Sotheby's auction of Joe Lewis collection breaks record for most expensive sold in UK

Sotheby’s London auction of works from billionaire financier and former Tottenham Hotspur owner Joe Lewis’s collection achieved £249.3m (£296.3m with fees), setting a UK record for the most valuable single-owner collection ever sold. Assembled over nearly 50 years by Lewis and his daughter Vivienne, the 25-lot sale spanned European Modernism and post-war figuration, from Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele to Pablo Picasso and Lucian Freud, and exceeded its £150m–£200m estimate (excluding fees) with no guarantees. Asian buyers bid on half the lots and accounted for about a third of the total, according to Sotheby’s; Klimt’s Bildnis Gertrud Loew (Gertha Felsőványi, 1902) sold for £31m (£36.2m with fees) against a £20m–£30m estimate. Notable results included Gustave Caillebotte’s portrait of Paul Hugot at £8.5m (£10.3m with fees) and René Magritte’s La Belle promenade (work on paper) at £13.5m (£16m with fees), up from £2.2m when last sold at Christie’s in 2014.

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