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Paris Printemps

The Paris sales totaled about $100 million, with each house selling a single-owner collection, and solid bidding for a range of artists. Maybe it’s easier for Europeans to spend money on art as the existing world order fades, but what does that signal for next month’s all-important May sales?

Paris Auction
The top lot among the Paris sales was a Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec portrait of Jane Avril seated on a Japanese divan, which is a sketch for one of the artist’s most famous images. The work was estimated at €2.5 million and sold for €5.3 million ($6.04 million), which places it among the top 10 prices paid for Toulouse-Lautrec at auction. Photo: Anne-Christine Poujoulat/AFP via Getty Images
Marion Maneker
April 13, 2025

You might think that a week of unprecedented chaos and confusion in global markets, caused by the naive attempts of amateur statesmen like Scott Bessent and Howard Lutnick to remake the global economy, would have a deleterious effect on the art market. And maybe it will. Our first real clues will emerge next month during the New York sales. Before then, though, we do have some interesting anecdotes from the sales in Paris, where the surprisingly encouraging results suggested that an art market recovery is gaining momentum.