Francis Bacon Sold at Christie's Post-War and Contemporary Sale

Written by Claudia Kantor Wednesday, 29 June 2011 21:36

LONDON.- A painting by Irish-born artist Francis Bacon sold for 18.0 million pounds ($28.7 million) on Tuesday, the second highest price paid for a work of art at a Christie's post-war and contemporary auction in London. Francis Bacon (28 October 1909 – 28 April 1992), was an Anglo-Irish figurative painter known for his bold, austere, graphic and emotionally raw imagery.  Bacon's painterly but abstract figures typically appear isolated in glass or steel geometrical cages set against flat, nondescript backgrounds. He began painting during his early 20's and worked only sporadically until his mid 30s. Before this time he drifted, earning his living as an interior decorator and designer of furniture and rugs.

Later, he admitted that his career was delayed because he had spent too long looking for a subject that would sustain his interest. His breakthrough came with the 1944 triptych Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, and it was this work and his heads and figures of the late 1940s through to the mid 1950s that sealed his reputation as a notably bleak chronicler of the human condition.

"Study for a Portrait," depicting a be-suited man seated on a gilded armchair enshrouded in a sea of blue, had been expected to fetch around 11 million pounds, although the sale price includes a buyer's premium which the estimate does not.

The most expensive work of art sold at an equivalent sale at Christie's, London, was also by Bacon -- his "Triptych" raised 26.3 million pounds in 2008.


Executed in 1953, between Bacon's famous Pope series that year and his Man in Blue paintings of 1954, "Study for a Portrait" has never come to auction before.

Rodrigo Moynihan, who lent Bacon a studio, was the first owner. It later belonged to Louis Le Brocquy, the renowned Irish painter, who was the last to keep it before its acquisition by the present owner in 1984.

Elsewhere at the auction, "Woman Smiling" (1958-59), a landmark portrait by Lucian Freud, sold for 4.7 million pounds.

The only single portrait of Suzy Boyt, the woman who was to mother four of the artist's children, was last sold at auction in 1973 when it realized 5,040 pounds.

A large scale portrait of Chairman Mao by Andy Warhol dated 1973 fetched 7.0 million, in line with expectations.

Overall the auction raised 78.8 million pounds. Rival auction house Sotheby's holds its equivalent sale on Wednesday during a key few weeks for the art market, which has rebounded strongly from the slump of 2009.

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