The scandalous Modigliani that’s still making waves
Does a Sotheby’s sale of works amassed by billionaire Joe Lewis and his daughter Vivienne signal the top of the market?
In 1917, the daring Paris gallerist Berthe Weill opened the only solo exhibition dedicated to Amedeo Modigliani during the artist’s lifetime. Its display of unapologetic female nudes, in some cases including pubic hair, was not to everyone’s taste. A police commissaire, whose precinct happened to be opposite the Montmartre gallery, had the show closed, on grounds of indecency.
The scandal did the artist no harm, representing “a fleeting moment of recognition during his lifetime”, writes Valentina Castellani, author of Trading Beauty: Art Market Histories from the Altar to the Gallery (2026).
The shock value endures and tonight, a work from the same series as those in the shutdown show comes to auction with an estimated price tag of £45mn. “The mix of creating an uproar and then becoming institutionalised is rare,” says Oliver Barker, chair at Sotheby’s Europe, who will conduct the sale in London this evening.
“Nu assis au collier” (1917-18) is a relatively demure portrait, though Barker notes that the placement of the unknown sitter’s right hand between her legs begs the question “is she touching or protecting herself?”
Either way, the painting is the top-priced of 48 works coming from the Lewis Collection, accumulated in earnest since the 1990s by the billionaire trader Joe Lewis and his daughter Vivienne. Their family trust is best known as the majority owner of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club.
The works on the block, which have a total estimate of £195mn-£280mn, are set to become the most valuable single-owner collection ever to sell publicly in the UK, far ahead of the current record of £101mn, made at the Pauline Karpidas sale last year.
Predominantly portraits, the Lewis Collection is replete with psychologically charged imagery, sitters with back stories and striking ownership histories.
“We’ve probably always been drawn to works that set the cat among the pigeons,” says Vivienne Lewis, “to artists who dared to go where others hadn’t gone. They were often questioned by their contemporaries, but look at them now. Maybe it’s the sense of the underdog ultimately winning . . . I do think we identify with the idea that life isn’t always easy.”
Gustav Klimt’s ghostly and delicate 1902 painting of the 19-year-old Gertrud Loew tells the too-familiar tale of a sitter of Jewish descent, forced to leave Vienna in 1939. The Lewis family bought the work for £25mn in 2015 following a settlement between the sitter’s heirs and the Klimt Foundation and it now comes back for sale at around the same price level.
Francis Bacon’s intense 1976 study of the head of Henrietta Moraes, a model who had a brief affair with Lucian Freud and was later the lover of Maggi Hambling, conjures up the postwar London art scene. Moraes, who died in 1999, was “notoriously mercurial”, the Sotheby’s catalogue notes. “A combination of her youthful hedonism and an unsuccessful attempt as a burglar led her to spend a short sentence inside Holloway Prison.” The painting comes with a £3mn to £4mn estimate.
Other works spotlight the unsung, whether that is Freud’s government benefits supervisor (“Sleeping by the Lion Carpet”, 1995-96, £25mn-£35mn), a peasant by the Russian avant-garde painter Kazimir Malevich (1911, £1.5mn-£2mn) or Chaïm Soutine’s household service worker (“Portrait du garçon en bleu”, c1928, £1.8mn-£2.5mn), bought by Lewis in the same 1995 auction as the Modigliani nude.
The Lewis family has colourful stories of its own. The east London-born Joe Lewis, whose net worth was put at $6.9bn by Forbes this year, started out in his father’s catering business, then became a currency trader with successful bets including against the British pound during the 1992 financial crisis. He founded Tavistock Group, a private investment vehicle, in the 1970s, and this now has holdings in more than 200 companies across sectors including property, hospitality, retail and sport.
In 2024, Lewis pleaded guilty in Manhattan to three criminal counts in an insider trading case, for which he paid a $5mn fine and was put on three years’ probation. Last year, he was pardoned by President Trump, on medical grounds, the White House said.
Barker says that Lewis “has not sought the limelight, though the limelight has sometimes found him.” He senses an “alter-ego” in René Magritte’s anonymised and invisible businessman, “La belle promenade” (1965), the second lot in tonight’s auction (est £3mn-£4mn).
Barker resists the idea that the decision to sell now is a sign that Lewis is calling the top of the art market, though he concedes that “he is a market maker” and that “money is chasing the best of the best” at auction just now. Certainly, punchy, figurative 20th-century paintings are having their moment, while many of the Lewis works have gained in value in the decades since they were bought. The £45mn Modigliani was purchased for the equivalent of £8mn in 1995; Malevich’s peasant painting, once owned by Roald Dahl, was bought for the collection for £210,500 in 1993 and now has a £1.5mn to £2mn estimate.
Vivienne says that “it feels like a good moment, particularly for this type of material. So it’s partly about timing, and partly about looking ahead to the next phase.”
There are plenty more works still in the collection, notably by Freud, and Vivienne is still buying, continuing a figurative focus through a younger generation of artists, including Elizabeth Peyton, Tracey Emin and Hurvin Anderson, she says. Other projects include supporting residencies at OOF, a commercial gallery in the Tottenham Hotspur stadium dedicated to football-based work.
Unusually, for a collection of such value, the Lewis family has not secured any pre-arranged financial guarantees. “We trust the auction process, and we believe in the works themselves . . . we’re comfortable letting the market respond naturally,” Vivienne says. Plus, she notes, they are protected by a reserve. “If a work doesn’t reach the level we feel is appropriate, then we’re equally happy to keep it.”
Allowing the market to decide opens the door for possible surprises and shocks that heavily orchestrated, high-wattage auctions have lacked in recent years. Such theatricality suits the collection, which also has its fair share of masks, costumes and backstage drama. “I grew up around theatre,” says Vivienne. “We ran cabaret restaurants, places where people could come and eat and be entertained.” Even without a scandalised shutdown, they will serve up another colourful performance in London tonight.