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One of Europe’s most valuable private art collections is about to go under the hammer – and it’s expected to break records.
Sotheby’s has opened the doors on the pre-sale exhibition for the Lewis Collection – 48 works expected to fetch a combined total of more than £200 million (€237 million), the highest pre-sale estimate ever placed on a single-owner collection in Europe.
The works belong to the family of Joe Lewis, the 89-year-old former owner of Tottenham Hotspur football club, who is now estimated to be worth £5.8 billion (€6.7 billion).
“As you walk around the galleries… there is this kind of intense psychological kind of profiling of everything, and every work is a masterpiece too and it’s really extraordinary,” said Oliver Barker, the chairman of Sotheby’s Europe at a preview of the Lewis Collection’s pre-sale exhibition .
The star of the show is Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani’s 1917 nude Nu assis au collier, once considered scandalous and now expected to sell for over £45 million (€53 million) in its first appearance on the market since 1995.
When it was first shown, Nu assis au collier featured in Modigliani’s only solo exhibition during his lifetime at Paris’ Berthe Weill gallery. According to Sotheby’s, the show “caused such outrage that the police intervened and closed the exhibition almost immediately.”
Other highlights include Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Gertrud Loew (£20-30 million), Edgar Degas’ rarely-seen bronze Petite danseuse de quatorze ans (£18-25 million), and Pablo Picasso’s Buste de femme, a portrait of his muse Dora Maar (£12-18 million).
Also on display is Lucian Freud’s Sleeping by the Lion Carpet, a nude portrait of his model Sue Tilley, which was recently shown at the National Portrait Gallery. Barker called it: “Arguably… the greatest Lucian Freud painting ever to make its way to market.”
Freud met Tilley through the Australian performance artist and nightlife figure Leigh Bowery in the late 1980s. Tilley was a close friend of Bowery’s and worked with him on London’s club scene. Sleeping by the Lion Carpet is one of several portraits Freud completed of her.
The previous record for a single-owner collection sold in Europe was set by the Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé collection in 2009, which eventually sold for the equivalent of around £333 million (€395 million) at Christie’s.
The Lewis Collection is on free public display at Sotheby’s London until 23 June.
The 25 highest-value works go under the hammer on 24 June, with the remaining lots following the next day.