Modern British & Irish Art

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S otheby’s bi‑annual Modern British & Irish Art sales, held each June and November, provide collectors and consignors with premier opportunities to buy and sell exceptional works from leading modern British, Irish and Scottish artists. In addition to our flagship auctions, we offer bespoke private sales throughout the year.

Driven by the expertise and passion of our specialist team—and supported by Sotheby’s global reach—the department consistently achieves outstanding results and sets numerous auction records. We also maintain a distinguished legacy of presenting market‑defining single‑owner collections. Landmark sales over the past decade include the Evill/Frost Collection (2011), Lowry: The A.J. Thompson Collection (2014), Daughter of History: Mary Soames and the Legacy of Churchill (2014), the international phenomenon Bowie/Collector (2016), Howard Hodgkin: Portrait of the Artist (2017), Yeats: The Family Collection (2017), and The Colourists: Pictures from the Harrison Collection (2018).

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Listen to Sotheby’s Talks Latest Episode
The Bloomsbury Legacy: Art, Life and the Charleston Aesthetic

In the newest episode of Sotheby’s Talks, Kim Jones, Dr Darren Clarke, Frances Wilson and Jen Hardie explore the Bloomsbury group and the unique aesthetic cultivated at Charleston, their rural retreat, which became a hub for creative collaboration and continues to inspire generations of artists and thinkers today.

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Stories & Videos

New World Record for Kossoff Achieved at Sotheby's London in March 2026

Leon Kossoff’s Children’s Swimming Pool, 11 o’clock Saturday Morning, August (1969) stands among the most dynamic and life‑affirming works of his career. Painted at a pivotal moment when Kossoff shifted from sombre urban subjects to scenes of everyday vitality, the composition captures the bustling energy of a London public pool at peak activity. More than forty figures animate the surface, their movements rendered through dense, urgent brushwork that conveys both the physicality of painting and the immediacy of lived experience. Light splinters across the water, colour pulses through the crowd, and the entire scene becomes a study in motion, rhythm and human presence—qualities that have long placed this painting among the most celebrated works from the artist’s mature period.

The painting has a distinguished exhibition history, including early showings at the Whitechapel Art Gallery and the Royal Academy, and it has passed through several notable collections before returning to the market.

Its significance was emphatically confirmed on 4 March 2026, when the painting achieved a landmark result at Sotheby’s Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction in London. Estimated at £600,000–800,000, it soared to a final price of £5.2 million, setting a new auction record for Kossoff. This result exceeded the artist’s previous record by an impressive £3.8 million.

This historic performance underscores the growing recognition of Kossoff’s contribution to Modern British painting and confirms Children’s Swimming Pool, 11 o’clock Saturday Morning, August as a masterpiece within both his oeuvre and the broader School of London tradition.