The art market overall is in a notable reset, with auction totals down and dealers glum. But, in hopes of drumming up excitement, the major auction houses are rolling out some glitzy consignments for the fall season—a $30 million Rothko at Sotheby’s Hong Kong, beauty mogul Sydell Miller’s $200 million collection at the house’s New York salesroom, and a $50 million Van Gogh at Christie’s Hong Kong. Take your pick.

The latest work to join the list of inventory is Lucian Freud’s Ria, Naked Portrait (2006–07), to be offered at Christie’s London on October 9, during the week of the Frieze art fair. Coming to the auction block for the first time, it is estimated to fetch £10 million to £15 million ($13.3 million to $20 million). The seller is not identified.

The painting shows art handler Ria Kirby, whom the artist met at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum when he was featured in a 2006 joint exhibition there with fellow School of London artist Frank Auerbach. After she approached the artist to express her appreciation for his work, she went on to model for him every night over 16 months in the final years of his life; these sessions totaled no less than 2,400 hours, said the house. And yet Ria, Naked Portrait is the only fully realized work from her sessions, which came just after she finished her day job.

“To start with, it was quite exhausting, because I had only about 10 minutes’ break between finishing work and beginning to pose,” Kirby told Martin Gayford in the Telegraph. “I went through every possible emotion in my life. At the beginning, I was very conscious of trying to be a good sitter. It took a bit of practice to feel very relaxed, but be totally still at the same time.”

That stillness, she said, belied a sometimes lively environment.

“In the first few months, the hardest part of sitting was trying to stop laughing,” she said. “There were so many tales and songs and anecdotes.”

The painting had its own room in the blockbuster 2012 exhibition “Lucian Freud Portraits” at London’s National Portrait Gallery.

“In this painting we see Freud’s mastery of oil paint and how, like Geppetto, he is able to conjure up flesh,” said Katharine Arnold, vice chairman of the department of 20th and 21st-century art and head of postwar and contemporary art, Europe, in press materials.

“Her translucent limbs and flushed skin pulsate with life and comprise one of Freud’s defining legacies to painting. ‘Paint ages like we do,’ he famously said. Here, at the age of 80, he studies the appearance of youth. It sits within the rich pedigree of art history and the reclining female nude including Giorgione, Titian, and Velázquez—the latter’s Rokeby Venus (1647–51) was one of Freud’s favorite paintings at the National Gallery.”

The artist’s auction record is $86.3 million, paid at Christie’s New York as part of the collection of Paul G. Allen in 2022. Four full-length reclining female nudes have notched above $20 million since 2008.