Howard Rehs predicted it here last week and now Colin Gleadell has the news:

After two years of selling 19th-century European Art with Old Master paintings, Christie’s is to revert to holding stand-alone sales for the 19th-century works. This category of painting covers the vast number of artists from Western, Central and Eastern Europe associated with traditional, academic and salon-style paintings as well as orientalist and symbolist artists, but excludes the Impressionists. While Sotheby’s has consistently maintained its 19th-century European art sales, Christie’s has toyed with them. In the late Nineties, they combined them with Impressionist paintings. But clients said it didn’t work, and when the old category was reintroduced, Christie’s found it had lost considerable ground to Sotheby’s.

Market News (Telegraph)