Klimt's Lost Portrait Heads to £30M Auction at Sotheby's Next Summer
With an estimated value of £20–30 million (approximately €23–34 million), the painting is priced somewhat more modestly than Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer, which made auction history in November of the previous year with a staggering $236 million sale. Yet Portrait of Gertrud Loew (Felsővanyi), painted in 1902 and set to go under the hammer at Sotheby's in London on June 24, 2026, remains both prestigious and highly sought-after—not least due to its illustrious and controversial past in Vienna.
The current owner is British businessman Joe Lewis, a prominent figure in the financial sector and one of the UK's wealthiest individuals. He is also the majority owner of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club and the superyacht Aviva, where he is said to have stored parts of his art collection—now heading to auction.
Alongside Portrait of Gertrud Loew, the sale includes Egon Schiele's Klimt-influenced Danaë (1912, estimated at £12–18 million / €14–20 million) and a selection of high-caliber works by masters such as Francis Bacon, Pablo Picasso, and Lucian Freud. The total value of the collection, to be auctioned in multiple installments, is estimated at £150 million (€173 million). Sotheby's has hailed it as the most valuable single-owner collection ever to come to auction in Britain.
Lewis acquired Portrait of Gertrud Loew in 2015 for €34.7 million (hammer price: £22 million). The painting's backstory had already drawn significant attention in Vienna: for decades, it was owned by Ursula Ucicky, widow of director Gustav Ucicky (1899–1961). The illegitimate son of Gustav Klimt, Ucicky gained notoriety during the Nazi era as the creator of the propaganda film Heimkehr and as a Klimt collector who benefited from the Nazi regime's confiscation of Jewish-owned art—including Portrait of Gertrud Loew, which entered his possession in 1942.
When Vienna's Klimt Foundation was established in 2013 based on the Ucicky collection, the provenance was reexamined, leading to an agreement with the heirs; the auction proceeds were subsequently divided between the foundation and the rightful claimants. The painting is now considered "unencumbered," and it is safe to assume Lewis is betting on a price well above what he paid a decade ago.
