SouthernWorldwide.com – An Amedeo Modigliani nude portrait shattered European auction records, headlining a London sale of a significant private art collection. The first part of the auction, featuring works from Joe Lewis’s esteemed collection, generated a staggering $392.6 million.
The Modigliani masterpiece, titled “Nu assis au collier” (Seated Nude Wearing a Necklace), commanded an impressive $63.9 million. This sale marks the highest price ever achieved for a Modigliani artwork at auction in Europe, as confirmed by Sotheby’s.
The collection, amassed by Joe Lewis, the former owner of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, includes 48 works by renowned artists such as Picasso, Magritte, and Klimt. The auction spanned Wednesday and Thursday.
Lewis, now 89, divested his majority stake in the London football club to a family trust in 2022. His current net worth is estimated at £5.8 billion, according to The Sunday Times Rich List.
Another highlight of the auction was Gustav Klimt’s society portrait, “Bildnis Gertrud Loew.” This full-length painting secured the second-highest price of the evening, selling for $47.9 million to a private collector from Asia after attracting bids from seven interested parties.
The auction also saw Lucian Freud’s evocative nude painting, “Sleeping by the Lion Carpet,” fetch $38.8 million. This significant work, a depiction of Freud’s model and muse Sue Tilley, had been a part of the Lewis Collection since its acquisition in 1996, the same year it was created.
Sue Tilley, who was working in an unemployment office when she met the artist, now 69, has spoken about the profound impact the paintings had on her life. She humorously noted her newfound fame, stating, “Mona Lisa wasn’t alive when she became famous — but I am.”
Freud, the grandson of the renowned psychologist Sigmund Freud, created several famous paintings of Tilley in the 1990s. These works have since become some of the most celebrated and valuable pieces in modern art.
Reflecting on the sale, Tilley told The Associated Press last month, while posing in front of the 7 ½-foot-high nude image of herself at the auction house showroom, “It did change my life. Who would have thought I’d be in Sotheby’s?”
The Lewis Collection also boasts paintings by artists from the Vienna Secession movement, including Egon Schiele, alongside modernist and surrealist pieces by Rene Magritte and Pablo Picasso.
The second part of the auction, scheduled for Thursday, will feature 23 works. Among them is Picasso’s “Buste de femme” (Bust of a woman) from 1938, a portrait of French artist Dora Maar, with an estimated value of £12-18 million.
The current record for the most expensive single private collection sold in Europe was established in 2009 by the collection of the late fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent and his partner Pierre Berge. Their artworks sold at Christie’s for 373.9 million euros (approximately £333 million at the time), exceeding their initial estimate of 200-300 million euros.
Earlier this year, in March, four other paintings from the Lewis Collection, featuring British artists from the School of London group, including works by Freud and Bacon, achieved £35.8 million at a busy Sotheby’s sale.
In a broader trend of blockbuster art sales, New York auctions this past spring saw record-breaking prices for works by influential artists such as Jackson Pollock, Constantin Brancusi, and Mark Rothko, signaling a robust market for high-value art.
