Hiroshige Prints Bring $6.99 Million in White-Glove Christie’s Sale
Christie’s sold all 181 works in the first auction from Alan Medaugh’s Utagawa Hiroshige collection in New York on September 15, 2026, for $6,991,616 including buyer’s premiums. The stronger signal is the distribution: premium-inclusive results for 163 lots exceeded their premium-exclusive high estimates, while HENI’s four illustrated leaders supplied less than one-fifth of the total.
The Alan Medaugh Sale in Four Numbers
Christie’s official results page records the $6,991,616 total for Hiroshige: Colors of the Four Seasons | The Alan Medaugh Collection. HENI’s September 16 report, published the day after the sale, supplies the estimate totals and lot-by-lot distribution.
| Measure | Published figure | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Sale total | $6,991,616 | Includes premiums |
| Low estimates | $1.51 million | Excludes premiums |
| High estimates | $2.32 million | Excludes premiums |
| Above high estimate | 163 of 181 | 90% of lots |
The published total is 4.63 times the aggregate low estimate and 3.01 times the aggregate high. Those are comparisons between unlike figures, however: auction estimates exclude buyer’s premium, while reported results include it. They measure the scale of the result, not a hammer-price multiple. Describing the sale as “three times estimate” without that qualification would overstate what the public data establishes.
The distribution is more revealing. HENI reported that 163 lots sold above their high estimates, 16 sold within estimate, and only two sold below the low estimate. All 181 sold, with no withdrawn or guaranteed lots reported.
The four leading prices illustrated by HENI—$358,400, $345,600, $332,800, and $281,600—sum to $1,318,400. That is 18.9% of the sale total, leaving $5,673,216, or 81.1%, across the other 177 lots. The white-glove result was therefore not manufactured by four trophy prices.
Why Early Impressions Mattered More Than Famous Titles
Hiroshige’s works belong to ukiyo-e, a publishing system in which a design could be printed repeatedly from carved woodblocks. Individual sheets of the same image are not interchangeable. Lines can lose crispness as blocks wear, details can change between states, and pigments can fade after a print leaves the workshop.
That distinction was central to the Medaugh collection. In its August 11 announcement, Christie’s said Medaugh assembled more than 600 sheets over half a century and concentrated on early impressions, strong color, and condition. The September auction was presented as the first of three sales.
The $358,400 leader was not simply a copy of a famous image. Christie’s catalogued the 1857 Plum Estate, Kameido as a deluxe edition from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. It carried an estimate of $60,000 to $100,000 and documented ownership back to the Arthur Wesley Dow collection. The sheet had also appeared in the Van Gogh Museum’s 2018 Van Gogh & Japan exhibition and the British Museum’s 2025 Hiroshige exhibition.
The $332,800 Sudden Shower at Atake makes the state issue even clearer. Christie’s lot record identifies two boats in the right background and says their presence is believed to mark the first impression; the boats disappear from later impressions. The auction house had estimated the sheet at $50,000 to $100,000.
Readers familiar with Utagawa Hiroshige may know both designs through later impressions or reproductions. The Medaugh result shows why title recognition alone is an incomplete guide to value: collectors were buying particular physical printings, with visible evidence of state, color, and history.
The British Museum’s curator-led tour below shows the variety of Hiroshige’s output and, from 6:38, turns to One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. It provides a visual comparison with the prints that anchored the Christie’s sale.
The Bidding Reached Beyond Hiroshige’s Best-Known Views
The clearest counterexample to a fame-only market was Carp Ascending a Waterfall, a narrow vertical print published around 1843–1845. It sold for $44,800 against a $2,000 low estimate. HENI described that as 2,140% above the low; again, the comparison places a premium-inclusive result against a premium-exclusive estimate. Even with that limitation, the gap is too large to dismiss as the buyer’s premium alone.
Format also varied among the leaders. Eight Night Views of Kanazawa is a panoramic triptych, not one of the vertical Edo views. It sold for $345,600 against a $40,000 to $60,000 estimate. Christie’s catalogue traces Medaugh’s example to a 1998 Sotheby’s sale and records its inclusion in the British Museum’s 2025 exhibition.
These results support a bounded conclusion: bidders responded across landscapes, triptychs, bird-and-flower subjects, and less immediately famous designs, while the catalogue repeatedly emphasized early state and preservation. They do not establish how much of each price came from image fame, rarity, condition, provenance, or competition between particular bidders.
One successful single-owner sale also does not reset every Hiroshige price. The catalogue was unusually deep, the collection had a long exhibition and publication history, and buyer identities were not disclosed. Future results will show whether the same intensity persists when the remaining Medaugh material reaches the market.
Buyō Kanazawa Hasshō Yakei (Coastal Landscape in Moonlight) (1857), Utagawa Hiroshige. This impression is not the Alan Medaugh triptych. Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain Mark 1.0.
The $6.99 Million Total Shows Broad, Quality-Sensitive Demand
Christie’s establishes a premium-inclusive total of $6,991,616 for the September 15 sale. HENI establishes that all 181 lots sold and that 163 exceeded their premium-exclusive high estimates.
The four publicized leaders accounted for only 18.9% of proceeds, and Carp Ascending a Waterfall shows that exceptional bidding extended beyond the best-known compositions. The safest market reading is broad demand for this collection, sharpened by early impressions and documented histories—not a conclusion that every Hiroshige print has tripled in value.
The $6.99 million figure is not a hammer-only total, and the published comparisons should not be presented as like-for-like estimate multiples. Christie’s announced two further Medaugh sales without dates in its August release; its published total and 28% New York premium imply a $5,462,200 aggregate hammer, while buyer identities remain undisclosed.
Isabella studied at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts majoring in English Literature & Language and Psychology. Throughout her undergraduate years, she took Art History as an additional subject and absolutely loved it. Building on from her art history knowledge that began in high school, art has always been a particular area of fascination for her. From learning about artworks previously unknown to her, or sharpening her existing understanding of specific works, the ability to continue learning within this interesting sphere excites her greatly.
Her focal points of interest in art history encompass profiling specific artists and art movements, as it is these areas where she is able to really dig deep into the rich narrative of the art world. Additionally, she particularly enjoys exploring the different artistic styles of the 20th century, as well as the important impact that female artists have had on the development of art history.
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Cite this Article
Isabella, Meyer, “Hiroshige Prints Bring $6.99 Million in White-Glove Christie’s Sale.” Art in Context. September 17, 2026. URL: https://artincontext.org/alan-medaugh-hiroshige-auction-results-2026/
Meyer, I. (2026, 17 September). Hiroshige Prints Bring $6.99 Million in White-Glove Christie’s Sale. Art in Context. https://artincontext.org/alan-medaugh-hiroshige-auction-results-2026/
Meyer, Isabella. “Hiroshige Prints Bring $6.99 Million in White-Glove Christie’s Sale.” Art in Context, September 17, 2026. https://artincontext.org/alan-medaugh-hiroshige-auction-results-2026/.
