On 5 March 2026, Christie’s staged a nearly four‑hour marathon evening in London, with three sales realising a combined total of about £197.5 million (US$264 million) – a 52 per cent increase year‑on‑year on the equivalent auctions last season.
Alongside its flagship 20th/21st‑century and Art of the Surreal evening auctions, Christie’s introduced a dedicated sale of works from the collection of Belgian collectors Roger and Josette Vanthournout. In total, 93 lots were offered and 89 found new homes, bringing the sell‑through rate to 96 per cent by lot and signalling confidence in the London market.
The night opened with the traditional 20th/21st Century: London Evening Sale, which brought £114.2 million (US$152.5 million) from 36 lots, up 39 per cent on last March’s total. Four works were withdrawn ahead of the auction and three went unsold, giving a solid 92 per cent sell‑through.
The sale – and the evening – was led by the last cast in private hands of Henry Moore’s monumental double‑portrait King and Queen, which had remained with the family who acquired it directly from the artist in 1954. Setting a new auction record for the artist at £26.3 million (US$35.2 million), it was also the highest‑selling lot of the London season.
Adrien Meyer, Global Head of Private Sales & Co-Chairman, Impressionist & Modern Art, selling Henry Moore’s King and Queen
Lot 7 | Henry Moore (1898-1986) | King and Queen, bronze with a dark green and brown patina (Auction record for the artist)
Conceived in 1952-53 and cast in 1952-53 by the Galizia Foundry, London, in an edition of four plus one artist's cast
Height: 164 cm
Provenance:
- Acquired directly from the artist in 1954, and thence by descent to the present owner
Sale: 20th / 21st Century: London Evening Sale
Estimate: £10,000,000 - 15,000,000
Hammer Price: £22,500,000
Sold: £26,345,000
Conceived in 1952–53, King and Queen is widely regarded as one of Moore’s most inventive and celebrated sculptures. Life‑size and notably elongated, it presents two stylised rulers seated side by side on a plain bench, their stillness projecting a calm yet intense authority.
The work was first cast in an edition of four plus an artist’s cast. This is the only example remaining in private hands; the others are housed in major museums in Europe, the United States and Japan. Two further casts were later produced for the Tate Collection (1957) and the Henry Moore Foundation (1985).
Offered at auction for the first time, this cast drew interest from six bidders over the course of eight minutes. Opening at £6 million, the price moved swiftly in £2 million increments, then half‑steps, before hammering at £22.5 million to a phone bidder with Anthea Peers, President of Christie’s EMEA – and a round of applause.
With fees, the final price came to £26.3 million (US$35.2 million), more than doubling the work’s low estimate of £10 million and eclipsing Moore’s previous auction record, set in 2016 when Reclining Figure: Festival sold for £24.7 million at Christie’s London.
Henry Moore | Reclining Figure: Festival | Sold: £24,722,500 (US$32.7 million), Christie's London, 2016 (Previous auction record for the artist)
Henry Moore at his studio in 1953
Moore began the work as Queen Elizabeth II came to the throne in 1952, amid a national swell of ceremony and optimism. He denied any direct response to current events, grounding the sculpture instead in the influences that had long shaped his visual language: ancient Mexican and South American art, African totems and ritual objects, and, most directly, a limestone double portrait in the British Museum of an Egyptian official and his wife seated together on a bench.
At the same time, Moore was absorbing ideas from Surrealism and from biomorphic abstraction – abstract forms that recall living organisms and natural materials. The King’s head, with its swooping planes, concave hollows and rounded edges, seems weathered like pebbles, shells or driftwood.
Set against this semi‑abstract language, the hands are strikingly realistic. “Hands, after the face, are the most obvious part of the human body for expressing emotion,” Moore observed. To lend the figures tangible human warmth, he asked his wife, daughter and secretary to pose as models, shaping the hands from life to accentuate the contrast between human grace and primal kingship.
Lot 11 | Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) | Le rond rouge, oil on canvas
Painted in April 1939
89.1 x 116.1cm
Provenance (Consolidated by The Value):
- Nina Kandinsky, Neuilly-sur-Seine
- Galerie Maeght, Paris, by whom acquired from the above in December 1957
- Gustav Zumsteg, Zurich, by whom acquired from the above on 14 June 1961; his sale, Christie's, London, 6 April 1976, lot
- Davlyn Gallery, New York [David Nahmad], by whom acquired at the above sale
- Private collection, Europe, by whom acquired circa 1980 and until 1996
- Fridart Foundation, Amsterdam, by whom acquired in 1996; sale, Sotheby's, New York, 12 November 2018, lot 4 (Sold: US$20,621,000)
- Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Note: Subject to Third-party Guarantee
Sale: 20th / 21st Century: London Evening Sale
Estimate: £10,500,000 - 15,500,000
Hammer Price: £10,500,000
Sold: £12,545,000
Carrying the highest estimate of the London season and offered in the same sale, Wassily Kandinsky’s Le rond rouge opened at £8 million and hammered at its low estimate of £10.5 million, selling for £12.5 million (US$16.8 million) with fees after a single bid. The result was well below the US$20.6 million the consignor paid at Sotheby’s in November 2018.
In April 1939, five years before his death, Kandinsky wrote: “Spring is indescribably beautiful here – everything is in bloom… Nature does everything to create joy. People do everything to spoil it. But we want to remain optimistic.” Painted that same spring in Paris, Le rond rouge channels this stubborn optimism on the brink of war.
By then, Kandinsky and his wife Nina had been in Paris for six years, having left Germany after the Nazis closed the Bauhaus. Back in the orbit of the European avant‑garde, his language of abstraction evolved: the strict geometry of his Bauhaus years gives way to a hybrid vocabulary, where circles and grids mingle with softer, biomorphic forms inspired by his fascination with biology and microscopic life. The city’s light nudged his palette towards gentler, warmer tones – lilacs, peach and pink, mint greens and pale yellows.
Kandinsky kept Le rond rouge in his own collection until his death, and his widow Nina retained it for years afterwards. Shown in key post‑war exhibitions, including his 1948 retrospective at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, it has surfaced on the market only a handful of times—most recently in 2018, after a 16‑year loan to the Courtauld Gallery in London.
Wassily Kandinsky at his Paris apartment in 1938
Lot 120 | Dorothea Tanning (1910-2012) | Children's Games, oil on canvas (Auction record for the artist)
Painted in 1942
23.3 x 14.3 cm
Provenance:
- Max Ernst, New York & Sedona, by whom acquired directly from the artist
- Gypsy Rose Lee, New York & Hollywood, by whom acquired from the above in January 1948
- Erik Lee Preminger, New York, by descent from the above
- Acquired from the above by the present owner via the intermediation of Jeffrey Hoffeld &. Company, Inc., New York in June 1985
Sale: The Art of the Surreal Evening Sale
Estimate: £1,000,000 - 2,000,000
Hammer Price: £3,800,000
Sold: £4,686,000
Later in the night, the 25th edition of The Art of the Surreal Evening Sale achieved a white‑glove result, with all 26 lots sold, totalling nearly £43 million (US$57.2 million).
One of the biggest draws of the sale – and of the evening – was Dorothea Tanning’s tiny Children’s Games (1942), which soared past its £1-2 million estimate, hammering at £3.8 million after a 10‑minute battle. With premium, it realised nearly £4.7 million (US$6.26 million) – almost US$1 million per square inch – and smashed the artist’s auction record of US$3.4 million, set by Interior with Sudden Joy (1951) at Sotheby’s New York in November 2025.
Dorothea Tanning | Interior with Sudden Joy (1951) | Sold for US$3,222,000 at Sotheby’s New York in November 2025 (Previous auction record for the artist)
Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning in New York in 1947 | Photograph by Irving Penn
Measuring just 23 x 14 centimetres, Children’s Games is an early Surrealist painting that stages an uncanny, meticulously detailed dream scene. In a bare corridor, three young girls in dresses and heeled boots violently tear at wallpaper, exposing a hidden world of flesh‑like forms beneath, while gusts of wind whip paper, hair and fabric towards a bright opening at the far end.
The work exemplifies Tanning’s growing focus in the early 1940s on female agency, sexuality, and the transition from childhood to adolescence – casting girls not as passive muses but as active protagonists assaulting a confining domestic interior, with literary echoes of Alice Through the Looking-Glass.
Shown in Peggy Guggenheim’s landmark 1943 “Exhibition by 31 Women,” where Tanning met Max Ernst, the painting was acquired directly from Tanning and Ernst in January 1948 by the legendary entertainer and “queen of burlesque” Gypsy Rose Lee. Extensively exhibited over the last eighty years, it was acquired by the present owner four decades ago and has never before appeared at auction.
Lot 108 | René Magritte (1898-1967) | Les grâces naturelles, oil on canvas
Painted circa 1961
81.5 x 100.4 cm
Provenance:
- Renée Lachowsky, Brussels, by whom acquired directly from the artist
- Henri Montois, Brussels, by whom acquired from the above, by 1982
- Xavier Hufkens Gallery, Brussels
- Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2003
Note: Subject to Third-party Guarantee
Sale: The Art of the Surreal Evening Sale
Estimate: £7,000,000 - 10,000,000
Hammer Price: £7,000,000
Sold: £8,520,000
The highest price of the Art of the Surreal Sale went to René Magritte’s Les grâces naturelles (c. 1961), which sold for £8.52 million (US$11.4 million). Held in the same private collection for twenty‑five years and formerly on long‑term loan to the Musée Magritte in Brussels, the painting is a key example of Magritte’s Surrealist style in the final phase of his career.
At this time, he was looking back over his work, returning to compositions and subjects he felt still had a strong poetic power. This led him again to one of his most famous motifs: the magical “leaf‑bird” – hybrid creatures that are part bird, part leaf, caught mid‑metamorphosis between vegetation and dove.
The motif had first appeared in his paintings of the early 1940s and returned in later variations. Here, seven bright green leaf‑birds stand ready to fly but remain literally rooted, embodying Magritte’s fascination with “in‑between” states rather than simple mixtures of forms. Instead of placing them in a landscape or interior, he sets them against a dense, decorative carpet of blue, star‑shaped leaves, with only small glimpses of sky.
Magritte believed that poetic images should reveal the mystery hidden in everyday reality, and titles were part of that poetry. He took Les grâces naturelles from a suggestion by his friend Paul Nougé and noted that, in this canvas, everything is marked by “natural grace.”
René Magritte | Photograph by Duane Michals
Lot 205 | Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) | Nu debout et femmes assises, oil on canvas
Painted in Royan on 23 September 1939
41.5 x 33 cm
Provenance:
- Saidenberg Gallery, New York
- G. David Thompson, Pittsburgh
- Richard L. Feigen, Chicago, by whom acquired from the above in November 1960, via Galerie Beyeler, Basel
- Galerie Claude Bernard, Paris
- Roger and Josette Vanthournout, Belgium, by whom probably acquired from the above, by 1973, and thence by descent
Sale: Modern Visionaries – The Roger and Josette Vanthournout Collection – Evening Sale
Estimate: £3,000,000 - 5,000,000
Hammer Price: £5,700,000
Sold: £7,004,000
The evening concluded with Modern Visionaries: The Roger and Josette Vanthournout Collection – Evening Sale. Thirty‑one works from the Belgian collection brought a total of £40.3 million (US$47.3 million), with 97 per cent of lots sold.
The top result was Pablo Picasso’s Nu debout et femmes assises, chased by eight telephone bidders before hammering at £5.7 million, above its high estimate of £5 million. With fees, it fetched £7 million (US$9.4 million).
Painted in Royan in late September 1939, in the tense first weeks of the Second World War, the work ranks among the finest of Picasso’s grisaille double‑portraits of Dora Maar. Executed in the austere grey palette associated with Guernica, it pairs a standing nude with a clothed, seated figure – an elegant yet stark juxtaposition that channels the anxiety and psychic fracture of the war’s onset.
Made in the cramped, makeshift studio of Picasso’s Atlantic‑coast refuge, the painting marks a pivotal moment in the Royan sequence from which his later, more monumental wartime visions of Dora would emerge.
Other Highlight Lots:
Lot 21 | Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) | Le peintre et son modèle, oil and Ripolin on canvas
Painted in Mougins on 8-9 November 1964
130 x 195 cm
Provenance (Consolidated by The Value):
- Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris
- Richard K. & Florence Weil, St. Louis, Missouri
- Galerie Beyeler, Basel, by whom acquired from the above on 19 December 1985
- Private collection, Europe, by whom acquired from the above on 10 October 1997, and thence by descent; sale, Christie's, New York, 17 November 2022, lot 36 (Sold: US$10,351,500)
- Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Note: Subject to Third-party Guarantee
Sale: 20th / 21st Century: London Evening Sale
Estimate: £7,000,000 - 10,000,000
Hammer Price: £7,000,000
Sold: £8,520,000
Lot 8 | Gerhard Richter (b. 1932) | Schober (Haybarn), oil on canvas
Painted in 1984
100.3 x 120 cm
Provenance (Consolidated by The Value):
- Marian Goodman Gallery, New York
- Emily and Jerry Spiegel Collection, New York
- Their sale, Christie’s New York, 17 May 2017, lot 20b (Sold: US$6,967,500)
- Acquired at the above sale by the previous owner
Note: Subject to Third-party Guarantee
Sale: 20th / 21st Century: London Evening Sale
Estimate: £6,000,000 - 9,000,000
Hammer Price: £6,900,000
Sold: £8,405,000
Lot 8 | Gerhard Richter (b. 1932) | Abstraktes Bild, oil on canvas
Painted in 1991
112 x 102cm
Provenance:
- Galerie Liliane & Michel Durand-Dessert, Paris
- Private Collection, Spain (acquired from the above in 1992)
- Acquired from the above by the present owner
Sale: 20th / 21st Century: London Evening Sale
Estimate: £4,500,000 - 6,500,000
Hammer Price: £6,200,000
Sold: £7,600,000
Lot 25 | Claude Monet (1840-1926) | Le Parc Monceau, oil on canvas
Painted in 1878
54.1 x 65 cm
Provenance (Consolidated by The Value):
- Georges de Bellio, Paris, by whom acquired directly from the artist on 2 June 1878 and until at least 1889
- Victorine (née de Bellio) & Eugene Donop de Monchy, Paris, by descent from the above, circa 1894
- Paul Rosenberg, Paris, by whom acquired from the above on 4 June 1917
- Galerie Durand-Ruel et Cie., Paris, by whom acquired from the above on 6 June 1917
- Durand-Ruel Galleries, New York, transferred from the above in December 1917
- Private collection, Switzerland, by descent from the above; sale, Christie’s, New York, 9 May 2007, lot 18 (Sold: US$3,848,000)
- Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Note: Subject to Third-party Guarantee
Sale: 20th / 21st Century: London Evening Sale
Estimate: £5,500,000 - 8,500,000
Hammer Price: £5,500,000
Sold: £6,760,000
Lot 103 | Joan Miró (1893-1983) | Peinture, oil on canvas
Painted in 1949
65 x 50.5 cm
Provenance:
- Galerie Maeght, Paris
- Acquired from the above on 25 October 1962, and thence by descent to the present owner
Sale: The Art of the Surreal Evening Sale
Estimate: £1,500,000 - 2,500,000
Hammer Price: £3,900,000
Sold: £4,808,000
Lot 17 | Andy Warhol (1928-1987) | Four Mona Lisas, acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas
Executed in 1978
126.7 x 101.3cm
Provenance (Consolidated by The Value):
- Carlo Bilotti, Palm Beach (acquired directly from the artist in 1978)
- Anon. sale, Christie’s New York, 13 May 1999, lot 515
- Pam and Bob Goergen, Greenwich
- Anon. sale, Christie’s New York, 10 November 2010, lot 60
- Private Collection, New Jersey
- Anon. sale, Christie’s New York, 12 November 2014, lot 77 (Sold: US$5,989,000)
- Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Note: Subject to Third-party Guarantee
Sale: 20th / 21st Century: London Evening Sale
Estimate: £3,500,000 - 5,500,000
Hammer Price: £3,500,000
Sold: £4,320,000
Lot 112 | Paul Delvaux (1897-1994) | La Ville lunaire, oil on canvas
Painted in February 1944
143 x 200 cm
Provenance:
- Georges Van Extergem, Brussels, by 1944
- Sidney Janis Gallery, New York
- Alex Salkin, New York, by 1948 and until at least 1961
- Galerie Jan Krugier, Geneva, by whom acquired from the above in February 1977
- Private collection, Geneva by whom acquired from the above in November 1977
- Acquired from the above to the present owner in 2006
Sale: The Art of the Surreal Evening Sale
Estimate: £2,000,000 - 3,000,000
Hammer Price: £3,500,000
Sold: £4,320,000
Lot 122 | Toyen (1902-1980) | Le devenir de la liberté, oil on canvas (Auction record for the artist)
Painted in 1946
165 x 65 cm
Provenance:
- Private collection, France, by whom probably acquired directly from the artist in the 1950s-160s, and thence by descent; sale, Thierry-Lannon & Associés, Brest, France, 7 May 2016, lot 215
- Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Sale: The Art of the Surreal Evening Sale
Estimate: £1,200,000 - 2,200,000
Hammer Price: £3,000,000
Sold: £3,710,000
Lot 23 | John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) | Study for 'Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose', oil on canvas
Painted in 1885
73 x 47 cm
Provenance:
- Lily Millet, Broadway, Worcestershire, probably a gift from the artist, and until at least 1926
- Charles Kinderman, London, by 1929; sale, Sotheby's, London, 10 June 1942, lot 87
- Oakley, by whom acquired at the above sale
- Anonymous sale, Sotheby's, London, 16 December 1942, lot 147
- R.E.A. Wilson, London, by whom acquired at the above sale
- Major C.G. Nicholson, Victoria, British Columbia, by 1944, and thence by descent in 1959
- Johannes P. E. Klaverwyden, Victoria, British Columbia
- Private collection
- Adelson Galleries, New York, 1998
- Acquired from the above by Carol and Terry Wall in January 1999
Sale: 20th / 21st Century: London Evening Sale
Estimate: £3,000,000 - 5,000,000
Hammer Price: £2,800,000
Sold: £3,466,000
Lot 216 | Lucio Fontana (1899-1968) | Concetto spaziale, Attese, waterpaint on canvas
Executed in 1964
73 x 92.5cm
Provenance:
- Galleria Rotta, Genova
- Rosette d’Incelli Collection, Paris
- Emilio Arditti, Paris
- Galerie New Selection, Knokke
- Roger and Josette Vanthournout, Belgium, by whom acquired from the above circa 1980, and thence by descent
Sale: Modern Visionaries – The Roger and Josette Vanthournout Collection – Evening Sale
Estimate: £2,000,000 - 3,000,000
Hammer Price: £2,800,000
Sold: £3,466,000
Lot 10 | Eduardo Chillida (1924-2002) | Modulación del espacio III (Modulation of Space III), iron
Executed in 1963
36 x 48 x 39cm
Provenance (Consolidated by The Value):
- Galerie Maeght, Paris
- Private Collection, New Zealand (acquired from the above in 1966)
- Thence by descent to the present owner
- The Renker Collection
Sale: 20th / 21st Century: London Evening Sale
Estimate: £800,000 - 1,200,000
Hammer Price: £2,700,000
Sold: £3,466,000
Lot 229 | Jacques Lipchitz (1891-1973) | Jeune fille à la tresse, bronze with dark brown patina
Conceived in plaster in 1914 and cast in bronze in an edition of 7
Height: 83 cm
Provenance:
- The artist's estate
- Marlborough Fine Art, London, by whom acquired from the above
- Roger and Josette Vanthournout, Belgium, by whom acquired from the above on 19 November 1973, and thence by descent
Sale: Modern Visionaries – The Roger and Josette Vanthournout Collection – Evening Sale
Estimate: £400,000 - 700,000
Hammer Price: £1,600,000
Sold: £2,002,000
Lot 2 | Lucian Freud (1922-2011) | Lemon, oil on board
Painted in 1946-1947
15.3 x 24.5 cm
Provenance:
- Ian Gibson-Smith, London
- Piccadilly Gallery, London (acquired from the above in 1969)
- Marlborough Fine Art, London
- Keith Lichtenstein, London
- Simon Sainsbury, London (acquired from the above in 1971)
- Thence by descent to the present owner
Note: Subject to Third-party Guarantee
Sale: 20th / 21st Century: London Evening Sale
Estimate: £600,000 - 800,000
Hammer Price: £1,050,000
Sold: £1,331,000
Lot 204 | François-Xavier Lalanne (1927-2008) | 'Grenouille Fontaine', circa 1982, Patinated bronze
40 x 54.5 x 58 cm
Numbered 7/8
Provenance:
- Art Gallery Christian Fayt, Knokke-Heist
- Roger and Josette Vanthournout, Belgium, by whom acquired from the above, and thence by descent
Sale: Modern Visionaries – The Roger and Josette Vanthournout Collection – Evening Sale
Estimate: £250,000 - 350,000
Hammer Price: £720,000
Sold: £914,400
Lot 32 | David Hockney (b. 1937) | Study for Olympic Poster, coloured pencil and graphite on two adjoined sheets of paper
Executed in 1970
85.4 x 63 cm
Provenance (Consolidated by The Value):
- Private Collection, London
- Private Collection (acquired from the above)
- Anon. sale, Sotheby's London, 27 June 2012, lot 174 (Sold: £121,250)
- Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Note: Subject to Third-party Guarantee
Sale: 20th / 21st Century: London Evening Sale
Estimate: £500,000 - 700,000
Hammer Price: £500,000
Sold: £635,000
Auction Details:
Auction House: Christie's New York
Date: 5 March 2026
Sale: 20th / 21st Century: London Evening Sale
Number of Lots: 36
Sold: 33
Unsold: 3
Sale Rate: 92%
Sale Total: £114,175,900
Sale: The Art of the Surreal Evening Sale
Number of Lots: 26
Sold: 26
Sale Rate: 100%
Sale Total: £42,978,950
Sale: Modern Visionaries – The Roger and Josette Vanthournout Collection – Evening Sale
Number of Lots: 31
Sold: 30
Unsold: 1
Sale Rate: 97%
Sale Total: £40,317,750
Combined Sale Total: £197,472,600