A Frank Auerbach painting estimated to be worth several million pounds is to be sold by the National Crime Agency after it was recovered from a convicted money launderer who worked for organised criminal gangs, including drug traffickers.
The work was seized by police after Lenn Mayhew-Lewis, 69, went on the run in March 2023 after being convicted of money laundering, with an investigation discovering that he had also bought a painting by Auerbach in a private sale.
The painting – Albert Street, 2009 oil on canvas, 112 x 122cm – is part of Auerbach’s long-running series that depicts a street in Camden Town, north London, where the artist – widely regarded as one of Britain’s greatest living painters – has been based for many decades.
The NCA said that they believed that after the painting was bought by Mayhew-Lewis it was then used by another individual as collateral to secure a “£5m loan from a UK auction house”.
Mayhew-Lewis has been on the run since failing to appear at a sentencing hearing a year ago, with the NCA describing him as someone who offered “services that helped criminals blur the origins of their cash by using multiple companies to filter payments”.
The NCA confirmed that the painting was bought in 2017 for £1.6m, but noted that Auerbach’s works can fetch sums in excess of £5m when at auction.
Albert Street, 2009 is being stored by an auction house, where it will be held in case there is an appeal against the forfeiture. If no one comes forward a sale will follow. Under the asset recovery incentivisation scheme, the proceeds will go to the Home Office and a portion – as much as 50% – will be returned to the NCA.
The Albert Street paintings, which are sometimes called “to the studios” or “from the studios”, are intensely personal, according to the Guardian’s art critic Jonathan Jones. He said they were “definitely major late works” by the artist, who was adding to the series as late as 2017.
Auerbach was born on 29 April 1931 in Berlin to Jewish parents. He was sent to Britain as a seven-year-old to escape Nazi persecution, while his parents remained in Germany and were killed in concentration camps during the second world war.
He studied at St Martin’s School of Art in London and the Royal College of Art, developing his approach of “repeatedly trying, then erasing, then trying again to make an image that is true” while using a palette of bold colours and thickly applied painting style.
Auerbach, who turned 93 on the day the painting’s forfeiture was announced, has just had a successful solo show at the Courtauld in London, where his signature charcoal portraits made between 1956 and 1962 attracted large crowds and positive reviews.
Speaking to the Guardian shortly after his 92nd birthday, the artist said: “As long as I can put on my painting trousers and have a brush in my hand, or a stick of graphite, I feel active.”
The work was discovered after the NCA sent out an amber warning to auction houses and other people working in the art market to be wary of money-laundering schemes and other criminal activity connected to fine art.
In a statement released in January, the NCA warned those working in the world of fine art sales to regularly carry out “due diligence checks” and be able to “identify within their business any change in client status and suspicious activity”, including “money laundering, cultural property trafficking, or other criminality”.
The financial investigator Ian Hough said: “This forfeiture is proof that criminals cannot keep their illegally funded purchases hidden from law enforcement. Our specialist investigators will find and strip criminals of their illicitly acquired assets.”