Sotheby’s has unveiled the Lewis Collection, a group of works expected to achieve more than £200m (approx $268m) when it comes to auction in London on June 24 and 25, making it the most valuable collection ever offered at auction in Europe.
Assembled over more than four decades by British businessman Joe Lewis and his daughter Vivienne, the collection brings together works by Amedeo Modigliani, Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Pablo Picasso, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, and Edgar Degas. Many have spent years on loan to major museums around the world, while others have remained out of public view for decades.
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Interest in the collection has already proven strong. Four works from the Lewis Collection led Sotheby’s Modern & Contemporary sales in London earlier this year, realizing a combined £35.8m (approx. $50m). Francis Bacon’s 1972 Self-Portrait (1969) achieved £16m (approx. $21.5m), doubling its low estimate.
Ahead of the June sale, Sotheby’s has brought the collection together at its New Bond Street galleries in Mayfair, offering a rare opportunity to view the works before they disperse once again. During a preview of the exhibition, Tom Eddison, Sotheby’s head of Contemporary Art in London, described the collection as “art history in a room.”
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Visitors are met first by Modigliani’s Nu assis au collier (1971), the $60m centerpiece of the sale. Its appearance in London marks the highest-value Modigliani ever offered in Europe. Two other paintings from the same series, both titled Nu couché (1917), achieved $170.4m and $157.2m at auction in New York in 2015 and 2018, respectively, placing Modigliani among the small group of artists whose works have surpassed the $100m mark more than once.
While the Modigliani may be the headline-grabber, Eddison argues that the collection’s appeal lies in its breadth. “You have the headline works from the collection, like the like Freud’s portrait of Sue Tilley, which is incredibly rare, the Modigliani, the Degas dancer. Each is widely known outside of the auction world – they’re incredibly famous and important artworks in their own right.”
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“When we look at the Lewis Collection today, we see works of enormous power and beauty,” adds Oliver Barker, Sotheby’s European chairman. “It can be easy to forget that, at the time they were created, many of these works sent shockwaves through the art world and polite society. The Lewises have always had an instinctive understanding of what made a work of art sensational in the true sense of the word.”
That spirit of artistic disruption runs throughout the collection. Alongside Modigliani’s radical reimagining of the nude is Lucian Freud’s Sleeping by the Lion Carpet (1996), estimated at £25-35m. ($33.5-50m). The painting is the final and most ambitious portrait from Freud’s celebrated series depicting Sue Tilley, one of the artist’s best-known sitters.
A further standout is Degas’ Petite Danseuse de quatorze ans (1922), estimated at £18-25m ($24-33.5m). Widely considered one of the defining sculptures of modern art, it remains the only sculpture Degas exhibited during his lifetime. Of the 27 casts produced, most are now held by major museums, making examples exceptionally rare on the market.
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For Vivienne Lewis, seeing the works reunited has revealed new connections even after years of collecting. “We came across these works, often unexpectedly and at different moments, and in every case we knew there was something about each one that meant it was for us,” she says. “While we have enjoyed and cherished these works, we haven’t always had the pleasure of seeing them together. To see them brought together now in one place is, even for us, something of a revelation.”
The sale will also feature seven works by Picasso spanning eight decades of the artist’s career. For Eddison, the group offers a rare snapshot of the artist’s evolution. “You have from Blue Period through to the Fontainebleau period to the Minotaur, and you see the whole transition of his work,” he says. “To see that in capsule within this collection is amazing.”
Among them is Buste de femme (1937), a portrait of Dora Maar that has not been publicly exhibited for more than 50 years. Estimated at £12-18m ($16-24 million), the painting offers a notably tender depiction of Picasso’s muse and artistic companion, contrasting with the more fractured portrayals that would later define his representations of her.
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Other highlights include Gustav Klimt’s luminous 1902 portrait Bildnis Gertrud Loew (Gertha Felsőványi), Egon Schiele’s Danaë (1909) – regarded as one of the most significant works of his career – and Modigliani’s Homme à la pipe (Le notaire de Nice) (1919), which has remained unseen for nearly half a century. Additional works by René Magritte, Henri Matisse, Max Beckmann, Francis Bacon, Chaïm Soutine, and Gustave Caillebotte complete what is widely considered one of the finest groups of figurative art assembled in private hands.
The collection will be on view at Sotheby’s New Bond Street galleries through June 23 ahead of the June 24-25 sale.
