Sotheby's Contemporary Evening Auction made £47.6 million on New Bond Street in Frieze week 2025, led by Francis Bacon's Portrait of a Dwarf.
Sotheby’s held its Contemporary Evening Auction at Sotheby’s on New Bond Street in Mayfair on Thursday 16 October 2025, closing Frieze Thursday. The sale of 27 lots made £47.6 million.
Samuel Baker sold his first lot in London in 1744. The house that grew out of that sale is the oldest of the international auctioneers still trading.
It moved to 34 to 35 New Bond Street in 1917 and became a picture house only in the twentieth century. The Contemporary Evening Auction is the newest end of that business.
The total rose from £37.6 million for the equivalent sale in 2024, and 24 of the 27 lots sold. Fourteen lots carried guarantees.
Francis Bacon’s Portrait of a Dwarf, painted in 1975, sold for £13.1 million with fees against an estimate of £6 million to £9 million. The lot before it, Bacon’s Study for Self-Portrait of 1980, made £5,770,000.
Lucy Bull’s 9:59 made £1,260,000 against a high estimate of £500,000. Tom Eddison, the house’s co-head of contemporary art, took the rostrum for a marquee evening sale for the first time.