Auctioneer by appointment to the world’s new rich

In 1987, shortly after joining Christie’s auction house in London as a 23-year-old English Literature graduate from Oxford, Jussi Pylkkanen nervously approached the head of the Impressionists department, James Roundell, and asked if he could transfer to his team. ‘He was a kind of god in the company. He’d just sold Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” to a Japanese insurance company for almost $40 million. He was the most important man in Christie’s,’ recalls Pylkkanen. A year later, Pylkkanen joined the Impressionists department; 20 years on, he has replaced Roundell as the colossus of Christie’s European operations. Pylkkanen is the president of Christie’s Europe and the company’s top-flight auctioneer this side of the Atlantic. Last month he presided over a week of auctions in London that realised £200 million, and broke price records for 17 artists. Forty-two lots sold for over £1 million.

One has come to think of the £1 million painting as pretty commonplace these days, but now prices of up to £40 million are being fetched by single works of art and there seems to be no sign of the market’s current buoyancy subsiding.