Peter Doig, one of the most popular artists in today’s market, pictured at work.
Peter Doig is of the same generation as many of the notorious Young British Artists (YBAs), but unlike them, he didn’t eschew traditional artistic mediums or practices, and he didn’t gain attention for using shock tactics or living a wild lifestyle. Instead, Doig successfully established his reputation with his eerie, beautiful, and unsettling figurative paintings, and he is now one of the most respected and valuable artists in today’s market.
Doig is primarily a painter, but he is also a proficient printmaker, and prints account for 65% of his work sold at auction. His art is most popular in the United Kingdom, and his prints usually reach between £1,000 and £5,000, though some can achieve far higher prices.
Below is a list of Peter Doig’s five most expensive prints sold at auction. If you would like to find out more about how much a Peter Doig print is worth, or how to sell it, please get in touch with Mark Littler today.
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Untitled, Ping Pong Player
This monotype from 2011 is a reworking of an earlier painting by Doig; the two versions are very similar, with the same shadowy figure playing a one-sided game of table tennis against an invisible opponent, but the painting seems more concrete and tangible, the lines harder, and the planes of colour more solid.
The monotype – created several years later – is much more dreamy and fantastical; the shadowy figure seems to have no legs and appears to be floating, and the foliage and tiled wall in the background overlap and merge into one another, whilst the legs of the ping pong table look like they’re almost melting beneath our gaze. Overall, the monotype is much more in keeping with the rest of Doig’s mysterious, atmospheric work, and it was sold by Christie’s in March 2018 for £170,000, setting a new record for the artist.
Untitled, Ping Pong Player sold by Christie’s in 2018
100 Years Ago
Peter Doig has said several times that he’s “an outsider”, a feeling which partly stems from a childhood spent moving between different countries and continents due to his father’s work. But in some of his paintings and prints, there is also the sense of being outside the modern world, and outside society; his art almost always contains human figures, but they’re usually obscured and overshadowed by glorious, awe-inspiring landscapes, and there’s very rarely anything to indicate when the image might be set. Some could be based in the present day, and others could be hundreds – if not thousands – of years ago.
Timelessness is an idea explored in this set of eight etchings from 2001, which were sold by Sotheby’s in October 2023 for £49,374. There is a sense of serenity in the prints, edged by something slightly surreal, and they seem to hang suspended outside the normal confines of time and place. The title of the series, 100 Years Ago, may be a nod to Post-Impressionism, a movement Doig is heavily-influenced by, and elements of which are clearly echoed in his work.
100 Years Ago sold by Sotheby’s in 2023
Zermatt
In 2018, Peter Doig’s friend Heinz Julen offered to let the artist stay at his chalet in Zermatt, a small town in the Swiss Alps. Doig has always loved painting snow, believing that it “somehow has this effect of drawing you inwards”, and he spent his time in Zermatt enjoying and painting his beautiful alpine surroundings.
The artist returned several times to Zermatt over the next few years in order to complete the paintings (he often spends a long time finishing his work), and subsequently, he chose six of these paintings to turn into prints. His selection was based on the images that were most poster-like, resulting in this set of stunning, slightly surreal prints. The series is consistently among Doig’s most popular at auction, and it was sold by Phillips in January 2023 for £35,000, almost doubling its estimate.
Zermatt sold by Phillip’s in 2023
Blizzard ’77
Doig’s fixation with snow also led to this series of eight etchings in colours from 1997, a time when the artist was first beginning to establish his reputation in the art world. Against the backdrop of the wild, bombastic creations of the YBAs, Doig stood apart, and these atmospheric prints are exemplary of the introspective, contemplative quality that demarcates his work.
The monochrome palette and isolated figures give the prints a dreamlike, haunting aspect, evoking questions about humans’ relationships with the landscapes that surround them, and their place in the vastness of the universe. The series was sold by Christie’s in November 2021 for £31,970, exceeding its estimate by several thousand pounds; ironically, although Doig is among the most expensive living painters, the artist himself can feel very uncomfortable about it. He’s said in the past that the vast sums paid for his work make him feel “physically sick”, though he tempered the statement by adding: “it’s out of my hands, and it’s an open market. It is an auction after all.”
Blizzrd 77 sold by Christie’s in 2021
Ten Etchings
This portfolio of ten etchings from 1996 was sold by Sotheby’s in October 2023 for £26,279, and it contains many of the elements one expects to see in Peter Doig’s work, including atmospheric landscapes, a limited colour palette, isolated, indistinct figures, and snow. Although they were created almost thirty years ago, when the YBAs dominated the British art scene, there is something refreshingly timeless about these prints, and about the traditional methods with which they are created.
This is an idea the artist himself is interested in, having said “there is a longevity in painting”, and that “painting becomes interesting when it becomes timeless.” It could be said these statements might apply to his prints as well, though whether this is a conscious decision on Doig’s part is questionable; he once said, “I really don’t know what my paintings are about. And I don’t want to. I don’t see the point. If I analyse them, I wouldn’t make them. There has to be an unknown element to be interesting.”
Ten Etchings sold by Sotheby’s in 2023
