Sotheby's history

George Leigh died in 1816, but not before recruiting Samuel E Leigh into the business.

Soon, Baker's company had transformed into the leading auctioneer of aristocratic libraries, culminating in the 1823 auction of the books Napoleon brought with him into exile to St Helena.

The company's staff also expanded, and, in 1842, Sotheby's senior accountant, John Wilkinson, was permitted to purchase a 25 percent share in the partnership.

John Wilkinson, Sotheby's Senior Accountant, became a partner and eventually the company's new head of the company when the last member of the Sotheby family died in 1861.

Following Hodge’s death in 1907, his son Tom brought in new associates: Montague Barlow, a Barrister and MP, Felix Warre, a banker, and Geoffrey Hobson, a young Foreign Office official.

Their first major success in this field was the sale of a Frans Hals painting for nine thousand guineas in 1913.

In 1917, Sotheby's relocated from 13 Wellington Street to 34–35 New Bond Street, which remains as its London base to this day.

Three years later he promoted Edward Grose Hodge, and restyled the company Sotheby, Wilkinson and Hodge, the name it carried until 1924.

In 1937, Sotheby's conducted its most notable house sale of the prewar era, when it dispersed the contents of 148 Piccadilly, formerly owned by the Rothschild family.

In 1946, the company sold £1.5 million worth of goods, a figure that would not be equaled for the next eight years.

FIRST INTERNATIONAL AUCTION HOUSE In 1955, Sotheby's became the world's first international auction house with the opening of a New York office to directly serve American clients.

The pioneering move almost immediately bore fruit in 1957 when Sotheby's secured the American-based collection of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings belonging to William Weinberg, which was sold in London that summer.

From this period dates the emblematic Goldschmidt sale, held in 1958, which made history for art sales given it infused a celebrity and posh component to auction sales.

By the end of 1959, with contributions from these two landmark sales, Sotheby's annual sales had reached £6 million.

That record was soon eclipsed with the sale of Rembrandt van Rijn's Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer, which was purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1961 for $2.3 million, at the time, the most expensive painting ever sold at auction.

In 1964, Sotheby's purchased Parke-Bernet, the largest auctioneer of fine art in the United States at the time.

In 1967, the company opened offices in Houston, Los Angeles, and Paris.

The following year, operations in Toronto, Florence, and Melbourne were inaugurated, and, in 1969, Sotheby's added Edinburgh, Zürich, Munich, and Johannesburg.

In 1971, the company opened a second London showroom, in the section of the city known as Belgravia.

In 1973, Sotheby's moved overseas again, opening an office and showroom in Hong Kong, which soon handled the sale of the Chow collection of Ming and Qing porcelain.

Also in 1974, Sotheby's opened offices in Stockholm, Milan, Brussels, and Dublin.

In May 1976, the company successfully auctioned the renowned Pink Diamond, for a record price of $1.09 million.

Meanwhile, in 1977, the great house sale at Mentmore Towers, Buckinghamshire, proved to be Peter Wilson’s swansong.

He was succeeded by Diana Dwyer "Dede" Brooks, who had first joined Sotheby's in 1979.

In 1980, after a drop in sales, Sotheby's relocated its North American headquarters from Madison Avenue to a former cigar factory at 1334 York Avenue, New York.

During this event, Sotheby’s marked its largest online sale with Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled (Head, 1982) going for $13.1 million.

Sotheby's was initially incorporated as Sotheby's Holdings, Inc. in Michigan in August 1983.

The dramatic growth rate continued throughout the following two years, and, in 1987, Sotheby's reported an 85 percent annual increase in auction sales, as the company passed the $1 billion mark for the first time.

By the end of 1989, the company's sales had doubled again over just two years, with strong returns from contemporary and impressionist art.

Already in 1990, Sotheby's New York had successfully lobbied for a zoning change permitting the construction of a 27-story residential tower above the five-story headquarters; this expansion was never realised.

By December 1991, annual sales had dropped to $1.1 billion.

Taubman, whose vast financial empire was crumbling, sold some of his Sotheby's shares in the spring of 1992.

She also, in January 1993, increased its buyer's premium, which helped to improve its profits.

By 1994, improving prices in some areas, such as jewelry, began to indicate a slow recovery in the market.

In 1995, although Christie's did secure several important collections, Sotheby's landed a Picasso that sold for nearly $30 million and edged out its rival yet again.

Sotheby's posted just under $1.6 billion in 1996 auction sales, and Christie's outsold them by the slimmest of margins, giving Christie's its first lead in 42 years.

Moreover, Christie's posted a turnover of $2.02 billion for the year 1997, passing Sotheby's for a second year running.

Then, a February 1998 auction of the personal effects of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor was a tremendous success which garnered enormous media attention.

January 1999 marked the debut of sothebys.com, a web site offering information on art collections, auctions, and catalogs.

The company sold the building in 2002 for $175 million.

In August 2004, Sotheby's introduced an online system – MySotheby's – allowing clients to track lots and create "wishlists" that could be automatically updated as new works became available.

As an emblematic moment of art history, 2008 saw Damien Hirst´s auction, Beautiful Inside My Head Forever, a collection of more than 200 works directly from the artist accompanied by a global marketing tour.

The brand is named #1 in its category and #7 of the more than 400 franchises surveyed for Franchise Business Review’s 2009 Franchisee Satisfaction award.

In 2010 the brand grew the office count within its network by more than 11 percent, ending the year with 11,700 sales associates located in more than 550 offices in 44 countries and territories worldwide.

The brand also grew the office count within its global network by more than 7 percent in 2011, ending the year with more than 600 offices and nearly 12,000 sales associates located in 45 countries and territories worldwide.

In 2012, the company signed a 10-year joint-venture agreement to form Sotheby's (Beijing) Auction Co.

In 2015, the auction house's longest serving auctioneer, David Redden, and Vice-Chairman retired.

Whether it’s taking an immersive and experiential Matterport walkthrough using a virtual reality headset, or exploring a home in high-definition on Apple TV, 2016 was a year of industry-leading technological innovation for the Sotheby's International Realty brand.

Such is the case of the aforementioned Sotheby's, Christie's (1766), Phillips, and Bonhams, with the first three accounting for 70% of the contemporary art market, according to The 2018 Contemporary Art Market Report.

In June 2019, Sotheby's announced that it was being acquired by French-Israeli businessman Patrick Drahi at a 61% market premium.

And now in 2020, with the cancellation of art fairs and traditional auctions due to the global pandemic, Sotheby’s was the first auction house to successfully shift to a hybrid digital auction format and create new mobile and web experiences to drive a much larger portion of sales online.