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The Lewis and Zabludowicz Collections Anchor London’s June Auctions in the Art Market’s Final Pre-Summer Test

Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips are offering major works by Modigliani, Freud, Bacon, Monet, Hockney and Kusama.

Post-Basel, the June London auctions are the final market temperature check before the art world jets off to slower summer destinations. Following New York’s May marquee auction week, led this year by multimillion-dollar collections, and a vibrant London Gallery Weekend, Sotheby’s and Christie’s are bringing top consignments to their summer sales in a city that is arguably still the world’s second-biggest art market hub.

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Sotheby’s, in particular, is expected to sell around £297-427 million of art in what is shaping up to be its strongest June session ever, led by an estimated £89-127 million Modern & Contemporary sale and the Lewis Collection—a spectacular trove of 48 modern and contemporary masterpieces with a total estimate in excess of £200 million. “London is a great magnet for international collectors, and this season captures that energy in a remarkable way,” Sotheby’s chairman Helena Newman told Observer. “The depth of material we are seeing, and the decision by so many collectors to bring their most important works here, speaks to the market’s enduring confidence in London as a global stage.”

While Christie’s has modified its London calendar, now holding its marquee 20th/21st Century sales in October and March, its reimagined London Summer Season still celebrates the city’s dynamism and creativity. This year, the house will stage its Post-War to Contemporary Art auction, preceded by a dedicated sale of top contemporary works from the legendary Zabludowicz Collection, most of them fresh to the secondary market and carrying a combined total value of around $15 million. What follows is a roundup of the lots worth watching across the major houses’ London auctions.

The Lewis Collection at Sotheby’s

Live on June 24. Estimate in excess of £200 million.

Assembled over decades by Joe Lewis and his daughter Vivienne, the Lewis Collection is one of those museum-grade consignments that can make an entire season. The British billionaire and art collector made his fortune in currency trading and went on to own the Tottenham Hotspur football club and a string of other enterprises, eventually taking to collecting with the same selectivity he brought to business. He, after all, grew up amid the creative ferment of postwar London, where the School of London first ignited his passion for collecting.

The Lewis Collection had already 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 against an estimate of £18.6-26.8 million. Leading that exceptional quartet was Francis Bacon’s 1972 self-portrait, painted in the shadow of devastating personal loss following the death of his lover George Dyer, which sold for £16 million, surpassing its £8-12 million estimate.

Preceding its Modern & Contemporary sale, Sotheby’s is staging a dedicated single-owner sale, Masterpieces from the Lewis Collection, featuring many works that have been exhibited or loaned to major museums. In total, the collection is expected to bring Sotheby’s a result in the region of £180 million (about $250 million), which would make it by far the most valuable collection ever sold in London, surpassing the already stellar result achieved by the Pauline Karpidas sale last September, which totaled £101 million with fees, and move closer to the most valuable collection ever offered at auction in Europe, the Collection of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé, which generated €373.9 million (roughly £332.8 million/$483.8 million) when it was auctioned at Christie’s Paris in February 2009.

The 48-lot group is led by Amedeo Modigliani’s Nu assis au collier, offered with an estimate in excess of £45 million and unseen for almost half a century. Described by Sotheby’s as one of the greatest works by Modigliani ever to appear on the market, it dates to 1917, the year of the artist’s first and only lifetime solo exhibition at Berthe Weill’s gallery on the rue Taitbout in Paris, which scandalized Parisian society and helped build the Modigliani myth. Acquired by Lewis from the Christie’s sale of the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Ralph F. Colin in May 1995 for $11.3 million, the painting was most recently on loan to the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney.

Lucian Freud took that tradition even further, 80 years later, into the unsettling reality of pure flesh and bodily vulnerability, defying any idealization while still echoing classical compositions. Freud’s four seminal portraits of his “benefits supervisor” Sue Tilley were described by art critic and........

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