Amedeo Modigliani's nude portrait makes history at auction; a nude painting of Sigmund Freud's granddaughter sold for $38.8 million

The first part of a London auction of a private art collection worthy of a museum fetched $392.6 million on Wednesday, powered Amedeo Modigliani a nude photo that set a new European record. Meanwhile, a nude woman painting by Sigmund Freud's granddaughter fetched nearly $39 million.

Forty-eight works by artists including Picasso, Magritte and Klimt, compiled by Joe Lewis, the former owner of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, were sold at auction on Wednesday and Thursday.

Lewis, 89, transferred most of his team to the London football club in 2022 and is now worth £5.8 billion, according to the Sunday Times Rich List.

Modigliani's painting “Nu assis au collier” (Seated Nude Wearing a Necklace) sold for $63.9 million, the highest price achieved for a work by the artist sold at auction in Europe, Suthu said.

Gustav Klimt's full-length public portrait “Bildnis Gertrud Loew” earned the second highest price of the evening. After seven bidders, it sold to a private Asian collector for $47.9 million.

Lucian Freud's “Sleeping by the Lion Carpet” reached $38.8 million. A nude portrait of his model and muse Sue Tilley, the work had been held in the Lewis Collection since it was acquired by Acquavella Galleries in 1996, the year it was completed.

“Mona Lisa wasn't around when she was famous — but I am,” Tilley, now 69, told the Wall Street Journal.

Tilley was working in an unemployed office when he met the artist, who is the grandson of the famous psychologist Sigmund Freud. The paintings he made of himself in the 1990s are now among the most famous in modern art – and the most important.

“It changed my life,” Tilley told The Associated Press last month as she sat in front of a 7 ½-foot nude portrait of herself in an auction showroom. “Who would have thought that I would be in Suthwini?”

Lewis also bought paintings by artists of the Vienna Secession movement such as Egon Schiele, as well as modernist and surrealist works by Rene Magritte and Pablo Picasso.

The 23 works going under the hammer on Thursday include Picasso's “Buste de femme” (Bust of a woman) from 1938, depicting French artist Dora Maar, valued at £12-18 million.

The current auction record for a single private collection in Europe was set in 2009 by the art collection of the late fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent and his partner Pierre Berge.

It was estimated at 200-300 million euros, but the works ended up being sold at Christie's for 373.9 million euros (at the time it was about 333 million rands).

In March, four more paintings from the Lewis Collection by British artists from the London School group, including Freud and Bacon, were sold for £35.8 million at a crowded Sutu auction.

In a return to blockbuster art sales, auctions in New York this spring set record prices for works by Jackson Pollock, Constantin Brancusi and Mark Rothko.