108 million), nearly 10 times the $11.6 million for which it sold when it last appeared at auction, in New York in 1994.
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Pablo Picasso, Femme à la montre, 1932
Image Credit: Getty Images for Sotheby's Sold for: $139 million
This painting was made in 1932, like many of the most expensive Picasso works that have sold at auction. From the collection of the late New York philanthropist Emily Fisher Landau, it sold this past November at a Sotheby’s New York evening sale. Femme à la montre marks the second-highest price achieved by Picasso at auction, exceeded only by the $179 million that Les femmes d’Alger (Version ‘O’), 1955, brought in at Christie’s in 2015.