Taking the temperature of the Hong Kong art market is rarely straightforward. While aggregate sales suggest cooling momentum, the resilience of blue-chip works – including the recent high-profile sale of The Great Wave off Kanagawa – shows that demand at the very top remains intact.

In November 2025, a rare impression of Katsushika Hokusai’s Under the Wave off Kanagawa, better known as The Great Wave, sold for a record US$2.8 million (HK$21.7 million) at Sotheby’s Hong Kong.

The result was all the more striking given the print’s humble origins. When first published in the early 1830s as part of Hokusai’s Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, the woodblocks were mass-produced and sold for around 16 mon; roughly the price of a double serving of noodles at the time, equivalent to around US$3 to US$4 today.

Two centuries on, what began as accessible popular art now trades as a global trophy asset, representing the kind of value arc every collector hopes to replicate, even if few are willing to wait 200 years to realise it.

Such headline results, however, can distort the overall picture. Strip out a handful of museum-grade works, and the market looks considerably less buoyant – particularly in the US$1 million-plus bracket that has traditionally anchored auction totals.

According to the Art Basel & UBS Survey of Global Collecting 2025, global art sales declined in 2024, after the post-pandemic surge, with the steepest contraction concentrated in the US$10 million-plus tier.

While overall sales value fell, transaction volumes proved more resilient, suggesting not so much a collapse in demand but a shift in behaviour. High-net-worth collectors remained active, albeit more selective, as higher interest rates and tighter liquidity conditions tempered appetite for speculative, leverage-backed buying.