James Christie (1730-1803) was the Scottish-born former Royal Navy officer who founded the auction house that bears his name in London on 5 December 1766, establishing what is now one of the two principal international fine-art and decorative-arts auction houses (Sotheby's, founded 1744, being the other).

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Foundation and early career

Christie was born in Perth, Scotland, served briefly in the Royal Navy, and arrived in London in the early 1760s. He held his first auction at premises in Pall Mall on 5 December 1766, initially handling household effects, books, antiquities and fine art on a commission basis. The business grew rapidly through the 1770s and 1780s, with Christie himself developing a reputation as a knowledgeable cataloguer and a charismatic auctioneer; Thomas Gainsborough's painted portrait of him (1778, now in the J. Paul Getty Museum) shows the man at the height of his commercial success.

Notable early sales

The firm handled several major early sales that established its reputation, including the 1778 sale of the Walpole collection from Houghton Hall (sold to Catherine the Great of Russia for £40,555), the dispersal of the collections of several aristocratic families in the wake of estate settlements, and a substantial range of decorative-arts and fine-art sales. The 1823 acquisition of the firm's longtime King Street, St James's premises, where Christie's London headquarters has remained continuously since, was a key institutional moment. Jewellery sales became a regular feature of the firm's calendar from the early nineteenth century onward, though the dedicated jewellery department in the modern sense developed only later.

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Successors

James Christie was succeeded on his death in 1803 by his son James Christie the Younger (1773-1831), and the firm passed through several successive proprietors before incorporating in the late nineteenth century. The firm's twentieth-century expansion to international offices (New York, Geneva, Hong Kong) and its acquisition by Great Universal Stores in 1973 (later acquired by François Pinault's Artemis in 1998) built on the foundation laid in the late eighteenth century. The Christie's jewellery department, now one of the two leading international jewellery sale operations, traces continuous practice back to the firm's foundation.