Lewis Collection under the hammer at Sotheby's

Des O'Sullivan previews the most valuable single-owner collection ever to be auctioned in London

Egon Schiele's 'Danaë'.

The 25 defining masterpieces of modern figurative painting from the Lewis Collection at Sotheby’s on June 24 constitute the most valuable single collection ever offered in London.

A Modigliani nude, once considered scandalous, leads an auction featuring stellar artists like Picasso, Schiele, Bacon, Klimt, Freud, Caillebotte, and Toulouse-Lautrec.

Amedeo Modigliani’s sensuous Nu assis au collier (Seated nude with necklace) ranks among the most important works by the artist ever to come to market. It is estimated to make around £45 million (€52.1 million). 

Painted in 1917, it belongs to a series now widely regarded as pivotal in the evolution of modern art, but considered so outrageous at the time that the exhibition in which the works featured was shut down by the police. 

Modigliani is one of a rare coterie of artists to have broken the $100 million threshold at auction, not just once but twice — each time in New York. Both were works from this series. The mantle now passes to London, where this is one of the highest-value works of any kind ever offered in the city and the highest-value work by Modigliani ever offered in Europe.

Amedeo Modigliani's 'Nu assis au collier'.

A suite of seven works by Picasso spans eight full decades of his career. The group is led by a highly unusual and evocative portrait of Dora Maar, the vibrant, fiercely independent artist who first attracted his attention by playing “knife roulette” between her splayed fingers on an adjacent table at Les Deux Magots in Paris. 

As well as becoming Picasso’s muse and lover, Maar also became his indispensable intellectual and artistic sparring partner. 

Given both the provocative nature of their nine-year relationship and the tumultuous backdrop against which it unfolded (the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War), the vast majority of Picasso’s renditions of Dora Maar are angular and jagged in form.

Pablo Picasso's 'Buste de Femme'.

Unseen for over half a century, Buste de Femme is a rare example of something quite different — a generous, sweepingly lyrical rendition of the Dora Maar with whom Picasso was still entirely besotted in 1938 when this work was painted. With its jewel-like surface and geometric patterning, Egon Schiele’s Danaë — painted when the artist was just 19 — is seen as a key breakthrough work. Here, Schiele imagines the mythological scene in which Zeus descends on Danaë in a shower of golden rain, its heaviness accentuated by the introduction of greens and blacks. Schiele died in the Spanish flu epidemic in 1918, aged just 28.

Francis Bacon's 'Two Studies for a Self-Portrait'.

Bacon’s Two Studies for a Self-Portrait was made in 1977 and captures an artist beset by inner turmoil. Following the suicide of his love George Dyer in 1971, Bacon launched into a period of production that would become the most emotionally fraught but ambitious of his career. 

Behind these works lies a decade of guilt, bereavement, and self-scrutiny, marked by the deaths of many of those closest to him — not only George Dyer, but also Peter Lacey. When asked in 1979 why he made so many self-portraits, Bacon replied: “People have been dying around me like flies, and I’ve had nobody else to paint but myself.”

Many of the works in a sale estimated to make in the region of £200 million (€231.5 million) have been shown in major museums across the globe. They were assembled over decades by Joe Lewis and his daughter Vivienne. 

Born and raised in London’s East End, Joe Lewis felt a natural affinity as a collector with the School of London painters, such as Bacon and Freud, whose work confronted the human condition with an uncompromising intensity. That early passion became the foundation for what is today one of the world’s most important private modern art collections, shaped by a fascination with the human figure in all its forms.

The Lewis journey in the art-collector domain is far from over. “We remain committed to the avant-garde painters of today, much of whose work is informed by the artists showcased here,” a statement said.

Billionaire Joe Lewis, who left school at 15 to help his father run his West End catering business, was born in 1937. The family lived above a public house in Bow, East London. 

He holds assets through his Tavistock Group and was previously the majority owner of ENIC Group, the majority owner of Tottenham Hotspur. Accused of tipping off associates and friends with non-public information and charged with multiple counts of insider trading in New York in 2023, he pleaded guilty. Lewis was spared jail time, fined $5m and later pardoned by Donald Trump. His art collection is estimated to be worth $1 billion.