American Art

Sotheby’s is leading the market with an innovative strategy that accurately reflects the evolving tastes of collectors worldwide by becoming the first major auction house to integrate 20^th century American Art into our Global Fine Art live and online auctions. Contextualizing American works within the larger art historical cannon signals their importance and generates greater visibility among the world’s most discerning collectors.

This strategy has proved immensely successful. Yielding tremendous results for our consignors and regularly setting world record prices, works of American art offered in this context outperformed their low estimates by an average of 41%. In May 2022, Sotheby’s integrated a large selection of 54 American works of art into our Modern and Contemporary Marquee Auctions. We engaged 94 bidders from 13 countries in competition for these works—notably 30% of these bidders were new to the American Art category.

We are thrilled to debut a new sale series alongside Americana Week in January 2023 dedicated to 19^thCentury American and Western art. This live auction, Art of the Americas, will present a tightly curated selection of paintings, drawings and sculpture by artists from Gilbert Stuart and Winslow Homer to Albert Bierstadt and Frederic Remington.

The passion and expertise of our specialists, combined with the global reach of our auctions, has consistently produced outstanding results and numerous auction records. In addition to our rolling calendar of auctions, your American art can also be sold privately or on our online marketplace where works are displayed continuously throughout the year. We would be delighted to provide you with a free and confidential valuation.