British billionaire Joe Lewis puts his Klimt, Modigliani and Freud masterpieces into Sotheby's for a £150-200 million London sale

Joe Lewis, the 89-year-old British billionaire who built a $5.8 billion fortune through currency trading, amassed one of the world's most valuable private art collections over 3 decades, pleaded guilty to insider trading in January 2024 and was pardoned by Donald Trump last November, is now moving to sell more than $200 million of that collection at Sotheby's London this June.

The auction, drawn from what Sotheby's is calling the Lewis Collection and assembled by Lewis alongside his daughter Vivienne, is expected to be the most valuable single-owner sale ever staged in the British capital. It follows a March 2026 precursor at Sotheby's London in which 4 School of London masterpieces from the same collection sold for £35.8 million ($47.8 million), roughly double their pre-sale estimate, at what was the first time Lewis had ever publicly sold works from his collection. Bloomberg data showed he earned returns of more than 3,500% on those works relative to his original purchase prices.

The June sale will be considerably larger. Highlights include works by Gustav Klimt, Amedeo Modigliani and Lucian Freud, alongside paintings by Egon Schiele, Gustave Caillebotte and Pablo Picasso. Selected works are currently on view at Sotheby's New York headquarters on Madison Avenue from May 2 through 18.

What is going under the hammer

The centrepiece is a Klimt portrait that Lewis acquired at Sotheby's London in 2015 for £24.8 million ($38.9 million), double its low estimate at the time. The painting reportedly hung on his 321-foot superyacht, Aviva. Only 5 comparable Klimt portraits have come to auction in the past 2 decades, and the comparable reference point is stark: last November, Sotheby's sold Klimt's Portrait of Elizabeth Lederer from the collection of Leonard Lauder for $236.3 million.

Modigliani's Homme à la Pipe, painted in 1918 in the mature period of his short career, has not been exhibited in 45 years and has never appeared at auction. It is estimated at £12 million to £18 million ($16 million to $24 million). Freud's Woman in a Grey Sweater (1988) has been lent to museums around the world but has similarly never been sold publicly before. Schiele's Danaë (1909), painted when the artist was just 19, carries a low estimate of £12 million ($16.9 million). Caillebotte's Portrait de Paul Hugot (1879) has not been shown publicly in almost 50 years. A Picasso drawing of Dora Maar, once owned by Maar herself, is also in the sale.

Sotheby's said further works will be announced as June approaches.

The March success that preceded this

The groundwork for the June auction was laid in March, when the 4 School of London works from the Lewis Collection went on offer at Sotheby's London for the first time. The Francis Bacon self-portrait painted in 1972 in the aftermath of his lover George Dyer's death fetched £16.03 million after 15 bids. Two Lucian Freud portraits and a Leon Kossoff swimming pool scene completed the group, which together sold for £35.8 million and set a new auction record for Kossoff. The broader sale that evening was 100% sold, with all 53 lots finding buyers.

Bloomberg's analysis of Lewis's purchase prices versus the March sale results showed returns exceeding 3,500% on works held for decades, an investment performance that rivals anything achievable in traditional asset classes and without any of the annual management fees associated with financial portfolios.

Sotheby's described Lewis as the most valuable private collection ever offered in London. "When works of this caliber come to market, they don't just attract collectors, they ignite the entire field," the auction house said.

Who Joe Lewis is

Lewis was born in London's East End in 1937 and left school at 15 to work in his father's catering business. He expanded the family operation into a successful West End restaurant chain, sold it in 1979 and relocated to the Bahamas, where he turned to foreign exchange trading. His bets in the currency markets in the early 1990s, including reported positions against sterling around Britain's exit from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism and against the Mexican peso, generated wealth on a scale that few individual currency traders have ever matched.

He assembled his art collection over 3 decades alongside his daughter Vivienne, focusing initially on the School of London painters whose figurative intensity reflected his own East End origins, then expanding into Klimt, Modigliani, Schiele, Picasso, Chagall, Miró and other 20th-century masters. Bloomberg estimated the total collection at approximately $1 billion. He previously owned a 30% stake in Christie's auction house in the 1990s, selling to François Pinault in 1998 before Pinault took the company private. He was behind the 2018 sale at Christie's New York of David Hockney's Pool with Two Figures, which fetched $90.3 million and set a then-record for a living artist.

His business empire is anchored by Tavistock Group, a private luxury real estate and hospitality conglomerate with major assets including the Lake Nona development in Orlando, Florida. His family controls Tottenham Hotspur, the Premier League club, with son-in-law Daniel Levy serving as chairman since 2001.

The legal matter that shadows the June auction is not small. In 2023, New York authorities indicted Lewis on insider trading charges, alleging he had shared confidential corporate information with people on his yacht. He pleaded guilty in January 2024 to conspiring to commit securities fraud and was sentenced to 3 years of probation and a $5 million fine. Trump pardoned him in November 2025, removing the conviction from his record before the ink on the formal sentence had properly dried.

What the pardon did not change is the art. Lewis spent 3 decades acquiring works that most institutions could not afford, housing them on a superyacht and in private residences, lending them freely to museums and keeping them off the market entirely. The Bacon self-portrait he sold in March reportedly earned him a return of more than 3,500% on his original purchase price.

The question going into June is whether the Klimt, the Modigliani and the other headline works can generate the $200 million the auction house is targeting. Given the March precedent and the rarity of the pieces in question, Sotheby's is not treating that figure as aspirational. It is treating it as a floor.