REVIEW

Looking Back at 2025 : Top Lots & Collections

18 December 2025

Lyon & Turnbull

2025 proved to be the most successful year in Lyon & Turnbull’s history, with turnover reaching a record level and more than doubling since 2020.

The results reflect steady growth, driven by the strength of long-standing client relationships, specialist knowledge across departments, and a growing international audience. In a selective market, collectors showed clear confidence in well-provenanced and carefully presented material, resulting in consistently high sell-through rates, competitive bidding, and a number of notable and record-setting prices.

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2025 AT A GLANCE

Our highest total yet at £30 million*
58 auctions across 2 UK capitals
Over 12,000 lots sold, with more than 20,000 registered bidders

COLLECTIONS AT THE FOREFRONT

Single-owner collections were a defining feature of the 2025 programme, delivering many of the year’s most notable results. The Bernard Kelly Collection, offered in London in January, realised £1.88 million with 90% of lots sold, led by important works including a portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds (£262,700) and sculpture by Baron de Triqueti (£117,700).

In March, Makers & Creators: Selected Works from The Hugo Burge Collection achieved £955,000 with an impressive 95% of lots sold, featuring standout works by Rembrandt van Rijn (£225,200), Sir Edwin Lutyens (£35,200) and Robert Adams (£22,680). The success of the sale reflected strong appetite for thoughtfully curated collections spanning disciplines and periods.

Further notable collections included The Secret Life of Props: The Eccentric Trading Collection - a selection of over 800 lots of antiques and works of art with stories to tell of their lives on set; A Glasgow Legacy: Select Paintings from the John Shaw Collection - fine art sold to benefit the collector’s alma mater the University of Glasgow; and The Library of James Stirling, Mathematician - a fascinating collection of books and manuscripts from the eminent Enlightenment figure and peer of Sir Isaac Newton, which achieved £821,000 / 94% sold.

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS (BRITISH 1723–1792)

MRS HARTLEY AS A NYMPH WITH THE YOUNG BACCHUS

A wonderful work by famed British artist Sir Joshua Reynolds of Elizabeth Hartley (née White) (1750?–1824), one of the most celebrated actors on the London stage in the 1700s. A highlight of The Bernard Kelly Collection sold in London in January 2025.

FINE ART : FLAGSHIP RESULTS

Fine Art once again formed the backbone of Lyon & Turnbull’s auction calendar, delivering strong results across Scottish, British, and international art. The year’s highest price was for L. S. Lowry’s Going to the Mill (1925), which realised £805,200 in May.

Our Scottish Art auctions continue to be the undisputed market leading sales and Scottish Modern and Colourist works remained in strong demand. This year led by S. J. Peploe’s Iceland Poppies at £302,600 and a new world record result for Agnes Miller Parker’s The Horse Fair at £176,600.

Rare works by Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh attracted international interest. In spring, Charles’s Bouleternère (1925), painted after the couple’s move to France, sold for £150,200, followed in the autumn by Margaret’s Ophelia (1908), which reached £94,500 after strong transatlantic bidding.

Early Painting by L.S. Lowry, Sold by the Artist for £10, Fetches More Than £800,000 at Auction

LAURENCE STEPHEN LOWRY (BRITISH 1887-1976)

GOING TO THE MILL, 1925

L.S. Lowry’s early masterpiece Going to the Millwas painted a hundred years ago and, quite remarkably, remained the same private family collection for all but one of those hundred years. It was acquired directly from Lowry by the journalist A.S. Wallace, the editor of the Manchester Guardian, in 1926. Going to the Mill is the epitome of a 1920s Lowry, when he truly becomes a unique voice. Lowry’s paintings are never simple renditions of what he saw on the streets of his beloved city. They are theatrical in their conception, which is why the ‘backdrop’ of the mill at Pendlebury repeats itself, often in altered configurations, throughout his works. The city becomes a stage for an exploration of loneliness, isolation, loss, hope, although in Lowry’s hands the buildings themselves function as actors – figuring birth, marriage, death and the tyranny of mill-time.

Our London MODERN MADE auctions also provided a successful platform for key Modern British artists, with competitive bidding for works such as Cedric Morris’s The Blue Poppy (£201,600) and sculpture by Henry Moore. The Mall Galleries also hosted the first part of The Gillian Raffles Collection in spring, led by Sir William Nicholson’s Nancy in a Feather Hat (£131,450) and figurative works by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and Dame Elizabeth Blackadder. The Collection of Ursula & Gordon Boywer opened MODERN MADE in October with highlights from their contemporaries Robert Colquhoun, Robert MacBride and Edward Wadsworth as well as more contemporary works from sculptor Emily Young.

FEATURE COLLECTION

THE COLLECTION OF URSULA & GORDON BOWYER

London architects Gordon and Ursula Bowyer were a remarkable couple who were deeply involved with the foundation of modernism in post-war Britain. Formed over six decades, their collection reflects both an unerring eye for innovation and a circle of friendships with many of the up-and-coming artists and designers of their day, who went on to become major figures in their fields. They collected not as investors, but as participants in a milieu who believed passionately in shaping the modern world.

CELEBRATING 160 YEARS OF DESIGN

With one of the most experienced design teams in the UK, Lyon & Turnbull’s Design auctions continued to attract international collectors, presenting material spanning the Aesthetic Movement, Art Nouveau, Arts & Crafts, Modern and Contemporary design.

Private collections featured prominently, including The Art of the Tile: The Michael Blood Collection featuring William de Morgan and F. L. Griggs: A Cotswold Legacy - led by a privately commissioned piece by Ernest Gimson.

Like his pictures, the market for design works by Charles Rennie Mackintosh remained a highlight of our Design Since 1860 auctions, with the return of a rare cutlery suite designed for Fra Newbery of The Glasgow School of Art. Originally from the Taffner Collection, spirited bidding saw the suite realise £175,200.

In London, our unique Lalique auctions delivered strong results, with rare cire perdue works by René Lalique attracting international buyers, including Têtes de Poissons Multiples, which sold for £81,450 in October.

Modern and Contemporary design also featured strongly in MODERN MADE, with works by Finn Juhl, Jennifer Lee, and Lino Tagliapietra leading the category. Pop Art met urban design in autumn, when a unique mosaic by Eduardo Paolozzi for Tottenham Court Road Underground station sold for £12,600.

SUITE OF CUTLERY, DESIGNED FOR FRA & JESSIE NEWBERY IN 1902

CHARLES RENNIE MACKINTOSH (1868-1928)

Mackintosh was commissioned in 1902 by Jessie and Francis (Fra) Newbery to create an elegant table set for 12 people. Fra Newbery, then director of the Glasgow School of Art, was a strong supporter of Mackintosh’s work and played a crucial role in promoting his career. Mackintosh’s cutlery design is revolutionary in its form. The spoons and forks feature exceptionally long, slender handles with a distinctive longitudinal oval opening. The forks are particularly striking, as the transition between the handle and the bowl was seamless, creating the illusion of a single, continuous band of metal.

LUXURY : FROM TIARAS TO TANKS

Our expanded Luxury team had a busy year nationwide, with additional specialist auctions - including Cartier Curated in April - and private collections attracting new audiences.

This October saw the close of the “Autumn of Airlie” with jewels from the personal collection of Virginia Fortune Ryan Ogilvy, Dowager Countess of Airlie open our London Jewellery auction - 100% sold and Lady Airlie’s own tiara led the way at £189,000.

Signed jewellery by Cartier, Verdura, and Van Cleef & Arpels performed particularly well, alongside period pieces of rarity and craftsmanship. Highlights included an early 20th-century Colombian emerald ring (£47,880) and a gold and topaz necklace by Georges Lenfant for Cartier (£37,700).

Scottish freshwater pearls remained a defining strength, with the Collection of a Perthshire Connoisseur sold successfully across two sales, culminating in the sale of one of the largest pearls ever discovered, mounted with a gem-set crown, for £17,780.

Our Luxury team also now present four specialist Watch auctions a year with highlights including a Cartier gold ‘Tank’ from 1965 at £42,700; a Patek Philippe Aquanaut ‘Jumbo’ at £37,700 and a very rare British military issued Rolex ‘MilSub’ dated c.1974 for £58,950.

Virginia Fortune Ryan Ogilvy, Countess of Airlie

FEATURE COLLECTION

THE COLLECTION OF VIRGINIA FORTUNE RYAN OGILVY, THE DOWAGER COUNTESS OF AIRLIE

Virginia Fortune Ryan Ogilvy, Countess of Airlie (1933 - 2024) was a distinguished figure in the British royal household, best remembered as the first American-born Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Elizabeth II, a role she held with devotion and discretion from 1973 until the Queen’s death in 2022.

History, Scholarship, and Global Collecting

Historic works from the Earls of Airlie featured prominently in Scotland Collected and subsequent Five Centuries auctions. Institutional interest was strong for Lady Ogilvy’s dress, believed to have been worn around 1745 (£20,160), and an important cannonball from the Battle of Culloden (£18,900), now in the collection of the National Trust for Scotland.

Personal property from Virginia Fortune Ryan Ogilvy, Dowager Countess of Airlie, was offered throughout the autumn, led by works by Henry Stacy Marks (£65,520) and a rare Queen Anne painted bureau bookcase (£30,240).

Books and manuscripts continued to play a vital role in documenting history. Highlights included the Kilravock Castle archive, comprising manuscripts signed by Scottish royalty, which realised £124,000 and The Library of James Stirling, Mathematician that was led by a first edition of Newton’s ‘Analysis per quantitatum series, fluxiones…’ at £100,800.

To close we travel to the historic Middle East with a extremely rare Iznik pottery tile from the famous Cinili Hamam dating from c.1540 which attracted global interest to reach £243,950 in our June Islamic & Indian Art auction. Followed, in the second edition of the year a standout 15^th century and later Mamluk manuscript of Ibn Akhi Hizam’s ‘Kitab al-Baytarah (Book of Hippiatrics)’ soared to £189,200.

OTTOMAN TURKEY, CIRCA 1540

AN EXTREMELY RARE IZNIK POTTERY TILE FROM THE CINILI HAMAM

This tile, from the famous Çinili Hamam, is one of only three complete tiles bearing this pattern. The Çinili Hamam’s patron was none other than the great kapudan-i derya (Admiral) Hayreddin Pasha, better known in the West as Barbarossa. He was one of the most important characters of the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent, leading Ottoman naval forces across the Mediterranean from around 1510 until his death in 1546. That his hamam was constructed in the prestigious Zeyrek district of Istanbul was a testament to his importance. This example was most recently part of the collection of Bernard Kelly.

Looking Ahead to 2026

As we look to 2026, Lyon & Turnbull remains committed to offering trusted advice, rigorous scholarship, and providing a truly international platform for our clients’ collections. The results of 2025 reaffirm the enduring value of quality, provenance, and thoughtful curation, coupled with the energetic marketing efforts of our specialist team and we look forward to welcoming you back to our salerooms, galleries, and online in the year ahead.

*All prices shown are inclusive of Buyer's Premium.

Gerald Laing | Valuations, Buy, Sell at Auction

AUCTIONS

Our Forthcoming Auctions

Discover our 2026 auctions taking place across the UK.