Christie's London held its first auction of South Asian art since 2019 on 11 June, achieving a white-glove sale totaling £18.9m with fees. The 93-lot single-owner collection, identified by market sources as belonging to the Kolkata-based Goodricke Group (a subsidiary of Camellia PLC), set records for over a dozen artists. Highlights included Abanindranath Tagore's portrait of Mahatma Gandhi (1922) selling for £1m with fees—more than 15 times its estimate—and Ganesh Pyne's *Fisherman* (1977) reaching £3.8m with fees, a new record for the artist. The sale was notable for its focus on Bengal-associated modernists rather than the Bombay Progressive Artists' Group, which typically dominates the category.
The sale underscores the dramatic price escalation in the South Asian modern art market over the past three years, driven by a growing base of wealthy collectors from the region and diaspora. The strong results, including bids from China, Thailand, and the US, signal expanding global demand beyond traditional South Asian hubs. However, Christie's indicated that this London sale was opportunistic rather than a shift in strategy, with future programming to be decided case-by-case. The auction also highlighted the role of corporate collections—Goodricke's holdings, amassed in the 1990s and early 2000s, were sold as part of a broader asset divestment to improve profitability.