Keep the faith, London Walkers.
The streak stays alive.
Today’s – and, yes, it is 11th hour, but that doesn’t matter – today’s is what, by my back of the envelope calculation, the 476th consecutive day that we’ve put out a London Calling podcast.
And this one was worth waiting for. It’s a gem.
Here it comes.
A big welcome to a London art gallery you may never have visited.
Which is a pity.
Because it’s one of the best.
It’s completely free.
You can see Picassos there. Mondrians. Kandinskys. Bacons. Warhols.
And there’s one delicious difference between this particular gallery and the National Gallery.
Everything’s for sale.
Welcome to Christie’s.
The great auction house in King Street, St James’s.
And here’s my suggestion for today.
Go.
Seriously.
Push the door open and go in.
Because Christie’s is one of those London places people mentally put a little fence around.
“Oh, that’s not for me.”
“Yes, yes. Christie’s. Millionaires. Art dealers. People with houses in Monaco.”
Forget it.
It is for you.
You don’t need an invitation.
You don’t need a numbered paddle.
You certainly don’t need £10 million in your current account.
You can just walk in and look.
And right now is a particularly good time to do it.
There are major sales coming up this week and some extraordinary things are on view.
And what I especially love about Christie’s is this.
It’s a gallery where the walls never stay the same for long.
Go to the National Gallery and there’s a pretty good chance your favourite Rembrandt will still be there when you come back next year.
At Christie’s, no such guarantee.
The pictures arrive.
They’re hung.
For a few days you and I can stand six feet away from them and drink them in.
Then comes the auction.
Bang goes the hammer.
And they scatter to the four winds.
One may go to a museum.
Another to New York.
Another to Switzerland.
Another disappears into some private collection and chances are you’ll never see it again.
Not in your lifetime.
Unless, of course, you happen to get invited to dinner by the billionaire who bought it.
That gives looking at art at Christie’s a little extra frisson.
See it now.
Because this may be goodbye.
Christie’s has been doing this for 260 years.
It all began on December 5th, 1766.
James Christie was a young Scotsman and, crucially, a born showman.
His first London auction wasn’t exactly stuffed with Picassos and Monets.
There were four irons.
Yes, irons.
The things you press your clothes with.
I rather like that.
One of the grandest names in the international art world starts out flogging four irons.
But Christie understood something.
An auction isn’t just commerce.
It’s theatre.
You have to work the room.
Create excitement.
Make somebody want something.
And then make them want it just a little bit more than the person sitting three chairs away.
Christie was very good at it.
His auctions became fashionable.
Artists came.
Aristocrats came.
Collectors came.
Joshua Reynolds was part of his circle.
Thomas Gainsborough painted his portrait.
And in 1823 Christie’s moved into King Street, St James’s.
It’s still there.
And what stories those rooms could tell.
Here’s one.
Hamilton Palace in Scotland.
Not a house.
A palace.
A colossal aristocratic treasure chest crammed with paintings, furniture, porcelain, tapestries, objets d’art.
Generations of collecting.
And generations of spending.
Eventually the arithmetic caught up with the family.
The treasures had to go.
And where did they go?
Christie’s.
The sale lasted seventeen days.
Seventeen!
More than two thousand lots.
Collectors, dealers, aristocrats, museum people descending on the saleroom.
Nearly £400,000 was raised.
In 1882.
And here’s the sad little sting in the tail.
Eventually Hamilton Palace itself disappeared.
Demolished.
The building went.
The collection scattered.
Christie’s had been the great junction box through which the treasures of one vanished world passed into another.
Fast-forward a century.
March 1987.
A Van Gogh Sunflowers comes up at Christie’s in London.
The hammer comes down at £22.5 million, £24.75 million with the buyer’s premium.
A world record for a painting at auction.
Think about that.
Van Gogh had struggled desperately for recognition.
He died in 1890.
And nearly a century later people were fighting to pay fortunes for his pictures.
Wonderful.
And horribly poignant.
But here’s where Christie’s becomes really good fun for the likes of you and me.
Those little cards beside the pictures.
At an ordinary gallery you get the artist.
The title. When it was painted. What it was painted with. At Christie’s you get something else.
The estimate.
And suddenly looking at art becomes a game.
You stand in front of something.
“Rather like that.”
Then you look at the estimate.
£300,000 to £500,000.
“Oh.”
Next picture.
£2 million to £3 million.
“Good grief.”
Next one.
£8 million to £12 million.
And now you go back and look at it again.
What am I missing?
Why is THAT worth £12 million?
Why is the one next door worth £200,000?
Is it beauty?
Rarity?
Fashion?
Provenance?
The artist’s reputation?
Or two extremely rich people wanting the same thing?
It’s a terrific education.
In art.
In money.
In taste.
And in human nature.
And then there’s the auction itself.
If you’ve never watched one, do.
Because James Christie’s original discovery still holds.
It’s theatre.
The auctioneer at the rostrum.
Bidders in the room.
Specialists on telephones.
People bidding online from the other side of the world.
One million.
One point two.
One point five.
Two million.
Two point two.
A pause.
Going once.
Going twice.
And just when you think it’s over, somebody comes back in.
Two point three.
And off we go again.
Now, there’s a particularly good reason for talking about Christie’s today.
This week they’ve got some serious stuff coming under the hammer.
Mondrian.
Kandinsky.
Picasso.
Francis Bacon.
Andy Warhol.
And there’s a remarkable collection belonging to Peter Simon.
You may not know the name.
But you know his shops.
Monsoon.
Accessorize.
Simon started out travelling through Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan to India.
He became fascinated by Indian textiles.
The colours. The patterns. The craftsmanship.
And he started selling clothes on London market stalls.
Market stalls!
From there grew an international fashion business.
And along the way he built an extraordinary art collection.
Bacon. Hepworth. Hodgkin. Mondrian. Warhol. Picasso.
Now it’s being dispersed.
Christie’s describes it as the most valuable single-owner collection it has ever offered in London.
The big sales are this Wednesday and Thursday.
So this is the moment.
And here’s a London Walks tip for going forward.
We do several walks in this neck of the woods.
And others.
If your walk finishes anywhere around St James’s, don’t automatically head straight home.
Go to Christie’s.
It’s just around the corner.
Royal London in particular makes an almost indecently good double act.
Do the walk.
Palaces. Princes. Royal mistresses. Dynasties. Power. Money.
Then wander round to Christie’s.
That’s pretty royal too.
And you’ll certainly see some royal prices.
Best of all, you don’t have to pay them.
You don’t have to pay anything.
Just go in.
Look.
Pick your favourite.
Check the estimate.
See whether you’ve got £8 million knocking about.
And if you haven’t, no matter.
You’ve seen it.
And that’s really my point today.
London is full of places we don’t go into because we somehow decide they’re not meant for us.
Christie’s is one of them.
Don’t make that mistake.
Push the door open.
Walk in.
Look.
Because for a few glorious days, before somebody with extremely deep pockets raises a paddle and the hammer comes down, those Picassos and Mondrians and Kandinskys belong, visually at least, to all of us.
And then they’re gone.
London Calling.
London Walks connecting.
This is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time.
History time.
Local knowledge time.
Good recommendations time.
See you tomorrow.
Love this. When next in London I will go in ( without a paddle !) Thanks