Biography
Julian Dawes is Vice Chairman and Head of Impressionist and Modern Art, Americas. Since joining Sotheby’s in 2008, he has helped lead his team to unprecedented market-share while developing and expanding the Modern art category. For many years Julian oversaw the semiannual Day Sales in New York before becoming Head of Modern Evening Sales in 2018, and subsequently department head and Co-Head of Marquee Sales in 2020.
Julian maintains a strong client network in the United States and abroad, and plays a key role in sourcing Impressionist & Modern, Latin and Contemporary art across our global sales, helping to secure historic consignments from venerated institutions such as The Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the Toledo Museum of Art, the Guggenheim, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Museum of Modern Art, New York, as well as numerous private individuals. During his tenure, Mr. Dawes has been instrumental in orchestrating highly successful collection sales including The Collection of Alex & Elisabeth Lewyt, The Collection of Mrs. Paul Mellon, Property from the late Robert and Elizabeth Haskell, the Collection of A. Alfred Taubman, The Triumph of Color and the Important Private Collection which included the world record for Monet’s Meules. More recently he has overseen record setting auctions including The Macklowe Collection, The David M. Solinger Collection, The Mo Ostin Collection and The Collection of Sydell Miller.
Over the years Mr. Dawes has curated highly successful private selling exhibitions including 2014’s Rudolf Bauer: Tomorrow Today, 2015’s Cherchez la Femme: Women and Surrealism, and 2017’s Iconoplastic: 100 Years of De Stijl, and 2024’s Brooklyn Bridge: Federico Castellón and the birth of American Surrealism, all of which sought to spotlight lesser-known and undervalued artists via new scholarship and innovative exhibition design. In November 2018 he organized The Beautiful and Damned: Radical Art of the Great War, a curated catalogue and exhibition to commemorate the centennial of the WW1 armistice. In addition to significant private transactions, Julian’s focus on Surrealism and Abstraction has played a key role in achieving world auction records for Leonora Carrington, René Magritte, Francis Picabia, Frida Kahlo, Dorothea Tanning, Kay Sage, Leonor Fini, Enrico Donati, Kurt Seligmann, Rudolf Bauer and Fritz Glarner, among others.
Prior to joining Sotheby’s, Julian worked at Rago Arts and Auction Center in his native New Jersey, as a Triage Appraiser on Antiques Roadshow and in the education department at The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. He holds a Bachelor’s degree from Duke in Art History.
