So many highlights to tempt art fans in London this summer

Events like the re-opening after five years of the world-renowned National Portrait Gallery get the season started

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Diplomacy I (2009), at Christie's.

A late painting by Gustav Klimt set to become the most valuable artwork ever sold in Europe, wonderful antique furniture, portraits and exceptional collectibles will make rich pickings for the rich and plenty of eye candy for the rest of us in London in the coming weeks.

This is the time of year when the art world descends on the British capital for a variety of major sales, fairs and significant one-off events like the re-opening after five years of the world-renowned National Portrait Gallery.

Despite some indications that the global art market might be in slightly hesitant mode right now, the London summer season of 2023 is unlikely to disappoint.

Lady with Fan by Klimt at Sotheby’s Modern and Contemporary evening sale on June 27 has an estimate of around €80 million. The last portrait he painted was still on an easel in the studio at the time of his untimely death in the flu pandemic of 1918. 

Lady with Fan by Gustav Klimt at Sotheby's in London on June 27.

Featuring an unnamed woman it is described by Sotheby’s as an ever-deeper, ever-more-joyful immersion in pattern, colour and form, filled with creative exuberance.

The auction will offer a strong grouping of portraits with work by artists like Alberto Giacometti and Edvard Munch.

In celebration of the re-opening of London’s National Portrait Gallery last Thursday, the dynamism of portraiture across the centuries, redefined by each generation, will again be highlighted at Christie’s sale on June 28.

These c1765 carved mirrors in the Chippendale style are being shown by Ronald Phillips at the Treasure House Fair in London.

One of the more contemporary offerings here is Diplomacy I by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. Part of the Tate Retrospective which closed last February, it depicts a group of suited delegates recalling Marion Kaplan’s photographs of African heads of state at a summit in Uganda in 1967. 

The artist has created bold new characters for black representation in art. In this imagined portrait Yiadom-Boakye has inserted a single woman, clad in pink. The sale offers portraits by Frank Auerbach, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Edgar Degas, Lucian Freud and Howard Hodgkin.

The Treasure House Fair, in full swing until next Monday at the Royal Hospital in Chelsea, was generated by leading UK dealers after the cancellation of Masterpiece, which cited a lack of overseas exhibitor interest.

Treasure House has attracted dealers from France, Switzerland and the US like Geoffrey Diner and Michele Beiny. There is fine antique furniture from leading UK dealers like Ronald Phillips at this curated global event with distinguished names across a wide range of disciplines.

The city is also gearing up for London Art Week (June 30 to July 7) with 53 specialists and expert dealers with museum-quality examples of decorative arts, paintings, sculpture and works on paper from antiquity to contemporary.

The Life of the Virgin (1906) by Dublin-born Phoebe Anna Traquair is on display at the Fine Arts Society in London.

Various galleries will show work by Irish artists like Sir John Lavery, Gerald Leslie Brickhursts (who lived here for a time) Augustus John and Gwen John as well as showcasing artists from Giambologna to Renoir, Picasso and Dora Maar.

The Fine Arts Society will exhibit an enamel by Phoebe Anna Traquair, the Irish-born artist who achieved international recognition for her role in the Arts and Crafts Movement in Scotland. She produced large-scale murals, embroidery, jewellery and book illuminations. On show in London is The Life of the Virgin (1906), three plaques in enamel with foil on copper.