The Australian artists with greatest momentum
Looking at year-on-year changes in auction activity and sales value in 2025
This analysis is drawn from my 2025 Australian Fine Art Auction Market Report. A comprehensive, data-driven review of the year’s key results, trends, and pricing signals. What follows is an excerpt highlighting the artists with the greatest momentum. You can download the full report below.
Year-on-year momentum is a useful lens for collectors because it shows where attention and money moved, often more clearly than headline totals. It highlights which artists gained visibility, saw stronger bidding, or benefited from a run of high-quality works coming to market. Many of these shifts are supply-driven, triggered by estate sales, single-owner collections, or one-off masterpieces, so treat the results as a 2025 map of where competition intensified, where it cooled, and where opportunities may still exist, rather than evidence of sustained market trends.
Australia Contemporary (born 1945+)
The largest momentum shift in 2025 was Howard Arkley, who became the highest-selling artist of the year. Arkley has been a strong auction performer for some time, but 2025 moved to a different level with over $10m in sales (versus less than $1m in 2024) with four works in the top ten prices. This wasn’t simply more lots, it was a step-change in pricing for major paintings.
Outside Arkley, several Contemporary artists also strengthened. Bruce Armstrong moved into six-figure annual sales and has shown strong sell-through over the past five years. Rick Amor, Ben Quilty, and Criss Canning, all already established in six-figure territory, each roughly doubled sales year-on-year, with Amor setting an auction record for The Waiter at Menzies and Canning also setting a record for Gum Blossom from Pootilla at Smith & Singer.
Australia Post War (born 1911 – 1944)
William Robinson, James Gleeson and Pro Hart stand out in the Post War category for year on year increases. Though the jump is best read in context that each artist’s works had comparatively weak sales in 2024.
Australia Impressionist & Modern (born 1851 - 1910)
Impressionist & Modern artists saw the broadest momentum lift across multiple blue-chip names. William Dobell, Grace Cossington Smith, Frederick McCubbin, Tom Roberts, and Ian Fairweather each recorded $1m+ in sales and materially higher than 2024. With earlier-period artists, this kind of volatility is common because supply is thinner. But there is also a global shift in demand back towards artists from the 1800s with proven scarcity, quality and value.
McCubbin and Cossington Smith both particularly benefited from standout works: McCubbin’s Lime Tree sold for $1.5m at Leonard Joel, while Cossington Smith’s The Reader sold at Deutscher and Hackett and Chair and Drapery sold at Smith & Singer were among the strongest results for women artists in 2025.
A number of single-owner or estate sales also shaped the year’s momentum tables. These included the estate-related supply of Barry Humphries works, a large number of John Passmore works, and the Tony & Indra Deigan collection of Arthur Boyd prints (that they produced in partnership with Boyd). Conversely, the large Wolfgang Sievers sale in 2024 helps explain the sharp drop in 2025 activity for that artist.
On the downside, Margaret Preston, Elioth Gruner, and Tim Storrier recorded large falls after each exceeding $1m of sales in 2024. For Preston and Storrier, the key driver appears to be lack of top-quality supply in 2025. For Gruner, the decline was compounded by two high-priced works failing to sell, which materially reduced realised value.
In 2026, the key question is whether these momentum shifts persist and turn into more sustained trends or that these are single year blips at auction.
Methodology: To reduce noise, momentum increases are limited to artists with more than four works sold and over $20,000 in sales in 2025; momentum decreases are limited to artists with more than four works sold and over $20,000 in sales in 2024.