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Sotheby’s Lewis Collection Sale Powered a Record £393.4M Night in London

The £296 million result made it the most valuable single-owner sale in London's auction history; the marathon evening also set a new single-night auction record for Europe, fueled by stellar works by Rothko, Monet, Hockney and Kandinsky.

When prime material comes to market, buyers show up. With the caliber of works Sotheby’s offered from the Lewis Collection last night in London—25 modern and contemporary masterpieces carrying a total high estimate in excess of £273.6 million—expectations were high, but it could hardly have been otherwise, no matter the state of the market. The dedicated sale ultimately generated £296,315,500, which, together with the £97,083,186 achieved by the Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction that followed, brought the night’s total to £393.4 million ($520.7 million), the highest total ever achieved in a single night at auction in Europe.

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Assembled over decades by Joe Lewis and his daughter Vivienne, the Lewis Collection made news earlier this year, when a quartet of major works consigned to Sotheby’s for the London marquee sales in March generated £35.8 million, led by Francis Bacon’s 1972 self-portrait at £16 million. Last night’s £296 million result made it the most expensive single-owner sale ever in London.

Yet beyond the staggering sums, the rhythm at which the two-part evening sale proceeded was perhaps the more revealing signal of where the market stands after this intense season. The historic sale took more than two hours to move through just 25 lots, followed by an additional two hours for the remaining 50 lots of the Modern & Contemporary sale, with auctioneer Oliver Barker repeatedly urging the room to move on. The evening laid bare a market more cautious, more deliberate and acutely sensitive to estimates as much as final pricing. Even at the very top end, with once-in-a-lifetime, museum-grade works—many fresh to auction and long on loan to major institutions—buyers were engaged but not indiscriminate. Notably, none of the Lewis works carried guarantees.

Opening the Masterpieces from the Lewis Collection sale was the highly anticipated Gustave Caillebotte, Portrait de Paul Hugot, which had not been on the market for more than 30 years. Starting at £3 million, the work quickly climbed past £8 million, pursued by nine bidders, then stalled between phones, eventually prompting Barker—nearly 10 minutes into the lot—to quip that it was perhaps time to “start to sell it,” before it finally hammered at £8.5 million. Momentum continued with René Magritte’s La Belle Promenade, one of the artist’s most recognizable motifs. Acquired by Lewis in 2014 at Christie’s London for £1.9 million and estimated at £3-4 million, the work opened at £2.5 million and, after a sustained bidding battle of more than 10 minutes, hammered at £13.5 million to a bidder in the room, setting a new record for a work on paper by the artist.

The first of five Picassos in the sale, Buste de femme, a 1938 work on paper with an extensive exhibition history, rapidly climbed above its £1.8 million high estimate, hammering at £2.3 million. Another Picasso, more in the Neoclassical style, Tête de femme—one of just two pastel heads remaining in private hands—commanded £6.2 million against a £2-3 million estimate. Henri Matisse’s charcoal study of his longtime companion and muse, Lydia Delectorskaya, followed, opening at £1 million and landing at £3 million. The........

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