Jackson Pollock’s Number 7A, 1948, the top lot at auction so far made $181.2 million at Christie’s New York in May.
The resurgence in the art market continued in the first half of 2026. Christie’s reported first half revenues of $4.6 billion. Jackson Pollock’s Number 7A 1948 made $181.2 million at Masterpieces: The Private Collection of S.I. Newhouse in May and is the top lot sold at auction in the first half of 2026.
It has also been a record half year at Sotheby’s, which reported consolidated sales of $4.4 billion, a 58% increase over the first half of 2025. Auction sales at Sotheby’s reached an all time high of $3.4 billion with bidding from 119 countries across 170 auctions.
Oliver Barker, Sotheby’s chairman, Europe, selling Masterpieces from the Lewis Collection in London.
Pablo Picasso – Baigneuses, sirènes, femme nue et minotaure sold for £7,044,000
June sales of Masterpieces from the Lewis Collection and Modern & Contemporary art at Sotheby’s in London realised £420,488,006 across four auctions. This is the highest result for any season of sales ever staged in Europe. There was spirited activity from around the world, with bidding from 45 countries and particularly strong participation from Asian collectors, whose purchases in The Lewis Collection evening auction accounted for over a third of the total value of the sale.
The season was led by Masterpieces from the Lewis collection. The 47 works sold in Sotheby’s rooms this week brought in £306.6 million, the highest total for any single owner sale ever staged in London. Together with the £35.8 million realised for four School of London works offered from the same collection in March, the combined total for works sold from the Lewis Collection at Sotheby’s this year now stands at £342.4 million. The Lewis evening auction realised £296.3 million for 23 work with nine breaking the £10 million barrier. La Loge, a pastel by Degas, did not find a buyer during the sale but was sold immediately afterwards to a private collector.
The contemporary day auction totalled £9.3 million and the modern day auction, with masterpieces from the Lewis collection, brought in £17.8 million.
Amadeo Mogliani’s Nu assis au collier sold for a record £48.2 million at Sotheby’s tonight. This was a new European record for the artist. The collection of billionaire Joe Lewis achieved £296.3 million to become the highest single owner collection ever sold in London. A 1995 nude by Lucian Freud, Sleeping by the Lion Carpet made £29.3 million and a portrait of Gertrud Loew by Gustave Klimt sold for £36.2 million. Magritte’s La Belle Promenade, with a high estimate of £4 million, sold for £16 million, a record for a work on paper by the artist. Joe Lewis, former owner of Tottenham Hotspur football club, built up the collection with his daughter Vivienne.
The Modern and Contemporary auction followed at Sotheby’s. Claude Monet’s Nymphéas was the top lot, selling for £40.7 million.
Masterpieces from the Lewis Collection and the Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction achieved a combined total of £393.4 million – the highest auction total ever achieved in a single night in Europe.
(See posts on antiquesandartireland.com for June 19, June 13, June 7 and May 1, 2026)
Amadeo Modigliani – Nu assis au collier. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £48,235,000
The 25 defining masterpieces of modern figurative painting from the Lewis Collection at Sotheby’s on June 24 constitute the most valuable single collection ever offered in London.
A nude considered scandalous by Modigliani leads an auction which features stellar artists like Picasso, Schiele, Bacon, Klimt, Freud, Caillebotte and Toulouse-Lautrec. Modigliani’s sensuous Nu assis au collier (Seated nude with necklace) ranks among the most important works by the artist ever to come to market. It is estimated to make around £45 million (€52.1 million). Painted in 1917 it belongs to a series now widely regarded as pivotal in the evolution of modern art, but considered so outrageous at the time the exhibition in which they featured was shut down by the police. Modigliani is one of a rare coterie of artists to have broken the $100 million threshold at auction, not just once but twice – each time in New York. Both were works from this series. The mantle now passes to London where this is one of the highest value works of any kind ever offered in the city and the highest value work by Modigliani ever to be offered in Europe.
Pablo Picasso – Buste de Femme. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £23,855,000
A suite of seven works by Picasso spans eight full decades of his career. The group is led by a highly unusual and evocative portrait of Dora Maar, the vibrant, fiercely independent artist who first attracted his attention by playing ‘knife roulette’ between her splayed fingers on an adjacent table at Les Deux Magots in Paris. As well as becoming Picasso’s muse and lover Maar also became his indispensable intellectual and artistic sparring partner. Given both the provocative nature of their nine year relationship and the tumultuous backdrop against which it unfolded (the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War), the vast majority of Picasso’s renditions of Dora Maar are angular and jagged in form. Buste de femme, unseen for over half a century, is a rare example of something quite different – a generous, sweepingly lyrical rendition of the Dora Maar with whom Picasso was still entirely besotted in 1938 when this work was painted.
Egon Schiele – Danaë. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £17,932,500
With its jewel like surface and geometric patterning Egon Schiele’s Danaë – painted when the artist was just 19 – is seen as a key breakthrough work. Here Schiele imagines the mythological scene in which Zeus descends on Danaë in a shower of golden rain, its heaviness accentuated by the introduction of greens and blacks. Schiele died in the Spanish flu epidemic in 1918 aged just 28.
Bacon’s Two Studies for a Self-Portrait was made in 1977 and captures an artist beset by inner turmoil. Following the suicide of his love George Dyer in 1971 Bacon launched into a period of production that would become the most emotionally fraught but ambitious of his career. Behind these works lies a decade of guilt, bereavement, and self-scrutiny, marked by the deaths of many of those closest to him – not only George Dyer, but also Peter Lacey. When asked in 1979 why he made so many self-portraits, Bacon explained: “people have been dying around me like flies and I’ve had nobody else to paint but myself.”
Many of the works in a sale estimated to make in the region of £200 million (€231.5 million) have been shown in major museums across the globe. They were assembled over decades by Joe Lewis and his daughter Vivienne. Born and raised in London’s East End, Joe Lewis felt a natural affinity as a collector with the School of London painters, such as Bacon and Freud, whose work confronted the human condition with an uncompromising intensity. That early passion became the foundation for what is today one of the world’s most important private collections of modern art, shaped by a fascination with the human figure in all its forms.
Over the years the collection has been re-shaped. The Lewis journey as collectors is far from over. “We remain committed to the avant garde painters of today, much of whose work is informed by the artists showcased here” a statement said.
Billionaire Joe Lewis, who left school at 15 to help his father run his father’s West End catering business, was born in 1937 to a Jewish family living above a public house in Bow, East London. He holds assets through his Tavistock Group and was previously the majority owner of ENIC Group, the majority owner of Tottenham Hotspur. Accused of tipping off associates and friends with non public information and charged with multiple counts of insider trading in New York in 2023 he pleaded guilty. Lewis was spared jail time, fined $5 million and later pardoned by Donald Trump. His art collection is estimated to be worth $1 billion.
Francis Bacon – Two Studies for self-portrait. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £8,675,000
Gustav Klimt – Bildnis Gertrud Loew (Gertha Felsoványi) from 1902. UPDATE: THIS MADE £36,160,000
This ethereal portrait by Gustav Klimt from the Lewis Collection – the most valuable single collection ever offered in London – will come under the hammer at Sotheby’s in June. Gertrud Loew was a member of fin-de-siècle Viennese society, later known by her married name Gertha Felsoványi, who was aged 19 when this portrait was painted. It is estimated at £20-£30 million. Assembled over decades by Joe Lewis, former owner of Tottenham Hotspur, and his daughter Vivienne, many of the works in the collection have been exhibited in major museums across the globe. There is art by Egon Schiele, Amadeo Modigliani, Francis Bacon, Gustav Caillebotte, Lucian Freud, Chaim Soutine and Picasso in a collection estimated to make in the region of £150 million.
Born and raised in London’s East End, Joe Lewis felt a natural affinity as a collector with the School of London painters, such as Bacon and Freud, whose work confronted the human condition with an uncompromising intensity. That early passion became the foundation for what is today one of the world’s most important private collections of modern art, shaped by a fascination with the human figure in all its forms. From Klimt, Schiele and Modigliani to Caillebotte, Toulouse-Lautrec, Bacon and Freud, the Lewis Collection captures the radical inventiveness of the leading artists of the 20th century, and includes some of the greatest works of modern figurative painting to remain in private hands.
The June sale follows the presentation of four School of London masterpieces from the Lewis Collection at Sotheby’s London in March, which doubled their combined low estimate to realise a total of £35.8 million,. It also follows last September’s record-setting sale of the Pauline Karpidas collection, which achieved £101 million to become the highest-value single owner sale ever staged in London.
Highlights will be unveiled at Sotheby’s in New York tomorrow. The auctions will be held on the week of June 22 in London.
FRANCIS BACON – TWO STUDIES FOR SELF-PORTRAIT. (£8 – £12 MILLION). UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £8,675,000
