LONDON—According to a new study put out by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, Damien Hirst’s £111.5 million ($199 million) sale at Sotheby’s London last month marked the peak of the U.K. art market, its success obscuring a downturn in lower-priced sectors, Bloomberg reports.

While Sotheby's sold 98 percent of the Hirst lots at its Sept. 15–16 sale, on Sept. 27, the Edinburgh-based auction house Lyon & Turnbull sold a mere 27 percent of the lots in its modern and contemporary art and design auction in London. Most pieces in the sale were valued at less than £5,000.

“The credit crunch and bank collapses are slowing down the markets, as is the falling house market,” said Simon Jones of Oxfordshire auctioneers Jones & Jacob, who is quoted in the survey. “It will get worse as the recession continues. That said, best quality lots are finding buyers at good prices.”

The quarterly survey, completed last month, shows a market whose upper and lower extremes are trending in very different directions. While a balance of 39 percent more auctioneers and valuers reported that prices rose for works of £50,000 pounds or higher, 34 percent reported prices falling for items estimated at £1,000 pounds or less. Prices fell most sharply for antique furniture and traditional paintings; by contrast, contemporary art showed the strongest growth, with 41 percent more surveyors reporting increased prices.