Russian Pictures

The Russian category continues to be one of the fastest growing and most exciting areas of the international art market. 2007 marked yet another record-breaking year for Russian Pictures & Works of Art at Christie's, with our November sales realizing an astonishing £39,121,775 / $80,590,857.

Christie's connection with Russia extends back to the 18th century, when the company's founder, James Christie, helped negotiate the sale of Robert Walpole's extraordinary collection of Old Masters to Catherine the Great of Russia. These pictures formed the core of the collection at the Hermitage, St. Petersburg. More recently, Christie’s has hosted exhibitions at Pashkov House, Moscow, The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, and the Kiev Museum of Russian Art.

Christie's international Russian department holds combined sales featuring Pictures and Works of Art in New York in April and at our King Street salerooms in London in June. One of the highlights of the London auction calendar, Russian Sale Week in November will include, in addition to our sale of Russian Pictures, a tightly-edited sale of exceptional paintings, and a selection of Russian Post-War and Contemporary works. We will also hold a dedicated Russian Art sale at our South Kensington salerooms.

Christie’s record- breaking sale of Russian Art in November 2004 marked the beginning of a new age in Russian art auctioneering with Ivan Aivazovsky’s St Isaac’s on a Frosty Day selling for £1,100,000, at that time the highest price for a Russian picture sold in a Russian sale. Since then, record prices for Russian artists have been established, broken and reset every sale season in Christie’s salerooms. Christie’s currently holds the records for the highest prices achieved at auction for numerous artists including Boris Grigoriev, Ivan Aivazovsky, Konstantin Somov, Ivan Shishkin, Isaak Levitan, Ilya Repin, Vasilii Vereshchagin, Boris Kustodiev and Alexandre Iacovleff. A new thriving area of the Russian art market is Post-War and Contemporary art, with works by artists such as Evgeny Rukhin and Vladimir Weisberg sought by collectors based in the CIS and abroad. This autumn Christie’s will offer a selection of works by leaders of the Non-conformist and Contemporary art movements as part of our Russian Pictures sale.

See also: Russian Works of Art & Fabergé

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