The works of Klimt, Matisse and Freud have been sold at high prices in London Art

A large collection of famous modern art is being auctioned by Sotheby’s in what is expected to be the most valuable collection ever offered. London.

The works, donated by Joe Lewis and his daughter Vivienne – whose family is Tottenham Hotspur – include paintings by Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Amedeo Modigliani, Francis Bacon, Henri MatisseChaïm Soutine, Lucian Freud, and Gustave Caillebotte. Sotheby’s said the group is expected to fetch more than £150m.

Combined with other projects coming to the market in June, this sale could make for the most valuable week of sales ever held in London.

Oliver Barker, chairman of Sotheby’s Europe, told the Guardian that the collection featured “innumerable masterpieces of museum-calibre” and was a major influence on modern painting. “Many have not been seen on the market for years – if at all – which speaks to their rarity and historical importance,” he said.

He said the sale was “one for the history books”. This follows last September’s sale of Pauline Karpidas, which raised £101m and became London’s most expensive owner-occupied sale. Barker said the sale was a “real turning point” that helped revive confidence in the global tech market.

“The sale was tangible proof that collectors around the world are deeply inspired by collections created from a single vision, rooted in harmony, rarity, and history,” he said.

Highlights of the Lewis collection will be shown in New York and London ahead of the June auction.

Among the leading lots is a Klimt portrait, Bildnis Gertrud Loew (Gertha Felsőványi) from 1902, which is expected to fetch £20-30m. The subject was one of the artist’s assistants, whose painting was stolen by the Nazis when he arrived in Vienna. In recent years it has hung alongside other Klimt works at the Neue Galerie.

When it was first shown at the Vienna Secession’s Klimt exhibition in 1903, the critic Ludwig Hevesi described the painting as “the most fragrant poem that a palette can create”. Sotheby’s said only five large Klimt paintings have sold in the past 25 years, each exceeding its estimate.

Also for sale are Schiele’s , painted when the artist was only 19 years old, and exhibiting the art that came to define him. They are said to take £12-18m, breaking even history for Schiele’s work.

Some of the main ones include Modigliani’s Man with a Pipe (The Notary of Nice)unseen for almost half a century and estimated at £12-18m, it is twice as rare as the Bacon portrait from 1977, which is estimated at £8-12m.

Lewis was born and raised in London’s East End, where he developed an interest in the artists of the School of London, including Bacon and Freud. That initial passion became the foundation of one of the world’s most influential contemporary art groups, created by an interest in the human form in all its forms.

Barker said bringing the work to London was a “cycle time”, adding that the collection would be presented with “all the care, attention and excitement that its importance dictates”.

The June sale follows the sale of four School of London works from the Lewis Collection at Sotheby’s in March, which made £35.8m – double their combined estimate.

A spokesman for the Lewis Collection said the family had been drawn to works of art that “expressed what it means to be human”, and received a strong response to the March auction as a sign of the “endless power of figurative painting”.