We act for you, not the auction house. That means comparing salerooms and sale dates, negotiating reduced seller’s fees, agreeing estimates and reserves, all while keeping the contractual paperwork in your name from consignment to settlement.
Paintings, prints, photographs, works on paper and sculpture, from Old Masters to contemporary and street art, including Banksy.
Working across well known international auction houses or lesser known regional auction houses we will endeavour to provide you options to make a sale with the best results.
Taking into consideration auction history in specific locations, available dates, different settlement periods and all associated fees, we can offer a sale that balances all options to suit your needs. Our fees are typically structured at 0%, but can range from 2.5 to 10%, dependent on complexity, which, however, once we’ve negotiated reduced seller rates on your behalf, mean your overall sale fees remain the same or lower. Unsold and marketing fees can also usually be avoided. We push to get the best sale price possible.
We offer a trustless service whereby all paperwork and remittance remains directly in your name. Shipping and insurance will also be handled on your behalf at a trade rate when possible.
Extensive experience working with all major and regional auction houses.
The process
We do the leg work on your behalf while you remain the consignor throughout. The contract and the remittance stay in your name; we sit on your side of the table rather than the saleroom’s.
We look at what you own and what you want from it.
Condition, provenance and comparable results give you a realistic range before anything is committed.
We approach houses worldwide and negotiate estimate, reserve, commission and marketing on your terms, not theirs.
Your work goes into the right sale, catalogued and presented the way it deserves to be.
We watch the bidding, confirm the result, and see the proceeds through to you.
Our fees are typically structured at 0%, but can range from 2.5 to 10%. (See notes)
Notes
We negotiate the standard auction seller’s fees on your behalf — Whitebank Fine Art does not typically charge you a separate fee on top.
Every charge in the breakdown below is agreed before your work is catalogued, and most of them are commercial terms rather than fixed costs. We settle them on your behalf — the seller’s commission, the unsold fee, insurance and cataloguing — with the houses competing for the consignment, and we compare what each is realistically likely to achieve for your work before you commit to any of them. Which auction house to use sets out what that comparison weighs.
All paperwork and settlement information remains in your name.
The percentage you see quoted whenever an auction house changes its pricing — usually somewhere between 25 and 30% — is the buyer’s premium. It is paid by whoever buys your work, on top of their winning bid, and it is not deducted from your proceeds. It still matters to you, because it is money the buyer has to find on top of the bid, and it quietly caps what they are prepared to bid in the first place.
What you pay is the seller’s commission, together with a set of smaller charges that are rarely printed alongside it. None of them is hidden, exactly. They are simply spread across a contract, a rate card and a schedule of terms, and the effect is that most sellers do not find out what a sale costs until it has happened.
Below is the whole of it, in the order you meet it. Auction fees and buyer’s premium explained works one £10,000 hammer price through to what reaches the seller.
A percentage of the hammer price, deducted before you are paid. Every house publishes a rate card, and for anything of consequence the published rate is not the rate that gets agreed. This is the most negotiable number in the contract and the main one we negotiate on your behalf.
The house insures the work while it holds it, and charges you for doing so — commonly around 1 to 1.5% of the hammer price. Often waivable if you can evidence your own cover for the period.
Per-lot charges for the catalogue entry and the photograph of your work. Modest on a single lot, less so across a group consignment, and frequently waived on work the house wants.
Charged when a lot fails to sell, usually as a percentage of the reserve. It is the fee you pay for the outcome you did not want, and it is among the first things worth negotiating away.
The expensive one, and the one sellers most often meet by surprise. Once a work has been catalogued, taking it back out can cost a percentage of the mid-estimate. Agree those terms before you sign, not when you want to change your mind.
Getting the work to the saleroom, and holding it if the sale is months away. Trade rates are materially cheaper than retail ones, and are not always offered unless asked for.
A royalty paid to the artist, or their estate, on qualifying resales — set in law rather than by the auction house, and charged to the seller. The bands are below.
Charged on the fees, not on the hammer price. At 20% it is not a rounding error: a 10% commission costs 12% in practice, and it applies to the other charges here too.
This one is set in law, not by the auction house, so it is the same wherever you sell in the UK and there is nothing to negotiate. It is payable on sales at or above £1,000, for artists who are living or who died within the last 70 years, and it is charged to the seller. The bands are cumulative — each rate applies only to the portion of the price that falls inside it — and the total royalty on any single sale is capped at £12,500.
| Portion of sale price | Royalty |
|---|---|
| Up to £50,000 | 4% |
| £50,000.01 to £200,000 | 3% |
| £200,000.01 to £350,000 | 1% |
| £350,000.01 to £500,000 | 0.5% |
| Over £500,000 | 0.25% |
Rates and thresholds as published by gov.uk, in sterling since 1 April 2024. Commercial fees above are indicative of current market practice and are confirmed against each house’s terms for your sale.
There is no single number, but the shape is consistent: a seller's commission taken as a percentage of the hammer price, plus insurance while the house holds the work, per-lot cataloguing and photography, shipping, VAT on all of those, and the Artist's Resale Right where the artist is living or died within the last 70 years. A seller who negotiates nothing and reads nothing can lose a meaningful share of the hammer price to charges that were all negotiable.
The buyer's premium is paid by whoever buys the work, on top of their winning bid. It is the figure quoted in the press — currently in the region of 25 to 30% at the lower tier across the major houses, falling in stages on higher-value lots. The seller's commission is what you pay, deducted from the hammer price. They are separate charges on separate parties, and a house can hold one steady while moving the other.
It is bought in, and most houses charge an unsold fee, typically a percentage of the reserve. The work is also now publicly recorded as having failed to sell, which affects how it is received the next time it appears. Both are reasons to argue about the reserve and the estimate before the sale rather than the fee afterwards.
If the work qualifies, yes — it is a statutory royalty and the seller pays it. It applies to sales at or above £1,000 for artists who are living or who died within the last 70 years, on a sliding scale from 4% down to 0.25%, and the total is capped at £12,500 for any single sale. It is collected by societies such as DACS and ACS rather than by the artist directly.
Most houses settle around 30 to 35 days after the sale, and only once the buyer has actually paid — which is not always the same thing. Settlement periods differ between houses and are one of the terms worth comparing when the sale dates are otherwise similar, particularly if the timing of the money matters to you.
01
Please write to us with the specifics and we will be happy to advise pricing based on results from a specialist art price database.
02
We are based in London but have previously listed, sold and shipped all types of artworks globally. Whether it's a rolled print held inside a tube, a medium sized photograph inside a glass frame, or a large canvas work that needs to go flat, we have the necessary experience to advise the safest and most cost effective transport method.
03
Three steps, and the first takes a few minutes with a phone. Photographs of the work, its reverse and its signature; then a written identification and valuation with the comparable results set out behind it, so you can see the reasoning rather than take a figure on trust; then a choice between auction and private sale, with the terms negotiated rather than accepted as published. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
Work from 1945 to now — the most actively traded category at auction, and the one where estimates move fastest.
Early- and mid-twentieth-century painting and sculpture, where condition and exhibition history carry unusual weight.
Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works, a market that rewards impeccable provenance above almost everything else.
Pre-1800 painting and works on paper, where attribution and scholarship determine value more than fashion.
Vintage and contemporary photography, where print date, edition and printer matter as much as the image.
Banksy and the wider urban contemporary market, where authentication paperwork is often half the value.
Hokusai: Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji is at Dulwich Picture Gallery until 17 January 2027, with all 46 prints in the series shown together in Britain for the first time, The Great Wave and Red Fuji among them. Ticket prices, opening times, talks and what to see.
Frida: The Making of an Icon is at Tate Modern until 3 January 2027, with more than 30 works by Frida Kahlo. Ticket prices, opening times, late openings and what to see, with ten weeks left to go.
Renoir and Love is at the National Gallery until 31 January 2027, with 40 paintings including Bal du moulin de la Galette, in Britain for the first time. Ticket prices, opening times, pay-what-you-wish Fridays and what to see.
Whitebank Fine Art is a London art advisory and gallery. A photograph and a few details are enough to begin — a valuation carries no obligation to proceed.
Newsletter
Sent twice monthly by email. What’s in it
