There was a remarkable consistency between the June Contemporary art sales in London in 2018 and 2019 despite a significant shift in the composition of those sales. In the first place, Christie's returned to the June Contemporary market in London. But their presence did not add volume to the sales. Secondly, the top ten lots in 2018 accounted for £89.7m but the top ten lots in 2019 were 25% lower at £66.4m. This drop came within the context of an 4% drop in the sales total from year to year.

What makes this fall in the top ten total so interesting is that it comes at a time when the Contemporary art market remains strong at auction. According to the Financial Times quoting statistics compiled by Arttactic, a London consultancy that tracks market data by tabulating the publicly reported sales from Phillips, Christie's and Sotheby's, "Postwar and contemporary art marked a small gain overall, from $2.2bn to $2.3bn, and accounted for 40.7 per cent of the market."

The London Contemporary sales had the feeling of an after-party that was dutifully attended by an exhausted crowd. The Winter-Spring semester of the 2019 art market has been a long, mostly successful but tiring affair. The June Contemporary art sales in London grossed almost the same amount—down just 4%—as last year but with a much different composition.

There's no mistaking that the London Impressionist and Modern sales were way down from previous years even if they ended up being about the same level as the comparable sales in June 2016. The drop in combined sales value from last year to this was 36% across Christie's and Sotheby's day and Evening sales. The weakness in the sales this year was evident in some of the internal dynamics. First among those was a significant drop in the hammer ratio which is the total hammer price divided by the aggregate low estimate of all the auctioned (not withdrawn) works. A strong hammer ratio is 1.2. The Impressionist and Modern category tends to have a lower hammer ratio reflecting the picky market and the lower sell-through rates. Last year, these sales had a .93 hammer ratio which is fairly weak and a cause for concern even in this category. This year's sales had a .73 hammer ratio. That means the bidding was softer than last year's relatively soft market. Overall sales volume can be affected by a number of causes out of the market's control. Estate material is particularly driven by factors that lie outside of the market at times. The combination of a substantial drop in market volume and a drop in hammer ratio suggests the strong Imp-Mod category of the last year or two may be coming to an end. To be fair, there has been a lot of estates on the market. Buyers have had plenty of opportunities and much money has been spent. These weak sales numbers may have as much to do with the end of the cycle as they do with overall market interest.

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Galerie Gmurzynska

• A work by Antonio Saura for around US $1 million
• A Wifredo Lam for around US $2 million
• A Robert Indiana for around US $ 600k

Marianne Boesky

• sold a large painting by Jennifer Bartlett for $325,000 before the fair opened, with another at $275,000 on reserve (according to The Art Newspaper's Anna Brady)

Paula Cooper Gallery

• sold numerous works ranging from $15,000 - $2 million by Tauba Auerbach, Carl Andre, Sol Lewitt, Douglas Huebler, David Novros, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, Christian Marclay, Justin Matherly, and Dan Walsh