This summer in London, Sotheby’s will stage an exhibition and sale of masterpieces from the Lewis Collection. Estimated in excess of £150m / $200m, it is set to be the most valuable single collection ever offered in London, bringing together works of modern figurative painting by Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Amedeo Modigliani, Francis Bacon, Gustave Caillebotte, Lucian Freud and others.
Select highlights will be unveiled to the public at Sotheby’s headquarters in New York’s Breuer Building on 2 May, ahead of the exhibition and sale in London in June. The New York highlights include Klimt’s full-length society portrait Bildnis Gertrud Loew (Gertha Felsőványi) from 1902 (est. £20m to £30m); Schiele’s early masterpiece Danaë (est. £12m to £18m); Modigliani’s Homme à la pipe (Le notaire de Nice), unseen for almost half a century (est. £12m to £18m); and Bacon’s double self-portrait from 1977 (est. £8m to £12m).
Assembled over decades by Joe Lewis and his daughter Vivienne, many of the works have been exhibited in major museums, and many have not been seen on the open market for decades, if at all. Born and raised in London’s East End, Lewis felt a natural affinity with the School of London painters such as Bacon and Freud, and that early passion became the foundation for a collection shaped by a fascination with the human figure.
The June sale follows the presentation of four School of London masterpieces from the collection at Sotheby’s London in March, which doubled their combined low estimate to realise £35.8m / $48m. It also follows last September’s sale of the Pauline Karpidas collection, which achieved £101m / $137m to become the highest-value single-owner sale ever staged in London, a title now set to pass to the Lewis Collection.
The Klimt portrait depicts the 19-year-old Gertrud Loew, later known as Gertha Felsőványi, commissioned by her father Dr Anton Loew. When the Nazis arrived in Vienna, Gertrud left for exile in the United States in early 1939, leaving the family collection behind. The painting was later acquired by Klimt’s son Gustav Ucicky, whose widow Ursula established the Klimt Foundation in Vienna in 2013, and it was sold following a settlement between the Felsőványi heirs and the Foundation. In November 2025, another Klimt portrait, Bildnis Elisabeth Lederer, sold for $236.4m at Sotheby’s New York, the second-highest price ever achieved for a work of art at auction.
Further highlights include Caillebotte’s Portrait de Paul Hugot from 1879, a submission to the Fifth Impressionist Exhibition in 1880 (est. £3.5m to £4.5m); Freud’s Woman in a Grey Sweater of 1987 to 1988, a portrait of Susanna Chancellor (est. £3m to £4m); and Chaïm Soutine’s Portrait de garçon en bleu of circa 1928. A related Bacon Self-Portrait from 1972 sold in London in March 2026 for double its low estimate at £16m / $21.5m. Further major works from the collection will be unveiled in the weeks ahead of the London sale.
(Press Release)
