Overview
- Sotheby’s evening sale of works from Joe and Vivienne Lewis’s collection realized £249.3m at hammer and £296.3m with fees on Wednesday, making it the largest single‑owner collection ever sold in the UK.
- Amedeo Modigliani’s Nu assis au collier set a European auction record when it sold for £48.2m (£63.9m with fees), and other top lots included Gustav Klimt, Lucian Freud, Edgar Degas, and René Magritte at multi‑million prices.
- Sotheby’s said the 25‑lot offering was largely run without guarantees and produced only one buy‑in, a Degas estimated at £3–4m, showing the house took a relatively high‑risk posture that paid off.
- Buyers from Asia bid on about half the lots and contributed roughly a third of the sale’s total, according to Sotheby’s, underlining the region’s decisive role in demand for blue‑chip works.
- A separate, lower‑profile Christie’s sale of Zabludowicz collection material realized about £15.4m, highlighting that strong bidding this week was concentrated at the top end rather than across the broader market.