Why Are Collectors Choosing Certainty Over the Auction Room?
Last updated: October 2, 2026
In short: Because a known outcome is worth more to many buyers than the chance of a bargain. Christie's and Sotheby's each now do roughly a quarter of their business privately, and their own specialists say the draw is security: you know the price before you commit. A working artist's studio can offer the same thing at a human scale — a published price, the real painting shown before it ships, and dates set at the start — so the attention goes to the painting rather than the contest.
What is happening in private sales?
They are growing. ARTnews reported this year that Christie's sold $1.5 billion in art privately in 2025 — just under a quarter of its global sales — and that half of those private buyers were new to the channel. Sotheby's says its private sales have run between $1.1 billion and $1.3 billion a year since 2020, about a quarter of its total. Phillips reported a 66 percent rise last year.
The house specialists are candid about why. "When you sell privately, you know what you're going to get," Adrien Meyer, Christie's global head of private sales, told the magazine. "By contrast, at auction, the final price is uncertain." David Rothschild, now Sotheby's global lead of private selling exhibitions, was blunter still: "Discretion is important, but pricing security is the primary motivator."
Why does certainty matter so much to buyers?
Because uncertainty takes up the attention that should belong to the work. At auction, the evening is about the room — the paddles, the increments, the moment the hammer falls. Miety Heiden, Phillips's chairman of private sales, describes what collectors are choosing instead: "Collectors and sellers alike value discretion, flexibility, and certainty, and that's exactly where private sales excel."
John Dewey opened The Quest for Certainty in 1929 with a sentence that still explains the market: "Man who lives in a world of hazards is compelled to seek for security." Ludwig Wittgenstein, near the end of his life, made the subtler point in On Certainty: "If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty." Some things have to be settled before anything else can be judged well.
Is certainty only for the top of the market?
The top of the market is where it is most visible, but the logic travels. The former Christie's global president Jussi Pylkkänen, who now runs his own advisory, says that "selling has become a more complicated and more nuanced choice than it was ever before." And Sotheby's former co-head of UK contemporary private sales, James Francis Fox, called the channel "a new way to engage collectors." When the most sophisticated buyers in the world pay for a known outcome, it is a fair signal for anyone buying their first serious painting.
Aristotle gave the right measure for it in the Nicomachean Ethics: it is "the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits." A painting's price and delivery can be precise. Its effect on you cannot be promised by anyone — which is exactly why the knowable parts should be settled first.
What does certainty look like in an artist's studio?
Three things, each of them knowable before you commit.
- The price. Ready-to-ship paintings carry their prices, and commission pricing is published by size on the Commissions page, with architectural and multi-panel work quoted individually.
- The painting. Before a finished painting ships, I send several videos of it, so you see the real surface move in real light. For a commission, I paint two options at the same time, so you choose between two finished paintings rather than a description of one.
- The calendar. A commission runs about four weeks from deposit to delivery, depending on the studio schedule, with a first reveal and two rounds of revision dated at the start.
Paul Cézanne wrote to the young painter Émile Bernard in 1905: "I owe you the truth in painting, and I will tell it to you." A studio owes a buyer something similar — the truth about the price, the painting and the dates, said before any money moves.
Is there anything certainty cannot give you?
Yes — and it is the best part. Montaigne took "Que sais-je?" — "What do I know?" — as his motto, and a good painting keeps asking it for years. Certainty settles the transaction so that the uncertainty can live where it belongs: in the looking.
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Frequently asked questions
Why are private art sales growing?
Auction-house specialists cite uncertainty and volatility: a private sale gives a known price and outcome, along with discretion, which an auction cannot promise.
Is buying directly from an artist like a private sale?
In one important way, yes. The price is known before you commit, with no bidding and no estimate range, and you deal directly with the person who made the work.
How can I see a painting properly before it ships?
Ask for video of the finished painting in natural light, from several angles. This studio sends several pre-ship videos for every finished work, ready-to-ship and commissioned.
How long does an original painting commission take?
Here, about four weeks from deposit to delivery, depending on the studio schedule, including two options painted side by side, a first reveal and two rounds of revision.
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