Christie’s sold works from Monsoon founder Peter Simon’s art collection for £107.5 million, including fees, at an evening auction in London on 14 October 2026. Forty of the 41 lots found buyers, and the hammer total, before the buyer’s premium, was £86.9 million, according to The Art Newspaper. The top lot was Francis Bacon’s Figure in Movement (1978), which sold for £17.2 million with fees.
It shows a collection working as family capital, with much of the risk passed on before bidding began.
How the Monsoon Sale Was Guaranteed
Every lot was guaranteed. A guarantee is a promise that the seller receives an agreed minimum price whatever happens in the room. Christie’s gave 11 of the guarantees itself; outside backers gave the rest. A third-party guarantor commits in advance to buy at an undisclosed price and is usually paid a fee for the risk. Il Sole 24 Ore reported that guarantors bought about a quarter of the lots, including four of the top ten.
Only a 1967 painting by Frank Auerbach went unsold, and 43% of lots sold above their high estimate, The Art Newspaper reported. Simon had bought the Bacon in 2006 from the dealer Ivor Braka; what he paid is not public.
A Collection Built Alongside Monsoon
Simon opened Monsoon in London in 1973 and the first Accessorize shop in 1984. The company listed on the stock exchange in 1998, and in 2007, by Wikipedia’s account, he paid £185 million to take it private again. In June 2020 it went into administration and Adena Brands, which Simon owns, bought it back, closing 35 stores, The Industry reported.
Christie’s billed the collection as its highest-value single-owner collection offered in London in one marquee week. Simon gave no financial reason. Announcing the sale on 9 September, he spoke of “freeing my mind and my walls to start in a new direction.”
What It Means for a Family That Holds Art
The gap between £107.5 million and £86.9 million, about £20.6 million by our arithmetic, is the buyer’s premium, which goes to the auction house, not the seller. On 12 October the art historian Bendor Grosvenor wrote that a work’s price often has to rise “at least 30%” just to recover what the buyer paid. A guarantee adds certainty but shares the upside with the backer.
For a family, art is a concentrated holding, a classic risk: it needs an owner on paper, a current valuation and a plan for sale or succession, as the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection showed.
A fair caveat
The results come from press reports, and dollar totals differ between outlets, so we use pounds. Fees and guarantee terms are private, so we cannot say what Simon received.
What to watch
- The final total for all nearly 200 works, once the day and online sales are added.
- Whether Simon’s “new direction” leads to new buying.
- Whether other single-owner sales in a cautious market are guaranteed in full.
Questions to bring to your advisors
Who owns our art, and is it valued and insured at today’s prices? If we sold, what would we receive after commission and tax? Would a guarantee be worth the upside we give away? These are questions to bring to your advisors, not advice.
