Ten years is long enough for an auction house to rise from almost nothing – and for one name to become a bellwether for the art market.
The Value has learned from reliable sources that Phillips' Asia Chairman, Jonathan Crockett, will step down on 2 September, bringing to a close a decade that transformed the house's fortunes in the region.
Under Crockett’s leadership, Phillips Hong Kong grew from a small office with a handful of staff into a regional hub with a presence in major cities across Asia. From building the 20th Century & Contemporary Art department from scratch, to moving into the West Kowloon Cultural District, to brokering unprecedented collaborative sales during the pandemic, each step helped redraw the map of the collecting world.
What this "golden boy" of the auction world leaves behind is not just a record of results that redefined what Phillips could be in Asia, but a willingness to break with convention – and a business foundation that now looks hard to shake.
Phillips' Asia headquarters at the West Kowloon Cultural District
Born into a multicultural family, Jonathan Crockett was educated at Eton College, the elite boys’ boarding school long seen as a cradle of the British establishment. Its alumni include 20 of Britain’s 59 prime ministers, along with figures such as writer George Orwell, Nobel Prize-winning physicist John Strutt, philosopher Derek Parfit, actor Eddie Redmayne, and numerous members of the royal family.
Although raised in Britain, Crockett was steeped in Chinese culture from an early age, shaped in part by his family and especially his grandfather, a painter and calligrapher.
In 1997, the year of Hong Kong's handover, he enrolled at SOAS, University of London, majoring in Chinese language, art history, and archaeology. At this leading training ground for art and auction specialists, he seized the chance to study in Beijing, strengthening his written Chinese and Mandarin. He later went on to the University of Oxford to pursue Chinese studies.
Over the following decade or so, Crockett joined Christie's and then Sotheby's, working his way up from junior roles to become a senior specialist in Asian contemporary art, while also training as an auctioneer. Along the way, he also spent more than four years running his own advisory business, forging close relationships with collectors, galleries, and auction houses across different markets.
SOAS, University of London, has nurtured generations of leading figures in the art and auction world
Crockett at the rostrum
Just as his career was hitting its stride, Crockett made a sharp turn.
The year was 2016. Phillips had only just entered the Hong Kong market, with a single watch sale under its belt and a tiny team in its Central office. Compared with rivals that had spent decades building their presence in Asia, the house was still relatively unfamiliar to many regional collectors.
Crockett took on a new brief as its Deputy Chairman for Asia and Head of 20th Century & Contemporary Art, tasked with establishing the category in Asia from the ground up. For the inaugural sale, he and his team took a deliberately bold approach: not only introducing a strong roster of Western artists, but also dissolving the traditional boundaries between categories, bringing painting, editions, design and photography together with Asian works in a single mixed sale.
The strategy paid off. Led by Roy Lichtenstein’s Landscape with Grass – shown in the 1980s at the Hong Kong Museum of Art and sold for HK$35.4 million – the sale sailed past its high estimate and set several benchmarks, including an artist record for a single work on paper by Yoshitomo Nara, as well as new Hong Kong highs for Gerhard Richter and George Condo.
That same year, Phillips also opened offices in Tokyo and Seoul and launched jewellery auctions in Hong Kong, steadily expanding its footprint across the region.
Roy Lichtenstein's Landscape with Grass led Phillips Hong Kong's inaugural 20th Century & Contemporary Art sale
Despite the strong debut, not everyone was convinced. Some in the trade wondered if it was a flash of first-sale heat – the kind of result a house can generate when it calls in every relationship and marshals its resources for a new-city launch. The real test often comes later, once that initial momentum begins to fade.
Crockett’s answer was to keep delivering.
In 2017, Phillips Hong Kong set new Asia auction records for a string of major Western artists, including Peter Doig, Henry Moore, and Sean Scully. A painting by Indonesian artist Christine Ay Tjoe, Small Flies and Other Wings, achieved a world auction record for a contemporary Southeast Asian artist.
At a time when new media art had yet to become a full-blown trend in the auction world, Phillips brought in teamLab’s digital work Universe of Water Particles, which sold for close to three times its estimate.
teamLab's Universe of Water Particles sold for close to three times its estimate at Phillips
After quickly gaining traction, Phillips Hong Kong reached an important milestone in 2018 with the opening of its first gallery space in Asia, at St George’s Building in Central. The new venue provided a year-round setting for previews and events, helping the house build closer ties with collectors and signalling its commitment to the region.
Beyond Western names, Phillips was also beginning to make its mark in the fiercely competitive market for Asian artists. That spring, Zao Wou-ki’s large-scale canvas 04.01.79 appeared at auction for the first time, selling for nearly HK$70 million and setting a new record for a 1970s work by the artist. The painting anchored an evening sale that brought in HK$233 million.
Behind the scenes, Crockett was laying out a wider strategy. Under his leadership, Phillips introduced day sales in Hong Kong and appointed a Shanghai representative to develop the mainland business. In just three years, the house had gone from a newcomer to one of the serious players in the Asian market.
Zao Wou-ki's 04.01.79 set a new record for the artist's 1970s works at Phillips
For an international auction house, Hong Kong’s value lies not only in local sales, but in its ability to turn Asian buyers into a globally influential collecting force.
Phillips Hong Kong moved quickly towards that goal. In 2019, bidding from Asia-based collectors rose sharply. Across Phillips’ global 20th Century and Contemporary Art auctions, they accounted for 23% of total hammer, making Asia the house’s second-largest client base after the Americas. A year later, that share climbed to more than 34%, with buyers from the region securing half of Phillips’ top ten lots of the year.
Since then, Asian participation at Phillips has repeatedly made headlines. Long Museum in Shanghai acquired Georgia O’Keeffe’s Crab’s Claw Ginger Hawaii for US$7.74 million, while an Asian client paid US$85 million for Jean-Michel Basquiat’s five-metre Untitled – the highest price ever achieved in Phillips’ more than 200 years of history.
Jean-Michel Basquiat's five-metre Untitled, consigned by Japanese collector Yusaku Maezawa
Within just a few years, Phillips Hong Kong did more than make waves in the Asian market – it helped reshape contemporary art collecting worldwide.
For an auction house in Asia, setting global records for Asian artists or Asia records for Western ones is already cause for celebration. Rarer still is setting a global auction record for a Western artist – the equivalent of beating the home side on their own ground.
Yet several Western artists once little known to many Asian collectors have seen their global auction records set at Phillips Hong Kong, among them Daniel Arsham, Genieve Figgis, Eddie Martinez, Joyce Pensato, and Stanley Whitney. Women artists and Black artists, long overlooked by the mainstream market, have also found an important stage here.
Over time, Phillips built a reputation for identifying artists before the market caught up, drawing collectors from every region eager to ride the next wave.
Crockett with colleagues at Phillips Hong Kong
Crockett represented Great Britain in both skiing and rowing
Also an accomplished athlete, Crockett once represented Great Britain in both skiing and rowing. The persistence, hunger to improve, and will to win that defined his sporting career have been equally visible throughout his career in the auction world.
In 2020, he was appointed Chairman, Asia, formally joining Phillips’ global leadership team. The promotion coincided with the pandemic, which closed salerooms and froze travel across the region. His response was to do something the auction world had rarely, if ever, seen: partner with Poly Auction for a series of collaborative sales, sharing catalogues, previews, and the rostrum itself, then followed by further collaboration with Yongle Auction later.
In an industry that typically treats its competitors as adversaries, the collaboration was a genuine shock. Broadcast live around the world, three seasons of collaborative sales drew thousands of bidders and brought in close to HK$1.9 billion – including two works that each crossed the HK$100 million mark and new auction records for dozens of artists, among them Matthew Wong.
Even as the contemporary art market entered a period of post-pandemic correction after the collaboration ended, Phillips maintained its momentum. Richter’s Abstraktes Bild (774-1) sold for HK$89.37 million, making it the most expensive modern and contemporary artwork of Hong Kong’s 2022 autumn season. In spring 2024, Basquiat's Native Carrying Some Guns, Bibles, Amorites on Safari fetched nearly HK$99 million – the highest price achieved for any lot across all houses and categories that season.
The Phillips and Poly Auction collaborative sales sent shockwaves through the industry
Yoshitomo Nara's Missing in Action achieved the artist's second-highest price at auction
Between 2023 and 2024, the major auction houses unveiled new Asia headquarters in quick succession. Equipped with purpose-built gallery spaces and permanent salerooms, they were no longer bound by the traditional spring and autumn calendar, moving instead to a year-round model of live auctions, online sales, private transactions, and exhibitions.
Phillips was early to that shift. In 2023, it relocated to the West Kowloon Cultural District, taking its place alongside M+ and the Palace Museum in what had become the region's most significant cultural site. That autumn, it launched Phillips Perpetual in the Pedder Building in Central, extending its market-leading watch auction business into retail.
The numbers that accumulated across Crockett's decade speak for themselves: over HK$600 million in hammer across a single half-year period, a 96% sell-through rate by value, a client base in which 34% of buyers were millennials or Gen Z, and a footprint that now stretches across Shanghai, Taipei, Tokyo and Seoul.
Away from the boardroom, Crockett continued to deliver headline results. He oversaw the sale of Yoshitomo Nara’s Missing in Action for HK$123 million, the artist’s second-highest price at auction, and brought Peter Doig’s Rosedale to the block, which at one point set a record for a living British artist at US$29 million.
With his departure now confirmed, attention across the industry has turned to the question of who succeeds him at Phillips Hong Kong. The Value will report as developments emerge.