LONDON.- Bringing together masterworks ranging from Impressionism to the most ambitious expressions of contemporary art, Sotheby’s today lifts the curtain on the full scope of its June Modern and Contemporary sales in London, on view from today until 23 June, ahead of sales on 24 and 25 June.
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Anchored by Masterpieces from The Lewis Collection — a spectacular group of 48 works, to be presented across a dedicated evening auction and as a cornerstone of the Modern Day Auction, and representing the most valuable collection ever staged in Europe — this season’s offerings also include major works from other distinguished private collections, not least works by Claude Monet, Peter Doig, Wassily Kandinsky and Mark Rothko, among others, all to be offered in adjacent sales on 24 and 25 June.
Together, the works to be offered this season carry a combined estimate in excess of £300 million, making this one of the strongest auction seasons London has ever seen.
Two exceptional works by Claude Monet, painted nearly four decades apart, are a defining highlight of the Modern and Contemporary Evening Auction, tracing the arc of his practice from early Impressionism to its most immersive expression, inspired by his wife Camille and his garden at Giverny. Leading the pair is Nymphéas estimate £30–40 million, a luminous vision of the artist’s celebrated water lily pond and the highest estimate ever placed on a work by Monet to come to auction in Europe. It is complemented by Camille assise sur la plage à Trouville estimate £7–10 million, a rare and intimate portrayal capturing a fleeting, wind-swept moment on the Normandy coast. Formerly long held in major American collections, both works will be presented in London for the first time.
Further highlights from the Modern and Contemporary Evening Auction include Mark Rothko’s Untitled est. £4–6 million, a radiant work on paper from an esteemed West Coast private collection, and Wassily Kandinsky’s Fragment zu Improvisation II (Trauermarsch) est. £4–6 million, a pivotal early abstraction from an important European collection. They are joined by Peter Doig’s Cabin Essence est. £10–15m, a monumental early masterpiece from his celebrated Concrete Cabin series, and Banksy’s Love is In The Air (life size) est. £3.5–5.5 million, a rare, large-scale iteration of the artist’s iconic image — both from distinguished private collections and exemplifying the continued evolution of figurative and conceptual painting into the present day.
A selection of works in the Contemporary Day Auction will support Kettle’s Yard through the Artists for Kettle’s Yard campaign. Generously gifted ahead of the institution’s 70th anniversary in 2027, proceeds will benefit The Jim and Helen Ede Fund Endowment Campaign and directly support Kettle’s Yard. Featuring artists including Rana Begum, Antony Gormley, Megan Rooney and Caroline Walker, alongside figures such as Ben Nicholson and Lucie Rie, the group highlights the institution’s enduring role as a place of art, learning and inspiration.
The London Sales are presented in partnership with The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection. From 18–25 June, join our presenting partner for A Culinary Voyage as they take over the Sotheby’s Restaurant. Reimagined as an atmospheric extension of life at sea, the space is defined by soft forms, natural textures, and a palette inspired by ocean horizons.
A LOOK AT THE HIGHLIGHTS
MASTERPIECES FROM THE LEWIS COLLECTION, 24 June, 6pm, est. in excess of £200 million
• Assembled over decades by Joe Lewis and his daughter Vivienne, many of the works in the collection have been exhibited in major museums across the globe — a testament to their exceptional art historical significance — and many have not been seen on the open market for decades, if at all.
• Anchoring the group is Amedeo Modigliani’s Nu assis au collier est. in excess of £45m, a landmark work from the artist’s celebrated series of nudes, presented alongside Lucian Freud’s Sleeping by the Lion Carpet est. £25–35m, the culminating work from his definitive group of portraits of “benefits supervisor” Sue Tilley. The collection is further distinguished by Edgar Degas’ Petite danseuse de quatorze ans est. £18–25m and a suite of seven works by Pablo Picasso, led by a rare portrait of Dora Maar est. £12–18m, together with key works by Klimt, Schiele, Caillebotte and Bacon, and more.
• Masterpieces from the Lewis Collection will extend into the Modern Day Auction on 25 June, led by Pablo Picasso’s Portrait de Dora Maar est. £600,000–800,000, one of his earliest depictions of the artist and photographer following their first meeting, and part of one of the most celebrated series of portraits in his career.
• The June sale follows the presentation of four School of London masterpieces from the Lewis Collection at Sotheby’s London in March, which doubled their combined low estimate to realise a total of £35.8m / $48m.
MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY EVENING AUCTION, 24 June, 7pm
Claude Monet, Nymphéas, 1907, est. £30–40 million
• Painted in 1907, Nymphéas belongs to the pivotal series through which Monet transformed the language of landscape, dissolving the horizon and rendering his Giverny pond as a boundless field of light, colour and reflection.
• Executed in the coveted square format, the work marks a decisive shift in Monet’s practice, intensifying the immersive, near-abstract quality of his water lilies and focusing on the shifting interplay of surface and depth.
• Works from this celebrated group are increasingly rare on the market, with many of the finest examples now held in major museum collections.
• Monet’s water lily paintings are recognised for their profound influence on generations of artists who followed, including the Abstract Expressionists.
Claude Monet, Camille assise sur la plage à Trouville, 1870, est. £7–10 million
• Painted in the summer of 1870, this intimate portrait of Camille Monet, the artist’s first wife, captures a formative moment in the emergence of Impressionism and exemplifies his pioneering plein air approach, defined by immediacy and freshness of execution.
• Works depicting Camille are exceptionally rare, with only a small number ever to appear at auction; this example has been exhibited publicly just once, in Paris in 1970, and has never before been shown or offered for sale in the UK.
• Retained by Monet until 1875, when it was acquired by the poet and critic Émile Blémont, an early champion of Impressionism, the work reflects a quiet, personal moment set against the eve of the Franco-Prussian War, shortly before the artist departed for London with his family.
Wassily Kandinsky, Fragment zu Improvisation II (Trauermarsch), 1909, est. £4–6 million
• Fragment zu Improvisation II (Trauermarsch) dates from 1909, when Kandinsky was beginning to break through into his purely abstract visual language. In its combination of figurative elements with rich swathes of unassociated colour, the painting encapsulates the developments in Kandinsky’s work at this exciting time.
• The resulting balance between subtle figuration and almost total abstraction is indicative of the path that Kandinsky’s art would take over the years that followed, providing a powerful illustration of his unique contribution to the history of twentieth-century art.
• Acquired by the current owner in 1984, the painting is appearing at auction for the first time.
Mark Rothko, Untitled, 1959, est. £4–6 million
• Mark Rothko’s Untitled from 1959 is a dazzling embodiment of the artist’s legendary abstractions. With its strikingly saturated hues, the work exemplifies the drama Rothko was able to achieve on paper, as red underpainting flickers subtly through the top layer of golden yellow, lending the surface a vibrant, almost pulsating depth.
• Making its auction debut, Untitled recently featured in the celebrated exhibition of the artist’s paintings on paper at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Peter Doig, Cabin Essence, 1993–94, est. £10–15 million
• One of the crowning achievements of Peter Doig’s early career, Cabin Essence belongs to the artist’s celebrated Concrete Cabin series, a suite of nine paintings that emerged from Doig’s enduring fascination with Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation at Briey-en-Forêt; a seventeen story, partially abandoned modernist housing complex in north-eastern France that the artist first encountered in the early 1990s.
• Among the nine paintings that comprise the series, Cabin Essence has been singled out by Doig himself as the culmination of the group’s ambitions — an assessment borne out by its distinguished exhibition history: the painting has repeatedly returned to the walls of major international institutions and retrospectives over the past three decades.
Noah Davis, Untitled (Kids in Front Yard), 2010, est. £300,000–400,000
• Untitled (Kids in the Front Yard) belongs to the most poignant and psychologically resonant group of paintings Noah Davis produced during his brief yet extraordinary career.
• The work distills many of the defining qualities that have come to position Davis as one of the most important American painters of the twenty-first century.
• Davis’s work resides in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Studio Museum in Harlem, among others, while major retrospectives at DAS MINSK, the Barbican Art Gallery and the Hammer Museum have reaffirmed the extraordinary breadth of his achievement.
Hurvin Anderson, Untitled (Beach Scene), 2003, est. £1.8–2.5 million
• Hurvin Anderson’s ethereal and spellbinding Untitled (Beach Scene) occupies a pivotal position within the artist’s distinguished oeuvre, executed in the immediate aftermath of his residency at Caribbean Contemporary Arts in Trinidad in 2002.
• Trinidad’s long colonial history under British rule speaks directly to Anderson's split heritage as a man born in Birmingham to Jamaican parents. The painting bears witness to an artist navigating the complexities of an inheritance that stretches between Britain, Jamaica, and Trinidad, while simultaneously reflecting upon the broader histories that continue to shape those geographies.
Banksy, Love Is In The Air (life size), 2011, est. £3.5–5.5 million
• Measuring over two by two metres, Love Is In The Air (life size) represents the largest and most formidable iteration of Banksy’s universally recognised image to appear on the market.
• First executed in 2003 as a mural near the Israeli West Bank Barrier, the image was selected for the cover of the artist’s landmark publication Wall and Piece, cementing its status as the definitive expression of Banksy’s political and aesthetic philosophy.
• Its endless reproduction across media, protest culture, and the popular imagination speaks not simply to its recognisability, but to the extraordinary efficiency with which Banksy condenses political complexity into an immediately intelligible image.
• Love Is In The Air (life size) is appearing at auction for the first time.
Sidney Nolan, Ned Kelly at Glenrowan, 1956–7, est. £600,000–800,000
• A powerful painting from Sidney Nolan’s celebrated Ned Kelly series, Kelly at Glenrowan comes to market from the distinguished collection of David and Shoshanna Wingate, New York; the couple acquired the work in London circa 1962–63.
• Nolan’s depictions of the infamous Australian outlaw stand among the most iconic images in Australian art. First developed in the groundbreaking 1946–47 series — now held almost in its entirety by the National Gallery of Australia — the subject remained a defining thread throughout the artist’s career.
• Painted in London nearly a decade later, Kelly at Glenrowan belongs to a pivotal moment in which Nolan revisited and expanded this enduring theme to critical acclaim.
• Created following the artist’s travels in Italy, the work reflects a striking synthesis of history, myth, and modernist influence. Nolan’s stark, geometric compositions — defined by gridded structures, flattened perspective, and bold juxtapositions of space — draw on both the Italian landscape and the visual language of European modernism. Echoes of religious iconography and wartime ruin intersect with the dramatic narrative of Kelly’s final stand at the Glenrowan Inn in Victoria, imbuing the work with a powerful sense of symbolism and atmosphere.
Alberto Giacometti, Buste d’homme (New York II), conceived in 1965; this example cast by Susse Fondeur, Paris in 1972, est. £1.2–1.8 million
• Conceived in 1965, Buste d’homme (New York II) is Alberto Giacometti’s final sculpture of his brother Diego, and as such marks the culmination of one of the most important relationships in twentieth century art.
• In 1965, Giacometti made his first and only visit to the United States to attend the opening of his retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The artist chose this intimate portrait of his brother to represent his contemporary work at the retrospective.
• A moving testament to the lifelong relationship between Alberto and Diego, this work has been in the esteemed collection of David and Shoshanna Wingate for over thirty-five years.
CONTEMPORARY DAY AUCTION, 25 June, 12pm
• Bringing together a distinguished selection of post-war and contemporary works, the sale offers a broad view of the artistic experimentation that has shaped the past seventy years. Featuring artists including Damien Hirst, Lisa Yuskavage, George Condo, Lucio Fontana, Annie Morris, Yoshitomo Nara and Tracey Emin, it reflects the diverse formal and conceptual approaches that have defined the period.
• The auction also includes a group of works from the Artists for Kettle’s Yard campaign. Generously gifted by donors to support The Jim and Helen Ede Fund Endowment Campaign ahead of Kettle’s Yard’s 70th anniversary in 2027, all sales will directly support Kettle’s Yard, helping to secure its future as a place of art, learning and inspiration. Highlights include works by Rana Begum, Antony Gormley, Megan Rooney and Caroline Walker, alongside renowned 20th-century British artists such as Ben Nicholson and Lucie Rie.
MODERN DAY AUCTION INCLUDING MASTERPIECES FROM THE LEWIS COLLECTION, 25 June, 3pm
• Masterpieces from the Lewis Collection will feature in the Modern Day Auction, led by Pablo Picasso’s exceptional portrait of Dora Maar and accompanied by works from a broader group of leading modern masters.
• Spanning a century of painting, drawing and sculpture, the auction traces the evolution of artistic innovation from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Featuring artists including Pablo Picasso, Edgar Degas, Kees van Dongen, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Frank Auerbach, Egon Schiele, Vincent van Gogh and Pierre Bonnard, it highlights the movements and figures that redefined tradition and reshaped the course of modern art.
