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Jackson Pollock’s East Hampton Masterpiece Sells for Record $181.2 Million at Christie’s
The 1948 drip painting created in Pollock’s Springs studio shattered the artist’s auction record, becoming one of the most expensive artworks ever sold.
A Hamptons Masterpiece Makes Auction History
The Hamptons are filled with Jackson Pollock lore — including the story of the artist paying off a grocery tab at East Hampton’s historic Springs General Store with one of his paintings during his cash-strapped Springs years. On May 18, 2026, another Pollock masterpiece made history.
“Number 7A, 1948,” created inside Pollock’s now-iconic Springs studio in East Hampton — today preserved as the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center — sold Monday night at Christie’s in NYC for $181.2 million with fees, setting a new auction record for the Abstract Expressionist pioneer.
The nearly 11-foot-wide drip painting, once owned by publishing magnate and legendary collector S.I. Newhouse, hammered at $157 million after an intense 10-minute bidding war, with bids climbing in $1 million increments before Christie’s global president Alex Rotter secured the winning bid for an undisclosed buyer.
The final price vaults the work into the upper echelon of the global art market, officially making it one of the most expensive artworks ever sold at auction.
A New Benchmark for Pollock
The sale shattered Pollock’s previous auction record of $61 million, set in 2021 for Number 17, 1951. Christie’s had estimated Number 7A at more than $100 million, but fierce competition quickly drove the final total far beyond expectations.
Painted in 1948, the work was created during Pollock’s revolutionary Springs period, when he transformed modern art by laying canvases across the floor of his barn studio and pouring, flinging and drizzling enamel paint across their surfaces — a radical technique that forever changed contemporary painting.
The Springs Studio That Changed Art History
That studio, where Pollock and wife Lee Krasner lived and worked, remains one of the Hamptons’ most significant cultural landmarks.
Visitors to the preserved home can tour the paint-splattered floorboards where Pollock pioneered his drip technique and take part in family-friendly drip-painting workshops inspired by his groundbreaking process.
Christie’s said Number 7A is the largest Pollock drip painting still in private hands.
A Provenance as Storied as the Painting
Before entering the Newhouse collection, the work belonged to photographer Herbert Matter, who received it directly from Pollock. It later passed through the hands of collectors John Powers and Kimiko Powers before Newhouse acquired it.
The painting had not been publicly exhibited since a 1977 presentation at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
The Pollock sale was part of Christie’s highly anticipated offering of 16 works from the Newhouse estate, expected to generate more than $450 million.
Another standout from the collection, Constantin Brancusi’s bronze sculpture Danaïde, sold moments earlier for $107.6 million, also setting an auction record for the artist.
From Springs to the Global Stage
Together, the two nine-figure sales signal renewed confidence at the very top of the global art market — and a reminder that one of the art world’s biggest moments this year began inside Pollock’s unassuming East Hampton barn, where he forever changed the language of modern painting.
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