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Condition Report: David Pollack & Calvine Harvey, Sotheby’s Old Masters Department

The Old Masters market has a new sense of energy and opportunity, with a recent migration of contemporary collectors to the category and a savvy auction house highlighting new reasons to love old paintings.

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Sotheby's
"The reality is that in the Old Masters market, people understand that it’s pretty slow and steady. No one’s buying an Old Master and expecting to flip it in two years for three times the price the way they might in the contemporary market," says Sotheby's director of international strategy Calvine Harvey (left). Photos: Courtesy of Sotheby’s
Marion Maneker
February 25, 2026

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The Old Masters market seems to be changing on both the buyer’s and seller’s side. There’s an influx of modern and contemporary collectors who are confident in their ability to judge a work, and auction houses are emphasizing pieces with strong, resonant imagery pitched toward collectors’ new tastes. The results seem to validate these moves—Sotheby’s achieved an 86 percent sell-through rate in this month’s Part II sales (the equivalent of day sales), in a category that used to routinely accept sell-through rates as low as 65 to 75 percent.

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