This season’s major evening sale of Modern & Contemporary art at Sotheby’s London is set to star four extraordinary pieces by three visionaries of British Art: Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach and Frank Dobson. Coming to auction from a distinguished private collection, all four works were created within just a few miles of one another in London.

Lucian Freud’s naked portrait of Penelope Cuthbertson leads this exceptional group with an estimate of £8-12 million. While from a first glance, the painting appears to be simply a portrait, a closer inspection also alludes to the presence of the artist himself: the haphazard wardrobe offers a glimpse of Freud’s overcoat and boots, while the glowing reflections in the window perhaps hint subtly to Freud’s form, his brush, and his easel.

Freud’s meditative portrait will be offered alongside two remarkable paintings from Frank Auerbach’s most revered series’: Mornington Crescent, which carries the highest estimate ever placed on a work by the artist at auction (est. £3.5-4.5m), and a portrait of his most famed sitter Juliet Yardley Mills, J.Y.M. Seated II (est. £800,000-1.2m). Scraped and sculpted, its richly impastoed surface powerfully conveys the depth of Auerbach’s emotional response to his subject in a manner akin to Freud’s portrait of Cuthbertson (Night Interior).

The collection also comprises a white marble sculpture of a female form by Frank Dobson – a prominent player in the revival of ‘direct carving’ in Britain (est. £600,000-800,000). Rare to market, only ten carvings by the artist have appeared at auction in the last thirty years. Please find further information on each of the works below.

All four works will go on public view as part of Sotheby’s preview exhibitions in its New Bond Street galleries, opening on 20 June, before they are offered at auction on the evening of 27 June.