When Sotheby’s held its London Marquee Week auctions in early March, four works by artists associated with the School of London led the Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction. Francis Bacon’s Self-Portrait (1972) achieved the evening’s highest price at £16,035,000, while Lucian Freud’s Blond Girl on a Bed (1987) and A Young Painter (1957–58) sold for £7,410,000 and £7,166,000 respectively. The fourth work was by Leon Kossoff, whose Children’s Swimming Pool, 11 o’clock Saturday Morning, August (1969) set a new auction record at £5,214,000.
See also: Records for Henry Moore and Dorothea Tanning at London’s March Auctions
All four works came from the Lewis Collection, assembled over decades by British entrepreneur Joe Lewis and his daughter Vivienne Lewis.
Sotheby’s will continue the sale of works from the collection this month with a dedicated auction on June 24, titled Masterpieces from the Lewis Collection. Eleven works have already been announced, including one of the sale’s most important lots: Freud’s large-scale Sleeping by the Lion Carpet, painted in 1995–96. The work is appearing at auction for the first time and carries an estimate of £25 million to £35 million.
Sleeping by the Lion Carpet is the fourth and final portrait Freud made of Sue Tilley, a London social worker he met through a mutual acquaintance. Tilley is shown asleep in all four portraits painted between 1993 and 1996, reflecting the long and demanding nature of Freud’s sittings. Sleeping by the Lion Carpet took nine months to complete.
The stillness of the pose allowed Freud to study the body in exceptional detail. The result is a painting of unusual physical presence, monumental, sculptural and intensely human. Of the four portraits of Tilley, this is widely regarded as the most accomplished, not least for its subtle use of blue in the upper part of the composition.
Tom Eddison, Head of Contemporary Art, London, commented: "This vast, nine-month undertaking is the most ambitious and complete expression of Lucian Freud’s vision, where vulnerability and monumentality collide. It is without doubt his magnum opus. In Sleeping by the Lion Carpet Freud builds flesh with a sculptural intensity that is both unflinching and deeply humane - confronting us with the raw truth of the human body; charged with an extraordinary presence. Seldom are we afforded the opportunity to witness a painting of such extraordinary power and profound importance on the market."
All four paintings in the series remain in private hands. The first, Evening in the Studio (1993), has never appeared at auction. The second, Benefits Supervisor Resting (1994), sold at Christie's New York in 2015 for $56.2 million, setting a new auction record for Freud at the time. The third, Benefits Supervisor Sleeping (1995), sold at Christie’s New York in 2008 for $33.6 million, then the highest price ever paid for a work by a living artist.
See also: Christie's Billion-Dollar Night
Other highlights already announced for the sale include Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Gertrud Loew (Gertha Felsőványi) (1902, estimate £20–30 million), Edgar Degas’s Petite danseuse de quatorze ans (1879–81/1922, estimate £18–20 million), Egon Schiele’s Danaë (1909, estimate £12–18 million), Amedeo Modigliani’s Homme à la pipe (Le Notaire de Nice) (1918, estimate £12–18 million), Bacon’s Two Studies for Self-Portrait (1977, estimate £8–12 million), Gustave Caillebotte’s Portrait de Paul Hugot (1879, estimate £3.5–4.5 million), Freud’s Woman in a Gray Sweater (1987–88, estimate £3–4 million), Chaïm Soutine’s Portrait de garçon en bleu (c. 1928, estimate £1.8–2.5 million), and Henri Matisse’s Lydia (Étude pour “Portrait au manteau bleu”) (1935, estimate £1.5–2 million).
Additional works from the Lewis Collection will be offered in Sotheby’s Modern Day Auction on June 25, including Pablo Picasso’s Portrait de Dora Maar (1936, estimate £600,000–800,000).
The Lewis Collection sales are expected to realise around £150 million. If achieved, this would make it the most valuable single-owner collection ever sold at auction in London. The current record was set only last September, when the collection of Pauline Karpidas brought in £101 million.
Update, June 8: Sotheby’s has now announced the remaining works in the 24 June sale. Another leading lot is Modigliani’s Nu assis au collier (1917–18), estimated at around £45 million. Additional highlights include Picasso’s Buste de femme (1938, estimate £12–18 million), René Magritte’s La Belle promenade (1965, estimate £3–4 million), Max Beckmann’s Still Life with Gramophone and Irises (1924, estimate £3–4 million), Bacon’s Study for Portrait (1976, estimate £3–4 million), and Picasso’s Tête de femme (1921, estimate £2–3 million) and Angel Fernández de Soto (c. 1899, estimate £1.5–2 million).
The sale will include 25 works in total.
The Modern Day Auction has also been expanded to include additional works from the Lewis Collection, with pieces by Degas, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Frank Auerbach and Vincent van Gogh.
