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Phillips’ $115.2 Million Evening Sale Was a Testament to the Power of Pre-Planning and Priority Bidding

A carefully orchestrated script, early bidding incentives and a market still hungry for ultra-contemporary art propelled the house to its best May result in years.

Phillips may not have made as much noise ahead of this season’s marquee sales as the other major houses, with their announcement of major estates and consignments, but its specialists have certainly been busy. Its May 19 white-glove Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale generated a total of $115,216,700 across 41 lots, achieving 100 percent sell-through by value and more than doubling last year’s result. Less than half of the lots were secured by guarantees, suggesting that Phillips’ new Priority Bidding incentive, introduced in July 2025, contributed significantly to the result. According to data reported in January, 40 percent of all sold lots have attracted such bids since the program’s launch, and in the evening sale, more than half of the lots received priority bids, with bidders receiving a 4 percent discount off the buyer’s premium in exchange.

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The sale kicked off “with a bang,” according to Phillips’s chairman and worldwide head of modern and contemporary art, Robert Manley, with the three opening lots surpassing their estimates. Salman Toor’s Two friends sold for $333,400 against an estimate of $180,000-$250,000, a Cecily Brown from 2019 soared to $670,800 against an estimate of $300,000-$500,000, while an unusual and rare pastel on canvas by Lee Bontecou dated 1985 fetched $4.2 million, more than tripling its $1.2-1.8 million estimate and setting a new record for a two-dimensional work by the artist.

The sale proceeded with solid results within estimates across both Modern and Contemporary works, with Monet’s La Route de Vétheuil, effet de neige (one of the evening’s top lots) achieving $9.3 million, followed by a 1960 abstraction by Pat Passlof that set a new auction record for the artist at $580,500, a Joan Mitchell sold for $6.9 million and Paul Signac’s Les Diablerets (L’Oldenhorn et le Bécabesson), which reached $2.3 million.

From there, Phillips tapped into niche regional markets with a work from the collection of........

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