For years, rumours have circulated that Tottenham Hotspur owner Joe Lewis keeps a world‑class art collection, much of it housed on a near‑100‑metre superyacht. On 4 March, the first major evening auction of the year offered a glimpse of what he actually owns.

At Sotheby’s Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale in London, four School of London masterpieces that Lewis had held for nearly three decades came to market: Francis Bacon’s Self‑Portrait, painted the year after his lover’s death; two portraits by Lucian Freud – one of his muse, one of a painter friend; and a classic swimming‑pool scene from Leon Kossoff’s celebrated series. Together, the four works realised £35.8 million (US$47.8 million) and set a new auction record for Kossoff.

The sale set a firm tone for the season. All 53 lots found buyers, totalling nearly £131 million (US$175 million), with 20 works backed by irrevocable bids secured ahead of the auction.

Sotheby’s Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale in London achieves white-glove result

The auction was led by Francis Bacon's Self-Portrait (1972), which sold for £16 million

Joe Lewis' superyacht, Aviva

A self-made billionaire born in London’s East End in 1937, Joe Lewis left school at 15 to work in his father’s catering business, which he expanded into a successful West End operation before selling it in 1979 and relocating to the Bahamas.

Turning to foreign exchange, he amassed a vast fortune through high‑profile currency trades in the early 1990s, notably reported bets against sterling around Britain’s exit from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism and a later position against the Mexican peso. Today, his wealth is estimated at around US$5.8 billion.

Within the art world, Lewis is recognised as a major collector. Bloomberg has valued his collection at about US$1 billion, including important works by Picasso, Chagall, and Miró. 

Jow Lewis' family trust owns Tottenham Hotspur football club

In 2018, when David Hockney’s Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) set an auction record for a living artist at US$90.3 million, the unnamed consignor was widely reported to be Lewis. He had bought the painting from entertainment magnate David Geffen in 1995 and consigned it without reserve, declining to take a guarantee.

He has also been a powerful player on the market side, owning a 30% stake in Christie’s in the 1990s while it was still publicly listed. In 1998, he sold the holding to François Pinault, the auction house’s current owner, who later took the company private.

David Hockney | Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) | Sold: US$90,312,500, Christie's New York, 2018

This London evening sale marked the first time Lewis has publicly sold works from his collection. Assembled over decades by Lewis and his daughter Vivienne, the four paintings on offer that evening capture peak moments by artists of the School of London. None of the pieces carried an irrevocable bid or minimum‑price guarantee ahead of the sale.

The star lot was Francis Bacon’s 1972 self‑portrait, which exceeded its high estimate and hammered at £13.5 million after about 15 bids from at least four interested buyers. With fees, the piece changed hands for £16.03 million, going to Lucius Elliott, Head of Contemporary Art Marquee Sales in New York, bidding on behalf of telephone paddle 63.

Lot 18 | Francis Bacon (1909 - 1992) | Self-Portrait, oil on canvas 
Executed in 1972
36 x 30.5 cm
Provenance:

• Dr. Paul Brass, London (a gift from the artist circa 1983)
• Sotheby’s, London, 30 November 1994, lot 32 (consigned by the above)
• Acquired from the above sale by the present owner
• The Lewis Collection

Estimate: £8,000,000 - 12,000,000
Hammer Price: £13,500,000
Sold: £16,035,000

The School of London was not a movement in the strict sense, but a loose circle of London-based artists who rejected the era’s drift toward abstraction and forged a new path for figurative painting by confronting the human condition head-on. Francis Bacon is one of its defining figures, and Self‑Portrait belongs to a period that was dark and fragile yet intensely explosive.

At the time, he was still absorbing the death of his partner, George Dyer, who took his own life in a Paris hotel on the eve of the opening of Bacon’s landmark 1971 retrospective at the Grand Palais. In the aftermath, Bacon spiralled into self‑destructive behaviour and turned repeatedly to his own face.

“I’ve done a lot of self-portraits,” he said, “really because people have been dying around me like flies and I’ve had nobody else to paint but myself.” In 1972 alone, he produced at least 12 self‑portraits on this scale, their distorted faces suggesting both psychological trauma and physical damage. 

Lucius Elliott winning the lot on behalf of his client, paddled 63

Francis Bacon (left) and George Dyer (right)

That February, after a fight left Bacon with an eye injury, his doctor, Paul Brass, stitched him up in the studio; Bacon, very drunk, refused both a plastic surgeon and a local anaesthetic.

Brass had already come to Bacon’s aid in 1968, when he gave evidence in a drugs trial. In a jealous rage, Dyer had planted cannabis in the couple’s home and called the police. Testifying for the defence, Brass argued that Bacon’s severe asthma meant he could not have used the drug without becoming seriously ill.

Grateful for both the courtroom support and the “face‑saving” stitches, Bacon arrived at Brass’s surgery for a check‑up in late 1972 and left behind a paper bag. Inside was this painting.

The portrait has since travelled widely. First shown at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1975, it was most recently included in Francis Bacon: Human Presence at the National Portrait Gallery, London, in 2024. It last came to market at Sotheby’s in 1994, when Brass sold it to Lewis for £330,000.

---

Lot 16 | Leon Kossoff (1926 - 2019) | Children’s Swimming Pool, 11 o’clock Saturday Morning, August, oil on board (Auction record for the artist)
Executed in 1969
152.4 x 205.7 cm
Provenance (Consolidated by The Value):

• Rosemary Peto, United Kingdom (acquired directly from the artist by 1971)
• Saatchi Collection, London (acquired from the above in 1984)
• Sotheby’s, London, 3 December 1992, lot 59 (consigned by the above)
• Acquired from the above sale by the present owner
• The Lewis Collection

Estimate: £600,000 - 800,000
Hammer Price: £4,200,000
Sold: £5,214,000

Setting a new auction record for Leon Kossoff, Children’s Swimming Pool, 11 o’clock Saturday Morning, August was among the evening’s most fiercely contested lots, drawing around 36 bids from ten bidders.

Opening at £450,000, it hammered down at £4.2 million, or £5.21 million with fees, to a phone bidder represented by Alex Branczik, Chairman of Modern and Contemporary Art, EMEA & Asia. Kossoff’s previous record was set in 2018, when Willesden Junction – Autumn Afternoon sold for £1.38 million at Christie’s London.

Leon Kossoff

Willesden Junction – Autumn Afternoon | Sold for £1.38 million at Christie’s London in 2018 (Previous auction record for the artist)

Kossoff occupied a quieter register than Bacon or Freud but was no less intense. London – its streets, bridges, and public places – was his perennial subject, revisited again and again as the city remade itself after the war. 

The indoor swimming pool in Willesden, near his north London home, became one of those returning motifs. Soon after it opened in 1967, Kossoff began taking his children there for lessons and, over the following years, made numerous drawings – often from the cafeteria overlooking the water – tracking clusters of swimmers and the building’s geometry as seasons and times of day shifted the light and atmosphere.

Back in the studio, he translated these studies into six paintings, distinguished by a lighter touch and an unusual sense of movement, noise, and space. Children’s Swimming Pool, 11 O’clock Saturday Morning is one of them; three of the others are held in UK institutional collections.

Children's Swimming Pool Autumn Afternoon 1971 | Collection of Tate, London

---

Lot 19 | Lucian Freud (1922 - 2011) | Blond Girl on a Bed, oil on canvas 
Executed in 1987
40.6 x 50.8 cm
Provenance (Consolidated by The Value):

• Saatchi Collection, London
• Acquavella Galleries, New York
• Acquired from the above in 1997 by the present owner
• The Lewis Collection

Estimate: £6,000,000 - 8,000,000
Hammer Price: £6,000,000
Sold: £7,410,000

One of the two Lucian Freud portrait, Blonde Girl on a Bed, comes from his fully mature period, with thick, heavily worked paint and a forensic attention to flesh, weight, and gravity.

The sitter, Sophie de Stempel, first met Freud in a Soho pub when she was 19 and studying art. He was drawn to her visible discomfort, approvingly calling her “a very bad model.” 

Freud’s sittings were long and exacting. De Stempel recalled that his scrutiny could feel microscopic: “each of my toes was having its portrait painted.” She returned to sit for him on and off for more than eight years, and in the 1980s he made eight major portraits of her.

Acquired from the Saatchi Collection in 1997, Blonde Girl on a Bed has been exhibited internationally, including at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid. 

Sophie de Stempel

Lucian Freud, circa 1956

The other, A Young Painter (1957–58), depicts Ken Brazier and marks a decisive shift in Freud’s style, from the linear precision of his early portraits to a looser, more expressive handling of paint. Painted as his marriage to Caroline Blackwood was breaking down, it reflects the experimental freedom he found in Soho and under Bacon’s influence.

Freud’s sitters at this time were rarely accidental. Brazier had a difficult upbringing, and Freud took a protective interest in him – securing a place at the Slade School of Fine Art in 1958 and later a teaching position at Norwich School of Art.

The work has been shown at leading institutions including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the National Portrait Gallery in London. Acquired by Charles Saatchi in 1990, it was later exhibited alongside Blonde Girl on a Bed at the Saatchi Gallery.

Lot 17 | Lucian Freud (1922 - 2011) | A Young Painter, oil on canvas
Executed in 1957-58
41.9 x 39.1 cm
Provenance (Consolidated by The Value):

• Sir Oliver and Lady Scott, Windemere
• Christie’s, London, 28 February 1975, lot 175 (consigned by the above)
• Directors of Baring Brothers & Co., London
• Saatchi Collection, London (acquired by 1990)
• Acquired from the above in 1997 by the present owner
• The Lewis Collection

Estimate: £4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Hammer Price: £5,800,000
Sold: £7,166,000

---

Other Highlight Lots:

Lot 26 | Lucio Fontana (1899 - 1968) | Concetto spaziale, oil on canvas
Executed in 1960
200 x 205 cm
Provenance:

• Galerie Alfred Schmela, Dusseldorf
• Private Collection, Cologne (acquired from the above in 1963)
• Thence by descent to the present owner

Note: Subject to Irrevocable Bids
Estimate: £8,500,000 - 12,000,000
Hammer Price: £8,100,000
Sold: £9,825,000

Lot 12 | Claude Monet (1840 - 1926) | Maison de jardinier, oil on canvas
Executed in Bordighera in 1884
60.5 x 73 cm
Provenance:

• Girard & Cie., Paris
• Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris (acquired from the above on 11 April 1888)
• John Singer Sargent, London (acquired from the above on 26 August 1891)
• Christie's, London, 24 and 27 July 1925, lot 303 (consigned by the above)
• Emile Bernheim, Galerie Durand-Ruel and Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris (jointly acquired from the above sale)
• Durand-Ruel Gallery, New York (transferred from the above on 22 April 1926)
• Sarah Choate Sears, Boston (acquired in 1926)
• Amelia Peabody, Boston
• Wildenstein & Co., Ltd., New York (acquired from the above in 1950)
• Domenica Walter-Guillaume, Paris (acquired from the above in June 1953)
• Palais d'Orsay, Paris, 24 November 1977, lot 7
• Helly Nahmad Gallery, London
• Sotheby's, London, 28 June 1978, lot 14 (consigned by the above)
• Private Collection (acquired from the above sale)
• Private Collection, Europe
• Sotheby’s London, 5 February 2007, lot 27 (consigned by the above)
• Acquired from the above sale by the present owner

Note: Subject to Irrevocable Bids
Estimate: £6,500,000 - 8,500,000
Hammer Price: £6,700,000
Sold: £8,215,000

Lot 25 | Alberto Giacometti (1901 - 1966) | Femme debout, bronze
Conceived circa 1960; this example cast by Susse Fondeur, Paris in 1964. This work is number 2 from an edition of 6.
Height: 59.4 cm
Provenance:

• Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York (acquired in December 1965 from the artist)
• Kornfeld & Klipstein, Bern (acquired from the above)
• Acquired from the above in January 1966 by the present owner

Note: Subject to Minimum-price Guarantee
Estimate: £4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Hammer Price: £4,100,000
Sold: £5,092,000

Lot 39 | René Magritte (1898 - 1967) | Le Buste impassible, oil on canvas
Executed in 1926
120.5 x 80.3 cm
Provenance:

• Galerie Le Centaure, Brussels
• E.L.T. Mesens, Brussels (acquired from the above in 1932)
• Grosvenor Gallery, London (acquired from the above circa 1960-61)
• Sophia Loren and Carlo Ponti, Rome (acquired from the above before 1971)
• Private Collection, Switzerland (acquired by 1991)
• Galleria dello Scudo, Verona 
• Private Collection, Switzerland (acquired from the above circa 1992)
• Thence by descent to the present owners 

Estimate: £4,500,000 - 6,500,000
Hammer Price: £3,900,000
Sold: £4,848,000

Lot 32 | Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960 - 1988) |Thin in the Old, acrylic, oil and Xerox collage on panel
Executed in 1986
182.5 x 107 x 24 cm
Provenance:

• Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Zurich
• Akira Ikeda Gallery, Tokyo
• Kantor Gallery, Beverly Hills
• Sotheby's, New York, 18 November 1998, lot 179 (consigned by the above)
• Private Collection, Europe
• Private Collection, Italy
• Sotheby's, Paris, 6 December 2017, lot 54 (consigned by the above)
• Acquired from the above sale by the present owner

Note: Subject to Irrevocable Bids
Estimate: £6,000,000 - 8,000,000
Hammer Price: £4,400,000
Sold: £4,543,000

Lot 37 | Paul Signac (1863 - 1935) | Marseille. Le Port, oil on canvas
Executed in 1934
73.3 x 92.2 cm
Provenance:

• Estate of the artist
• Ginette Cachin (née Signac), Paris (the artist’s daughter; acquired by descent from the above)
• Henri Kréa, Paris (acquired as a gift from the above in May 1968)
• Estate of Henri Kréa
• Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 22 June 2001, lot 17 (consigned by the above)
• Private Collection (acquired from the above sale)
• Christie’s, London, 21 June 2005, lot 23
• Private Collection, Switzerland (acquired from the above sale)
• Christie’s, London, 23 June 2015, lot 23
• Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

Note: Subject to Irrevocable Bids
Estimate: £4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Hammer Price: £4,000,000
Sold: £4,378,519

Lot 13 | Constantin Brancusi (1867 - 1957) | Une Muse, bronze
Conceived in 1912 and cast by Susse Fondeur from the Istrati-Dumitresco plaster in 1972. This work is number 2 from an edition of 5
Height: 44 cm
Provenance:

• Alexandre Istrati and Natalia Dumitersco, Paris
• Galerie Beyeler, Basel (acquired from the above in June 1974)
• Acquired from the above in 1986 by the present owner

Note: Subject to Irrevocable Bids and Minimum-price Guarantee
Estimate: £2,000,000 - 3,000,000
Hammer Price: £3,050,000
Sold: £3,621,000

Lot 33 | Andy Warhol (1928 - 1987) | Hammer and Sickle, acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas
Executed in 1976
183.5 x 218.4 cm
Provenance:

• Carlo F. Bilotti, New York
• Gagosian Gallery, New York
• Private Collection, New York
• Richard Gray Gallery, New York
• The Macklowe Collection, New York (acquired from the above in February 2000)
• Sotheby's, New York, The Macklowe Collection, 16 May 2022, lot 24
• Acquired from the above sale by the present owner

Note: Subject to Irrevocable Bids
Estimate: £3,000,000 - 5,000,000
Hammer Price: £2,800,000
Sold: £3,506,000

Lot 45 | Dame Barbara Hepworth (1903 - 1975) | Three Obliques (Walk In), bronze with a mottled green, brown and golden patina
Conceived in 1968 and cast in 1969 by Morris Singer Foundry, London, the present work is number 1 from an edition of 2, plus 1 Artist's Cast
288.9 x 466.1 x 330 cm
Provenance:

• Gimpel Fils, London
• Acquired from the above by the Exxonmobil Foundation, February 1972
• Their sale, Sotheby's New York, 3 May 2006, lot 50
• Acquired from the above sale by the present owner

Note: Subject to Irrevocable Bids
Estimate: £3,500,000 - 4,500,000
Hammer Price: £2,800,000
Sold: £3,506,000

Lot 38 | Edgar Degas (1834 - 1917) | Scène de ballet, oil on canvas
Executed circa 1885
81.3 x 56.3 cm
Provenance:

• Estate of the artist
• Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, Atelier Degas, 1ère Vente, 6-8 May 1918, lot 79 (consigned by the above)
• Georges N. Bernheim, Paris (acquired by 1921)
• Ludwig and Estella Katzenellenbogen, Berlin (probably acquired from the
• above)
• Ludwig Katzenellenbogen, Berlin (acquired by 1928)
• Tilla Durieux-Katzenellenbogen, Berlin (acquired from the above by 1929)
• Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 9 March 1935, lot 33 (consigned by the above)
• Georgette Lecomte (née Pellerin), Paris (acquired from the above sale through André Schoeller, Paris)
• Private Collection (acquired by descent from the above)
• Christie's, London, 4 February 2008, lot 13 (consigned by the above)
• Private Collection, England (acquired from the above sale)
• Christie’s, London, 23 June 2015, lot 33 (consigned by the above)
• Acquired from the above sale by the present owner

Note: Subject to Irrevocable Bids
Estimate: £2,500,000 - 3,500,000
Hammer Price: £2,550,000
Sold: £3,201,000

---

Auction Details:

Auction House: Sotheby's London
Sale: Modern and Contemporary Evening Auction
Date: 4 March 2026
Number of Lots: 53
Sold: 53
Sale Rate: 100%
Sale Total: £130,962,024