Auctioneers

Special thanks to:
Mr. Samir Sharma
Mr. Matthew Girling
To the auction house SOTHEBY’S for Mr. Stefano Moreni’s performance.
To the auction house CHRISTIE’S for Mr. Ronan Sulich’s performance.

SAMIR SHARMA: charming Samir Sharma,  Independent Charity Auctioneer, has personally auctioned sales in the US since 2002 and spent five years with the world-renown international auction house Christie's, where he was responsible for Client Relationship Management. Some of the charities he has auctioneered for include: Denver Art Museum, Pittsburgh Ballet, Children’s Health Environmental Coalition, Food Bank NYC.

We are delighted to once again welcome Mr. Sharma this evening.

STEFANO MORENI: Director Contemporary Art

Ronan has been involved in the world of art and antiques since studying Fine Arts at the University of Sydney. After some years working in the commercial gallery world as well as the museum world in Sydney he moved to London in 1989 to gain experience and work in an auction house, and joined Christie's in 1995. Returning to Sydney he became the firm's Sydney decorative arts expert and auctioneer. With Christie's Australian operation becoming a representative office in 2006 he has been the Australian Representative and travels to Hong Kong as part of the Christie's team of auctioneers.

Exemplary client service and extensive experience are the two most important assets that have fueled Christie's success as an auction house. This commitment to excellence began in the auction house's early years when James Christie conducted his first sale on 5 December 1766.
Famed for his eloquence and humour, Christie turned auctioneering into a sophisticated art, conducting the greatest auctions of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Among the many milestones of Christie's auction house was Christie's successful negotiation with Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, for the sale of Sir Robert Walpole's collection of paintings, which would become the Hermitage Museum Collection in St. Petersburg.
Since its founding, Christie's auctions have been major attractions on London's social agenda. Nothing has changed. Today, Christie's salerooms continue to be a popular showcase for the unique and the beautiful.

Sotheby’s was founded in 1744 in London and it is one of the most ancient auction houses in the world.

Originally specializing in the sale of books since the early years, Sotheby’s had to entrust some of the most important collections that belonged to famous personages of the time, such as Napoleon Bonaparte.

At the end of the First World War, the activity of Sotheby's include other areas of collectibles such as antique prints, coins and medals.

Moreover Sotheby's moved to its famous New Bond Street salesroom, which has remained its London base ever since.

Thanks to its new location  in the new area of London, so elegant and fashionable, opened a new era for Sotheby's and the turnover for the sale of paintings and objects d'art soon surpassed that of books and literary collections.

This diversification effort paved the way for the explosive growth of the firm under the leadership of Peter Wilson.
Wilson, who joined the firm in 1936, took Sotheby's onto the global stage. He ensured the firm's readiness to capitalize on the meteoric rise in popularity of Impressionist and Modern paintings. Perhaps the single most sensational and ultimately influential sale during Wilson's tenure was the famous Goldschmidt sale of 1958. Seven pictures were all sold in just 21 minutes. They fetched £781,000, the highest total ever reached at that time at a fine art sale. Cézanne's Garçon au Gilet Rouge was sold to Paul Mellon for £220,000, more than five times the previous record for a painting at auction. It was one of the social highlights of the year, and possibly the most exciting art auction of the century.

Largely thanks to the vision of Peter Wilson, Sotheby's recognized long before its rivals that art was becoming an international market. It was because of this that the company opened an office in New York in 1955; and, more importantly, acquired Parke-Bernet in 1964.
Parke-Bernet was the United State's largest fine art auction house, and following its acquisition by Sotheby's, became crucially involved in the rapidly developing North American market for Impressionist and Modern paintings.

With the greatest American auction house now a part of Sotheby's, the company looked elsewhere for further opportunities and opening its offices all around the world.

In 1973 Julian Thompson opened Sotheby's Hong Kong - the first auction house to have an office in Asia - organizing the first sale in a room at the Mandarin Hotel. It was an incredible success, the first of many other auctions, during which it dispersed some of the largest private collections in the world, such as TY Chao, Edward Chow, Paul Bernat and the British Rail Pension Fund.

For the Chinese Art some awards were made that still remain records for the sector, such as (and recent): Crimson Lotuses on Gold Screen Zhang Daiqian in October 2002 that made $ 2,600,000, record for a painting of Modern Chinese Painting.

In 2002 Sotheby's achieved record sales of over $ 5,300,000 for a jar Family Rosa. The vase was used as a lamp in one of the rooms for guests of the residence of Ambassador Ogden D. Reid in New York. When it was brought to Hong Kong, its conditions (fortunately had not been drilled!) and its refined form immediately aroused great interest. One year after the auction, the new owner decided to donate the vessel to the Museum of Art in Shanghai, where it is still exposed to the public. From furniture into a very private bedroom to international exhibitions!
Later in Asia were opened other offices: in Tokyo, Singapore, Taipei, Shanghai, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand. The have just celebrated Sotheby’s thirtieth year in Asia and auctions are held regularly both in Hong Kong and Singapore.

The early 1980s, a period of market and corporate uncertainty, was followed in 1983 by the acquisition of Sotheby's by businessman A. Alfred Taubman and a small group of investors. Led by Michael Ainslie, Sotheby's once again became a private company.
At the same time, the art market was revitalized by several important sales that set the stage for the series of auctions at Sotheby's which have entered the history books for their drama, their prices and for the way they captured the public's imagination.
One of the most stunning auctions, held on the shores of Lake Geneva in 1987, was the sale of the jewels of the Duchess of Windsor. In an intensely competitive environment, bids via satellite from New York vied with bids from a celebrity audience and from phone buyers around the world.
Over $50,000,000 was raised during the course of the sale - more than five times Sotheby's highest expectations. Anything seemed possible in the late 1980s. In 1989, for example, the firm sold Impressionist and Modern art totalizing a staggering $1.1 billion in New York and London. Indeed, by the end of the decade, prices had risen to such levels that auctions attracted global media attention on an unprecedented scale. With these successes in hand, the company went public for the second time in 1988.
During the period of international recession of the early nineties, Sotheby's, thanks to its long history, had learned to manage the developments in the market, seeing several times a succession of periods of recovery after periods of recession. In fact, the affairs of Sotheby's, in the following decade, grew substantially, and the headquarters in London and New York were expanded.

In 2001 Sotheby's in London inaugurated the offices of Olympia, intended to support the sales activities in New Bond Street. Even Sotheby's New York brought to fruition a major project to expand: in the spring of 2000 were completed plans for 6 new offices in the building of York Avenue, which allowed to join Sotheby's offices and warehouses in a single complex and create new exhibition space for each collecting area of the Treaty. The tenth floor was built a large hall, called "one of the most sensational exhibition spaces in New York ... an environment intended to rival all other museums in town."

In 2000 Sotheby's was the first auction house to make sales on the Internet. Sothebys.com recorded sensational successes, such as sales of the first edition of the American Declaration of Independence for more than 8 million dollars, of the 21 panels of the historic Boston Garden floor, and a masterpiece of Frederick, Lord Leighton. Sotheby's subsequently made an agreement with eBay, the online auction site to allow participation in its traditional auctions via the Internet. Today, Sotheby's auction fails to take more online, but its website is vital tool for the dissemination of information and news on the activities of Sotheby's for customers all over the world.