Sotheby’s to Sell the Most Valuable Collection in London

In June, the British billionaire Joe Lewis will sell a collection encompassing works by the likes of Gustav Klimt, Henri Matisse and Lucian Freud at Sotheby’s. The auction house claims that it will be the most valuable staged in London, and estimates that the total works will sell for between £150m and £200m. 

Highlights from the collection will be shown in New York and London before the June sales. Many works have not been seen on the market for years.

Alongside the aforementioned artists, the collection includes paintings by others such as Amedeo Modigliani, Chaïm Soutine and Francis Bacon. Highlights range from a 1936 drawing of Dora Maar by Pablo Picasso, estimated to sell for £600,000-£800,000, to Gustav Klimt’s society portrait Bildnis Gertrud Loew (1902), estimated to sell for an outstanding £20-30m. 

The work carries both art-historical and restitutional significance, having been seized during the Nazi era before later reemerging in circulation. Works of this calibre rarely appear on the market, and when they do, they often exceed expectations. Each of the five major Klimt portraits which have come to auction in the past 25 years have exceeded their top estimates, according to Sotheby’s. 

The event follows last September’s record sale of the most valuable single-owner collection to be sold in the UK. This was the Pauline Karpidas collection, which made £101m. Such auctions as these are important signs that London’s once-lagging art market is gaining more confidence.