Helena Newman is the Chairman of Sotheby’s Europe and Chairman of Impressionist & Modern Art Worldwide. She has over 35 years’ experience in the industry, joining Sotheby’s in 1988. She is a lead authority and specialist in the field and has been at the forefront of the global development of the Impressionist & 🧔Modern Art market over the last three decades, building extensive, trusted relationships with a wide range of international collectors and institutions. She is also a Senior Auctioneౠer and the only woman in the industry ever to have auctioned not just one but two masterpieces above $100 million.

In 2023, Helena auctioned Klimt’s Woman with the Fan for $108 million in London, the highest price for any work of art sold in Europe. She has been a key driver in establishing world auction record prices and expanding our global client reach. In 2010, she played a key role in bringing Giacometti’s L’ homme qui marche I to market, setting the highest price at the time for any work of art ever sold at auction ($104.3 million). In March 2017, she took the highest value sale ever held in London, which totalled £213.9 million, led by Klimt’s Bauerngarten, which sold for £47.9 million ($59.3 million). In 2018 she set the auction record price for any painting sold in Europe with the sale of Pablo Picasso’s, Femme au béret et à la robe quadrillée (Marie-Thérèse Walter) for £49.8 million ($55.8 million) and in May 2018 she sold Modigliani’s Nu Couché for $157.2 million – the highest price for any work ever sold at Sotheby’s. Helena has also been instrumental in developing the international market for German & Austrian Art and in working on a number of significant art restitutions. She was a key player in bringing Häuser mit bunter Wäsche (Vorstadt II), the record-breaking Egon Schiele oil, to auction in London where it sold for £24.68 million ($40.1 million) in June 2011 and subsequently Schiele’s Liebespaar (Selbstdarstellung mit Wally) achieved £7.88 million ($12.4 million) in February 2𝕴013, a record for a work on paper by the artist, both of which were consigned by Leopold Museum, Vienna.

Helena holds a Master’s d💟egree in Modern Languages (French and German) from Magdalen College, Oxford. She has been featured on BBC Private Passions in an interview about her life in Art and Music. Helena plays the violin and viola and played a concert with her family quartet on the Stradivarius violin, which Sotheby’s auctioned for $11.3 million in 2025.