British billionaire Joe Lewis made his fortune in currency trading and went on to own the Tottenham Hotspur football club and a string of other businesses. He is said to approach collecting in the same market-oriented way as he approaches business, while drawing inspiration from his encounters with art. “Lewis grew up in post-war London, the city of Bacon, Freud and Kossoff, where the London School began to express his passion as a collector,” Suthu chairman Oliver Barker said in a statement. That passion eventually grew into an interest in speculation, in particular, and he built “the world’s most important private collection of modern art.”
Over nearly 25 years, Lewis and his daughter Vivienne assembled a museum-level archive of modern figurative painting, acquiring works by Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Amedeo Modigliani, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Gustave Caillebotte, Chaïm Soutine and Pablo Picasso, among others. In June, major works from that collection are headed to Sotheby’s in London for the Masterpieces From the Lewis Collection auction, which could be the most important single-owner sale ever held in the UK.
Notably, while Lewis has quit a few jobs, he and his family are not resting on their laurels. “While this public sale represents an important milestone, our journey as collectors is far from over – we remain committed to today’s avant-garde artists, much of whose work is appreciated by the artists exhibited here,” a Lewis Collection spokesperson said in a statement.
The preliminary estimate of £150 million to £200 million puts it ahead of the Pauline Karpidas sale at Sotheby’s last September, which raised £101 million in fees. And a March auction of just four works from the Lewis Collection—taken from the School of London and including pieces by Bacon, Freud and Leon Kossoff—brought in £35.8 million, suggesting the market likes this material very well. Most of the jobs going on in June haven’t been seen on the open market in decades; others never. Here’s what you can watch:
Gustav Klimt’s 1902 painting of Bildnis Gertrud Loew (£20-30 million)
One of the most famous doctors in Vienna, Dr. Anton Loew, commissioned Klimt to paint his daughter, 19-year-old Gertrud Loew. The resulting portrait, which shows her draped in gossamer, was described by Ludwig von Hevesi, a prominent Viennese art critic of the time, as “the most fragrant poem he could compose.” Klimt’s full-length public portraits are among the rarities on the art market—in the past 25 years, only five significant examples have appeared at auction, each exceeding its high estimate, often by a wide margin. In November 2025, Bildnis Elisabeth Lederer sold for $236.4 million at Sotheby’s New York, achieving the second highest price ever for a work of art at auction. Two years ago, Dame mit Fächer sold at London’s Sotheby’s for £85.3 million, making it the most valuable work of art ever sold in Europe. Bildnis Gertrud Loew you will probably follow suit.
Amedeo Modigliani Homme à la pipe (Le notaire de Nice) (£12-18 million)
In 1918, the year this work was painted, Modigliani was perhaps two years old. He and Jeanne Hébuterne had left Paris for Nice, where his salesman Léopold Zborowski hoped that the Mediterranean air might help his tuberculosis what medicine could not. Away from Montparnasse, Modigliani found new lessons from the locals—workers, farmers, merchants, and the man he called the ‘Notary of Nice’ sat in a black suit and black cap, pipe in hand, his long face and almond eyes unmistakably Modigliani’s. Homme à la pipe (Le notaire de Nice) it has not been shown publicly in nearly 50 years.
Portrait of Egon Schiele Danaë (£12-18 million)
Schiele was 19 years old when he painted Danaëand the work emerged at a time when the artist was moving from an academic tradition to something less refined and more intellectually exposed. The painting is clearly influenced by Klimt’s 1907 treatment of the same subject, but where Klimt feels decorative, Schiele feels human. In May 2017, Danaëcarrying an estimate of $30-40 million, it was withdrawn from the Sutu sale in New York and is returning to the garden in London at a revised estimate, making it one of the most watched lots of the season.
Francis Bacon’s Two Self-Portrait Studies (£8-12 million)
George Dyer, whom Bacon painted more than 40 times, died in a Paris hotel room in 1971, just two days before the opening of a major Bacon exhibition at the Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais. His death would send Bacon into the most emotional and ambitious period of his career. Two Self-Portrait Studiespainted six years later when he was world famous, it is a sign of the artist’s grief: two life-size figures, pink and purple with injuries, melting into black, mouths pursed, eyes closed in pain. Widely exhibited throughout Europe and Asia during Bacon’s lifetime, the duo of works were preceded by a related portrait from the Lewis Collection which sold in March for £16 million, more than double its low estimate.
Gustave Caillebotte’s Portrait de Paul Hugot (est. £3.5–4.5 million)
When Caillebotte delivered his memoir Photo by Paul Hugot (1878) at the Fifth Impressionist Exhibition in 1880, the critic Armand Silvestre called this work “his best piece.” Hugot was Caillebotte’s close friend, neighbor and one of his most devoted patrons; he amassed one of the largest private collections of an artist’s work ever assembled. The work appeared in a recent Musée d’Orsay retrospective commissioned by Caillebotte, but has not been seen on the market for more than 30 years. In fact, fewer than a dozen large works of this type by the artist have ever been sold, and the scale of the painting reflects that scarcity.
Photo by Lucian Freud A Woman in a Gray Sweatshirt (£3-4 million)
Freud painted this quietly commanding portrait of Susanna Chancellor (a friend and frequent muse) over a few months in 1987 and 1988, and with the artist’s familiarity with his exhibitions—there is a sense of real presence and connection that is not always present in his works. A Woman in a Gray Sweatshirt it passed through the Saatchi Collection before Lewis acquired it in 1997, and in the years since, it has been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tate Britain, Whitechapel Gallery, LA MOCA and the Museo Nacional de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid.
“From the beginning, we have been drawn to art that shows what it means to be human: in works that capture the people who live in these artists’ worlds—their friends, muses, lovers and contemporaries—but in very different ways that incorporate the desires and concerns of each artist,” added a spokesperson for the collection. A selection of Joe Lewis goods is currently on view at Sotheby’s New York, giving American collectors an early look at items that, in many cases, have been unavailable for a generation.
More on Auction
