When prime material comes to market, buyers show up. With the caliber of works Sotheby’s offered from the Lewis Collection last night in London—25 modern and contemporary masterpieces carrying a total high estimate in excess of £273.6 million—expectations were high, but it could hardly have been otherwise, no matter the state of the market. The dedicated sale ultimately generated £296,315,500, which, together with the £97,083,186 achieved by the Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction that followed, brought the night’s total to £393.4 million ($520.7 million), the highest total ever achieved in a single night at auction in Europe.
Assembled over decades by Joe Lewis and his daughter Vivienne, the Lewis Collection made news earlier this year, when a quartet of major works consigned to Sotheby’s for the London marquee sales in March generated £35.8 million, led by Francis Bacon’s 1972 self-portrait at £16 million. Last night’s £296 million result made it the most expensive single-owner sale ever in London.
Yet beyond the staggering sums, the rhythm at which the two-part evening sale proceeded was perhaps the more revealing signal of where the market stands after this intense season. The historic sale took more than two hours to move through just 25 lots, followed by an additional two hours for the remaining 50 lots of the Modern & Contemporary sale, with auctioneer Oliver Barker repeatedly urging the room to move on. The evening laid bare a market more cautious, more deliberate and acutely sensitive to estimates as much as final pricing. Even at the very top end, with once-in-a-lifetime, museum-grade works—many fresh to auction and long on loan to major institutions—buyers were engaged but not indiscriminate. Notably, none of the Lewis works carried guarantees.
Opening the Masterpieces from the Lewis Collection sale was the highly anticipated Gustave Caillebotte, Portrait de Paul Hugot, which had not been on the market for more than 30 years. Starting at £3 million, the work quickly climbed past £8 million, pursued by nine bidders, then stalled between phones, eventually prompting Barker—nearly 10 minutes into the lot—to quip that it was perhaps time to “start to sell it,” before it finally hammered at £8.5 million. Momentum continued with René Magritte’s La Belle Promenade, one of the artist’s most recognizable motifs. Acquired by Lewis in 2014 at Christie’s London for £1.9 million and estimated at £3-4 million, the work opened at £2.5 million and, after a sustained bidding battle of more than 10 minutes, hammered at £13.5 million to a bidder in the room, setting a new record for a work on paper by the artist.
The first of five Picassos in the sale, Buste de femme, a 1938 work on paper with an extensive exhibition history, rapidly climbed above its £1.8 million high estimate, hammering at £2.3 million. Another Picasso, more in the Neoclassical style, Tête de femme—one of just two pastel heads remaining in private hands—commanded £6.2 million against a £2-3 million estimate. Henri Matisse’s charcoal study of his longtime companion and muse, Lydia Delectorskaya, followed, opening at £1 million and landing at £3 million. The sale continued at a deliberate pace: nearly every lot took time to hammer, with multiple bidders competing in small increments and Barker repeatedly urging the room to move on.
Another of the evening’s highlights was Edgar Degas’ Petite danseuse de quatorze ans, the only sculpture the artist exhibited during his lifetime. Offered at £18-25 million, it ultimately hammered at £21.4 million, selling to a phone bidder represented by Julia Fischel, Sotheby’s Head of Modern Day Sales, to become the second-highest price ever achieved for a bronze by the artist.
Kazimir Malevich’s Head of a Peasant moved more quickly, reaching £2.4 million on the phone after a brief pause—a result 14 times higher than the £190,000 Lewis paid for it at Sotheby’s London in 1993. Momentum continued with Egon Schiele’s Danaë, which opened at £9.5 million against a £12-18 million estimate, then climbed to £14.6 million before ending at £17.9 million with fees. In the Lewis collection for over 20 years, the work was withdrawn in May 2017 from a Sotheby’s New York sale where it had been offered with a far more ambitious estimate of $30-40 million, and had since been on long-term loan at New York’s Neue Galerie, included in “Egon Schiele: Living Landscapes” in 2024-2025 after appearing in “Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele: 1918 Centenary” in 2018, with prior loans to the Met from 2011 to 2012 and to the Philadelphia Museum of Art between 2013 and 2017.
The sale took nearly an hour to move through the first seven lots, and that was with Barker urging bidders forward. Even smaller works became protracted contests, with one lot advancing in £50,000 increments before finally hammering at £1.51 million. A raw and anguished Max Beckmann composition, formerly in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, hammered at £5 million, just before another of the evening’s major lots: Lucian Freud’s monumental nude, Sleeping by the Lion Carpet, the last of four major paintings of his “benefits supervisor” Sue Tilley and a work exhibited in the artist’s most important retrospectives. Opening at £17 million, the canvas initially struggled to reach its £25 million low estimate, stalling for several minutes at £24.8 million before finally hammering at £29.3 million with fees. The painting had been in the Lewis Collection since it was acquired from Acquavella Galleries in 1996, the year it was completed and unveiled.
Francis Bacon’s Study for a Portrait, originally shown at Galerie Claude Bernard in what has been described as one of the most important exhibitions of the artist’s career, hammered at £3.5 million, or £4.36 million with fees. It previously appeared at auction in 2023, when Lewis acquired it for the somewhat higher price of £4,521,250.
Two Picassos followed, hammering at £5 million and £5.7 million respectively, before the sale reached one of its marquee lots: Amedeo Modigliani’s Nu assis au collier, described by Sotheby’s as one of the greatest works by Modigliani ever to appear on the market. The star lot opened at £38 million and hammered at £41.5 million to a phone bidder, reaching £48.2 million with fees, against its estimate in excess of £45 million. Acquired by Lewis from the Christie’s sale of the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Ralph F. Colin in May 1995 for $11.3 million, the painting was most recently on loan to the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney. Last night’s result made it the most expensive lot of the evening and the highest price ever achieved at auction for the artist in Europe.
A Toulouse-Lautrec hammered at £1.5 million in the room, while a subsequent Degas was passed at £1.9 million before the sale reached Gustav Klimt’s delicate, ethereal portrait Bildnis Gertrud Loew, one of the rare full-length Klimt society portraits to have appeared on the art market. In the last 25 years, only five significant examples have come to auction, always exceeding their high estimates. Long on loan to the Neue Galerie and acquired by Lewis at Sotheby’s London for £22 million in June 2015, the masterpiece this time opened at £15 million and soon moved beyond its £20-30 million estimate, with nine bidders, selling for £36.1 million with fees.
Chaim Soutine’s signature work, promised for an artist exhibition at Palazzo Reale in Milan in 2027-2028, sold just above its low estimate at £1.85 million. Lucian Freud’s Woman in a Grey Sweater, in the Lewis Collection for more than three decades, hammered straightforwardly at its £3.9 million high estimate, while Francis Bacon’s enigmatic and visceral personal diptych from 1997—another highlight of the sale—opened at £6.7 million but soon stalled, hammering below its low estimate on the phone and reaching £8.675 million only with fees.
Toward the end, another major Modigliani, Homme à la pipe (Le Notaire de Nice), opened at £8 million and climbed to a £19.8 million hammer, or £23.28 million with fees, against its £12-18 million estimate. The sale closed with La Dame en noir by Kees Van Dongen selling over the phone within estimate for £1.4 million with fees, an additional Max Beckmann that almost doubled its low estimate selling for £5.9 million, a Picasso work on paper surpassing its estimate to sell for £3.384 million and a 1957 Chagall, Les Amoureux de Vence, landing just shy of its high estimate with fees.
Highlights from the Modern & Contemporary Evening Sale
Somewhat after 8 p.m., Barker passed the baton to Helena Newman, Sotheby’s chairman for Europe and Impressionist and Modern Art, who took to the rostrum for the second part of the evening with an additional 41 lots, after two were withdrawn ahead of the auction (a 2012 Lynette Yiadom-Boakye painting and Peter Doig’s 1993-94 work Cabin Essence). The session opened with strong interest in Elizabeth Peyton, which hammered at £300,000 against a £450,000-650,000 estimate. Alberto Giacometti’s Buste d’homme (New York II) only just cleared its low estimate with fees, hammering at £1.1 million. Further action came from Lucio Fontana’s gold Concetto spaziale, fresh to market, which sold for £1.088 million (est. £600,000-800,000), as well as a Marlow Moss, which set a new record for the artist, hammering at £920,000 from a £450,000-650,000 estimate, or £1.1 million with fees.
Banksy artwork on the wall; one bidder raises a paddle marked â23â while others watch the sale in progress.” width=”970″ height=”647″ data-caption=’The Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction achieved an additional £97.1 million. <span class=”lazyload media-credit”>Courtesy Sotheby's</span>’>
From there, the sale reached its highlights, beginning with Mark Rothko’s fresh-to-auction Untitled (1959), yellow, blue and white watercolor fields included in the recent exhibition of his works on paper at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and Oslo (2023-2024). After a 10-minute bidding battle starting at £3.5 million, it hammered at £7.4 million against a £4-6 million estimate.
Claude Monet’s Nymphéas (1907) opened at £25 million and hammered on the phone without drama, in the middle of its £30-40 million estimate, for a final £40.8 million with fees. Formerly in the collection of Anne H. Bass, the painting was acquired by the current consignor’s estate at Christie’s in 2022 for $56.4 million—more than the £54 million equivalent of the new London result, even before accounting for inflation.
A few lots later, the other highly anticipated Monet, Camille assise sur la plage à Trouville, an earlier Impressionist work from 1870, was passed at £5.8 million, failing to meet its £7-10 million estimate despite having formerly been in the collection of Peggy and David Rockefeller. It had been acquired by the current consignor at Christie’s dedicated sale of that collection in May 2018, where it sold for $12.1 million.
A Roy Lichtenstein work just cleared its low estimate, selling for £2.042 million. Momentum returned with Egon Schiele’s 1912 landscape, unseen for over 78 years, which hammered at £3.6 million just above its high estimate, followed by a fresh-to-market Morandi still life sold to Asia for £832,000.
Perhaps buoyed by the artist’s recent passing, a 1988 David Hockney painting—never exhibited and held in the same collection since its creation—fetched above its high estimate, selling for £2.164 million. Leon Kossoff’s A Street in Willesden also surpassed its high estimate, hammering at £660,000. During the last Lewis sale in March, another masterwork by the British artist, Children’s Swimming Pool, 11 o’clock Saturday Morning, August (1969), set a record for the artist, selling for £5,214,000 and surpassing its £600,000 low estimate by nearly eight times.
Philip Guston’s The Hill (1970s) hammered at its low estimate of £2.5 million, as did Wassily Kandinsky’s early Fragment zu Improvisation II (£5.036 million with fees), preceded by a Leonora Carrington that met its estimate at £764,400. Also within estimate were Matthew Wong’s The Painter (2016) (£358,400), a Noah Davis work (£384,000) and a fresh-to-auction 2004 Kiefer, also sold for £384,000.
One of the rare moments of intense bidding was inspired by a work by Russian avant-garde artist Mikhail Larionov, last seen at auction in 1987 when it sold at Sotheby’s London for £183,000. Described as one of the most significant works by the artist still in private hands, it hammered above its high estimate at £2.5 million (est. £800,000-1.2 million). Otherwise, most lots landed within estimate or around the low benchmark, with a few passes, including a Frank Bowling painting that failed to reach its £150,000 estimate, stalling at £140,000, and Richard Avedon’s portrait of Marilyn Monroe, which went unsold at a final bid of £320,000. The final lot, an Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, also failed to find a buyer against its £300,000 low estimate. In the closing stretch, the only late highs were secured by Banksy’s Love Is in the Air (life size), which sold above estimate for £6.434 million, and Tamara de Lempicka’s Portrait d’une jeune femme triste, which met expectations at £1.024 million.
Closing almost four hours later, past 9:30 p.m. London time, it was by every measure an eventful, record-breaking night for Sotheby’s. But beyond the headline total, the marathon session confirmed an uneven buyer’s market that is highly estimate- and price-sensitive, yet still shows up for once-in-a-lifetime opportunities while remaining extremely discerning and unwilling to overpay, even at the very top end.
More significant was the strong participation from Asia, also reported by the auction house in the May sales, with collectors from the region pursuing some of the evening’s top lots—among them the Caillebotte, Picasso’s Buste de femme, the Degas sculpture, the Schiele, both Freuds and both Monets, as well as the Banksy in the second session. Asian collectors ended up acquiring two of the evening’s most anticipated and expensive works, the Modigliani and the Klimt, among others, suggesting that the ongoing transfer of high-caliber Western masterpieces will not only be generational but also regional.
