£9.7M for Lullaby Spring
image © Sotheby's / Lullaby Spring © Damien Hirst 2002
Considered Hirst‘s most expensive work for its value in dollars (US$19,200,000 million), Lullaby Spring – a steel and glass cabinet holding 6,136 individually painted pills – achieved over three times its £3,000,000-4,000,000 estimate when it sold at Sotheby’s Contemporary Evening Auction in London on 21 June 2007. At £9,600,000, it set a new auction record price for Hirst and established him as Europe’s most expensive living artist at the time.
Lullaby Spring is one in a series of four pill cabinets known as Lullaby, The Seasons. Christie’s had sold Lullaby Winter in their New York auction in May 2007 for US$7,432,000, or £3,700,000, although the buyer never paid. Just over a month later, Lullaby Spring increased the value of Hirst’s pill cabinets by US$12,000,000 when it was offered at Sotheby’s.
