Sotheby's London

Profil

On March 11, 1744, Samuel Baker, founder of Sotheby's, held the first-ever sale under his own name. The library of a certain Rt. Hon. Sir John Stanley, Bart. described as "containing several Hundred scarce and valuable books in all branches of Polite Literature" sold for a few hundred pounds. Well over two centuries later, on December 6, 1983, Sotheby's sold a single book, The Gospels of Henry the Lion, for more than 8 million pounds.

Arrival in fashionable New Bond Street also heralded a new era during which the turnover for paintings and other works of art finally began to outstrip books and literary property. This move towards a wider sales arena was a very deliberate one, and the charge was led in the area of Old Master Paintings and Drawings. This diversification effort paved the way for the explosive growth of the firm under the leadership of Peter Wilson.

Wilson, who joined the firm in 1936, took Sotheby's onto the global stage. He ensured the firm's readiness to capitalize on the meteoric rise in popularity of Impressionist and Modern paintings. Perhaps the single most sensational and ultimately influential sale during Wilson's tenure was the famous Goldschmidt sale of 1958.

Largely thanks to the vision of Peter Wilson, Sotheby's recognised long before its rivals that art was becoming an international market. It was because of this that the company opened an office in New York in 1955; and, more importantly, acquired Parke-Bernet in 1964. Parke-Bernet was the United State's largest fine art auction house, and following its acquisition by Sotheby's, became crucially involved in the rapidly developing North American market for Impressionist and Modern paintings.

Parke-Bernet, and its President Louis Marion, had a distinguished history of selling major collections at record prices. With the greatest American auction house now a part of Sotheby's, the company looked elsewhere for further opportunities. In 1967, offices opened in Paris, Los Angeles and Houston. In 1968 it was Melbourne, Florence and Toronto. In 1969, Zurich, Munich and Edinburgh joined the list. Expansion continued throughout the 1970s, with offices opening across much of Europe, a provincial network in Britain, offices in Asia as well as numerous new addresses across the United States.

Along with many other businesses at the time, Sotheby's chose this period of rapid growth to "go public." The share issue in 1977 was oversubscribed 26 times, and within 18 months the value of a share had more than doubled.

As the 1990s began, the all-embracing chill of a global recession made its mark on the art market just as emphatically as it did on so many other markets. With the perspective that 250 years of history provides, though, Sotheby's has learned to manage these art cycles and has seen recovery follow recession a number of times.

In 2000, Sotheby's became the first international art auction house to hold auctions on the Internet. Sothebys.com was the venue for some dramatic and unprecedented successes, such as the sale of a first printing of the Declaration of Independence for more than $8 million, 21 panels of the historic Boston Garden floor, and a masterwork by Frederick, Lord Leighton. In addition, Sotheby's opened its traditional saleroom auctions to Internet bidding through the eBay Live Auctions service. Although no longer an auction venue, Sotheby's website remains a vital tool for the dissemination of information and news about the auction house worldwide, and select sales are open for bids via the Internet.