Billionaire Joe Lewis plans US$200 million Sotheby’s art sale
Lewis family returns to auction market following a staggering 3,500% gain earlier this year
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[LONDON] Billionaire Joe Lewis is lining up one of the world’s biggest art collection sales from a single owner, reshaping part of the British investor’s sprawling fortune that has previously secured him huge returns.
The Tavistock Group founder and his family are offloading modern artworks at Sotheby’s in June from painters including Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Amedeo Modigliani with an estimated value of more than £150 million (S$259.5 million), the New York-based auction house said on Thursday (Apr 30) in a statement.
Staged in London, where Lewis was born and raised, the art sales would be the biggest from a single owner that Sotheby’s has offered in the UK capital, according to the statement, eclipsing the current record of £101 million set in September from the collection of a Greek shipping magnate’s widow.
Lewis and his family are ramping up their art sales after earlier this year offloading works from painters Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon and Leon Kossoff at a Sotheby’s auction in London, parting with assets that hark back to the early days of him building one of the world’s biggest fortunes.
A Bacon self-portrait from 1972 was the most expensive of the four pieces from the so-called School of London artists sold that evening. It received a winning bid of £13.5 million, beating high sale estimates and dwarfing Lewis’s £364,500 purchase price in 1994. The other three works Sotheby’s cited as “masterpieces” from the Lewis Collection recorded winning bids totaling £16 million, with some also fetching prices above the top estimates.
A spokesperson for the Lewis family said the success of the Sotheby’s sale this year – which scored the billionaire gains of more than 3,500 per cent – encouraged them to return to the auction market, adding they continue to collect works from contemporary artists.
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Lewis, 89, and his family oversee a fortune totaling about US$8.8 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. About 12.5 per cent of that is tied up in art investments.
“There’s a time when every collector has to make a tough decision to part with some of their most prized works,” Oliver Barker, chair of Sotheby’s Europe, said in a telephone interview on the upcoming auction. Lewis’ daughter, Vivienne, 64, who helps manage the collection, “is developing a connection with young portraiture painters,” he added.
Lewis, a Bahamas resident, made his initial fortune in the hospitality industry and currency markets. The business empire he established also includes five-star hotels, restaurant chains and Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, though he is no longer involved in the Premier League team currently battling relegation.
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In 2023, he became the central figure in a US insider-trading case in which he ultimately pleaded guilty but avoided prison, partly due to his age and health. President Donald Trump pardoned Lewis in November to help the British investor receive medical treatment and see his family, capping off one of the most turbulent periods of a career spanning more than six decades.
Other works in the upcoming sale include paintings from Gustave Caillebotte, Pablo Picasso and Freud. Some of the pieces will be on display in Sotheby’s New York headquarters next month, according to the statement. Lewis, a former shareholder of Sotheby’s rival Christie’s, has previously used his 98-metre superyacht, Aviva, to showcase his art collection.
“What you see in this collection is someone who was extremely self-confident with a north star defined by quality,” Barker said. “He was never afraid to pay whatever it took to acquire the best.” BLOOMBERG
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