The Lewis Collection Sells for $392.6 Million, Setting a New European Record

The top lot: Modigliani at $63.9 million

A rare female nude by Amedeo Modigliani, Nu assis au collier (1917–18), led the sale with a final price of £48.2 million ($63.9 million, including buyer's premium), against a pre-sale estimate in excess of £45 million. Lewis had acquired the work at Christie's in 1995 for $12.4 million — a return that speaks, quietly but forcefully, to three decades of sustained market confidence in the artist.

Freud, Klimt, Degas, Magritte

The second most significant result of the evening was Lucian Freud's Sleeping by the Lion Carpet (1995–96), a nude portrait of his longtime muse Sue Tilley, which sold for £29.3 million ($38.8 million) against a low estimate of £25 million. The work had been in Lewis's collection since he acquired it directly from Acquavella Galleries, Freud's New York representative, in 1996 — making this its first appearance at auction.

A 1902 Klimt portrait of Viennese socialite Gertha Felsőványi — once displayed at the Neue Galerie in New York and purchased by Lewis in 2013 following a dispute between the Klimt Foundation and the sitter's descendants — sold for £36.2 million ($47.9 million), doubling its high estimate of £30 million. Sotheby's confirmed the buyer as an Asian private collector.

A 1922 cast of Degas's Petite danseuse de quatorze ans, one of the sculptor's most celebrated works, sold for £25.1 million ($33.3 million), in line with its estimate. The same cast had previously appeared at Sotheby's London in 2015, realising £15.8 million, and again in 2000 at £7.7 million — a trajectory that illustrates how consistently blue-chip works have appreciated over the past quarter-century.

Egon Schiele's Danaë (1909) sold for £17.9 million ($23.6 million), just below its £18 million high estimate — though well below the $30–40 million valuation placed on the work when it was withdrawn from a marquee New York sale in 2017.

The surprise of the evening came from René Magritte. La Belle Promenade, a work on paper unseen publicly for nearly 60 years, sparked a rapid sequence of bids that carried it from a £4 million estimate to £16 million ($21.2 million), setting a new auction record for the Surrealist master in the medium.

Works by Gustave Caillebotte — rarely seen at auction — also generated strong interest. His Portrait de Paul Hugot (1878) sold for £10.3 million ($13.6 million) after ten minutes of bidding, more than doubling its high estimate of £4.5 million.

The collection and its maker

Lewis built his collection alongside his daughter Vivienne, with a particular focus on artists of the mid-century School of London. In March, four works from the same collection — by Freud, Francis Bacon, and Leon Kossoff — had already raised $47.7 million at Sotheby's. Wednesday's sale brought the cumulative total from the dispersal well past the half-billion-dollar mark.

The evening was followed by a various-owner sale of 43 lots of modern and contemporary art.