Masterpieces by some of the biggest names in modern art – from Gustav Klimt and Lucian Freud to Henri Matisse and Francis Bacon – will be auctioned by Sotheby’s in June.
The works have been consigned by Joe Lewis and his daughter, Vivienne, whose family owns Tottenham Hotspur, and are expected to fetch a total of more than £150m.
Among the highlights in the collection is Klimt’s Bildnis Gertrud Loew, a 1902 portrait of Gertha Felsöványi, a member of fin-de-siècle Viennese society, which was last auctioned by Sotheby’s over a decade ago. The subject was one of Klimt’s patrons, from whom the painting was stolen by the Nazis when they arrived in Vienna.
Also for sale is Amedeo Modigliani’s Homme à la pipe (Le Notaire de Nice), which has not been seen in public for almost half a century and is predicted to fetch between £12-18m.
There is also a rare double self-portrait by Bacon from 1977, estimated at £8-12m, and Egon Schiele’s “audacious” early masterpiece Danaë, completed when he was just 19. It is expected to break the previous record for a Schiele work, with an estimate of £12-18m.
Sotheby’s Europe chairman, Oliver Barker, said the works formed the “most valuable private collection ever offered in London”, calling it a “full-circle moment” after Mr Lewis started his collection, his passion ignited by post-war School of London artists such as Bacon, Freud and Leon Kossoff. “That early spark developed into a broader passion for figuration, and from that into one of the world’s most important private collections of Modern art, with works that have been shown and celebrated in museums across the globe,” said Mr Barker.
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The June auction follows last September’s sale of the Pauline Karpidas collection, whose £101m total marked the highest-value single-owner sale staged in London.
A spokesperson for the Lewis Collection told The Guardian that the family had always been drawn to art that “reflects what it means to be human”. They welcomed the strong response to the March sale – of four School of London works from the Lewis Collection that fetched £35.8m – as a sign of “the enduring power of figurative painting”.
