PARIS - SOTHEBY'S France saw a 30 per cent increase in art sales in 2008 despite the financial crisis, becoming the leading auction house on the Paris marketplace, but Christie's slumped 19.1 per cent, both firms said on Friday.

Sotheby's overtook Christie's for the first time with 155.2 million euros (S$320.3 million) in sales against its rival's 150.3 million euros in sales.

Smaller French auction house Artcurial registered a 25 per cent drop to 93.7 million euros.

Describing 2008 as 'a very good year', the head of Sotheby's France Guillaume Cerutti said 'we are nonetheless feeling the crisis and will feel it again in 2009'. Paris, he added, appeared to be doing better, however, than London or New York.

In early December, well into the crisis, Sotheby's France sold a drawing by Georges Seurat for five million euros, the top sale of the year in France.

The auction house in 2008 also rang up 15 world records and made 18 sales worth more than 500,000 euros each.

Christie's France (Christie's International is owned by top French entrepreneur Francois Pinault), which over the past five years had been the country's leading auction house, registered a world record for furniture sold at auction with the four-million-euro sale of an 18th century commode.

It made 18 sales worth over one million euros.

'The wind has changed but it's not too bad given the current climate,' the head of Christie's Europe, Mr Francois Curiel, told AFP. 'Prices will remain sound for rare objects.' -- AFP