“Russian Seasons” in London 2025: how the rules of the art market are shifting
At the recent Sotheby’s sale, familiar faces of the old émigré community mingled with the new diaspora, listening attentively to the auctioneers while refreshing bids on their phones. The focus is not only on individual masterpieces but on the scale itself: since 2022, this has become one of the few major public auctions of Russian art. Sotheby’s assembled 365 lots for its Fabergé, Imperial & Revolutionary Art sale — late-19th-century painting, nonconformists, significant collections of decorative art, rare Fabergé pieces, enamel, silver and porcelain. The auction total exceeded £14.2 million. Afisha.London’s Editor-in-Chief, Margarita Bagrova, attended the sale and here shares her impressions.
This article is also available in Russian here
Senior Director Alina Davey noted that the entire catalogue had been sourced from private collections: in the absence of the traditional “Russian Week”, the auction house brought together several large holdings, restoring a scale the market has not seen in years. Formally, this is not a “Russian sale” but Fabergé, Imperial & Revolutionary Art — though the narrative remains unmistakable: from imperial landscapes of the 19th century and the Peredvizhniki to the Silver Age, the avant-garde and post-war art. The great canon — Aivazovsky, Kustodiev, Makovsky, Levitan — still sets the tone.
Aivazovsky and 19th-century rediscoveries
The painting section opened with a series by Ivan Aivazovsky, setting both the emotional register and the financial benchmark. The leading lot, The Survivors (1878), the largest Aivazovsky canvas ever to appear at auction, sold for £4.188 million — reaffirming his position among major European artists rather than as merely an icon of Russian marine painting. Comparable in significance to The Ninth Wave, the work reveals a later, more psychologically charged vision of maritime drama.
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Photo: Afisha.London
Rest by the Sea on a Moonlit Night, estimated at £400,000–600,000, achieved £1.016 million — a rare nocturne of Aivazovsky’s mature period with a near-monochrome treatment of light. Around fifteen works by the artist appeared in the catalogue, including several recently found in Italy — an unprecedented concentration for the current market.
The section of 19th-century “discoveries” was strengthened by Boris Kustodiev’s Procession by St Basil’s Cathedral, Moscow (£952,500), shown at auction for the first time; Konstantin Makovsky’s Breton Girl (£38,100); Sergei Vinogradov’s Summer Reflection (£190,500); and Isaac Levitan’s Boats on the Volga from the Boris Fuksman collection (£82,550).
Nonconformists and the “second avant-garde”
The smooth historical narrative shifts into tension in the Revolutionary Art section. The partial sale of the Igor and Natasha Tsukanov collection — one of the defining holdings of Soviet nonconformism and post-war art — served as a key market signal. Tsukanov built a panoramic view of the “second avant-garde”, from early Tselkov to Sots-Art and the artists of the 1970s. Its appearance at auction functions almost as an institutional endorsement.
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“Street at Night”. Photo: Afisha.London
Top results came for Erik Bulatov (£165,100), Semyon Faibisovich (£203,200), Oleg Tselkov (£33,020), Leonid Purygin, Komar & Melamid, Alexander Kosolapov (£25,400), and Leonid Sokov. Bulatov’s Street at Night reaffirmed his status as one of the leading post-war Russian artists; Faibisovich’s figurative scenes and Tselkov’s expressionist heads confidently exceeded estimates. This is an important signal: works once viewed as “marginal Soviet material” are now traded in the same logic as international post-war art. A cohesive block of nonconformists from a single curated private collection shifts perception — no longer Cold War exotica, but a fully recognised chapter of global art history from the 1960s–80s.
Fabergé, porcelain, and the imperial myth
Running parallel to the avant-garde is the “star” segment of Fabergé and decorative arts. Enamelled boxes, hard-stone animals, silver and porcelain form a concentrated portrait of imperial Russia — an image that still captivates part of the international audience. A major private collection assembled over nearly forty years played a crucial role: its owner spent decades acquiring enamel, silver, crystal and Fabergé pieces, and the result reads today as a document of a broader, less regulated era of collecting.
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- Photo: Afisha.London
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- Photo: Afisha.London
A dedicated group from the Boris Fuksman collection included Kurlyukov enamels, Ovchinnikov silver and rare Fabergé items. An Armfeldt-designed carved frame sold for £40,640; glass decanters with silver mounts reached £57,150. The Fabergé section revealed the full range of the genre — from miniature animals carved in aventurine, agate and quartz to complex clocks by Michael Perchin (£78,740–139,700) and hard-stone animals (£21,590–50,800). The porcelain section, notably a Maryland collection, presented over fifty Imperial and Gardner figures, including rare “Peoples of Russia” characters, as well as The Lover Caught Unawares and Feodor Chaliapin as Boris Godunov.
Who is buying — and what next?
The buyer profile is increasingly mixed. In the room one still finds “old money à la russe” — collectors guided by family memory and resonant catalogue names. But the presence of entrepreneurs and tech professionals from recent waves of relocation is growing, alongside European and American collectors shaped by museum retrospectives and curated exhibitions. For the latter, works from major private holdings like the Tsukanov collection carry particular authority — every piece has already survived the “test of time”.
Photo: Afisha.London
A hybrid auction model — online bidding, remote participation, private viewings — dissolves geography: Russian art is now bought by people living across the world who continue to integrate their “own” history into a global context. Politics and sanctions introduce a new level of caution: auction houses strengthen provenance checks and avoid the rhetoric of “Russian Week”, yet cannot ignore the market value of the segment.
Fabergé’s Winter Egg at Christie’s
This London season does not end at Sotheby’s. On 2 December Christie’s will host a sale that promises to be the winter’s climax: the legendary Fabergé Winter Egg (1913), one of the rarest imperial Easter gifts, is coming to auction. Created in the workshop of Carl Fabergé to a design by Alma Pihl for Emperor Nicholas II, who presented it to his mother, Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, the egg is a crystalline vision of frost: a rock-crystal shell with platinum “ice” and diamonds encases a platinum basket with anemones carved from quartz and jade — a concentrated metaphor for spring breaking through ice.
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Photo: Christie’s
After the Revolution, the egg entered Soviet state collections and was sold abroad in the 1920s. Throughout the 20th century it changed hands several times, twice setting auction records in Geneva and New York; its former owners include Sheikh Saud bin Mohammed Al-Thani of Qatar, one of the most energetic collectors of his generation. Now the Winter Egg returns to London with an estimate above £20 million and a real possibility of setting a new world record for Fabergé. For the market, it is a test of willingness to pay a museum-level price for the imperial myth; for collectors, it is a chance to join a very short chain of owners beginning in the private chambers of Nicholas II and continuing through Qatari palaces.
What this season means
This year’s London season of Russian art is not a nostalgic spectacle but a rehearsal of a new configuration — from Aivazovsky’s sea tempests and the manifestos of nonconformism to the crystalline egg that quite literally preserves the Romanovs’ last winter. The outcome of these sales will determine not only next season’s estimates but also the place of the “second avant-garde” and the imperial legacy within the global canon.
Cover photo: Ivan Aivazovsky “The Survivors”, Afisha.London
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Christie’s London presents Fabergé’s Winter Egg – expected to exceed £20 million
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