Anthea Peers

Spear’s Review

When asked about Christie’s private client service credentials, Anthea Peers, its EMEA president, brings Spear’s back to its first private sale in the 18th century.

‘It isn’t just one department, everyone in the business put a portion of their energy into thinking about private sales and offering private sales to their clients, finding out what their clients wanted,’ she says. Today, many clients want the sort of buzz that Paul Allen’s $1.6 billion philanthropic sales created in New York, which her team proudly executed. ‘Collection sales will be a big priority for us going forward,’ she says.

By Christie’s timeline, Peers says she’s not been at the firm for long enough: ‘Only 16 years, which compared to many of my colleagues, is nothing’. But she moved up the ranks quite swiftly since her first role as an Old Master administrator in 2006, working through ‘10 different departments along the way’. In 2019 she was elected global managing director of private sales to give the section ‘a reboot’. The results were ‘extraordinary’, she says. The private channel grew by 85 per cent over the course of 2020, with $1.7 billion-worth of sales.

Peers was promoted to her current role in 2022, while the former EMEA head Dirk Boll headed to the newly created role of EMEA deputy chairman of 20th and 21st century art. On top of researching, valuing and executing transactions and sales, the art history graduate enjoys the treasure hunt she and her team embark upon in family collections.

‘There are so many wonderful stories,’ she says. One memorable moment was hearing her colleague’s story of how he identified, hidden in a corner behind a row of plants, a sculpture which ‘went to auction and made somewhere in the millions’. 

‘It’s a perfect example of where our expertise is what makes the difference – no one else would have spotted that, but because we sent the client someone who was a real sculpture expert, he could see from across the room, hidden in the corner, something of real quality,’ Peers says.