Phillips tested its identity anew in Frieze week, when its Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale pitted a Gerhard Richter against a painter in her forties on Berkeley Square.
Phillips Berkeley Square in Mayfair called its Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale on Thursday 15 October 2026, the first of Mayfair’s two Frieze-week evening sales. Gerhard Richter’s Mathis and Megan Rooney’s Blue departure led it.
Harry Phillips founded the house in Westminster in 1796, and it turned 230 in 2026. Its modern and contemporary evening sale is the newest thing it does and now the one it is judged on.
Where the older houses built their reputations on old masters and estates, Phillips reorganised itself around twentieth and twenty-first century material. The evening sale tests that decision each year.
An evening sale calls 30 or 40 lots in an hour against published estimates. The dealers and advisers who set those estimates sit in the room, and the hammer either confirms them or does not.
This sale set a post-war name against a painter in her forties, the room Phillips wants to fill. The public view opened on Thursday 8 October and ran through the week, while PAD stood on the square outside the saleroom door.
Sotheby’s called its own evening sale on New Bond Street, a few streets away, later the same night.