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Dublin: 5 °C Thursday 28 March, 2024
Sotheby's London
bringing home the bacon

Francis Bacon painting sells for €27 million

An anonymous buyer pays three times the pre-sale price at an auction in London.

IRISH BORN ARTIST Francis Bacon has had one of his paintings sold at an auction in London for over €27 million to an anonymous buyer.

The price was three times the pre-sale estimate of between €8m and €10.5m and was sold by a private buyer at Sotheby’s ‘Looking Closely’ sale at their auction house in the UK capital.

The painting, entitled Three Studies For A Portrait Of Lucian Freud, consists of three separate panels and was painted in 1964 at the height of Bacon’s career.

It shows his friend and fellow artist with a variety of facial expressions “ to create the remarkable likeness apparent in this portrait,” according to the auction house.
Cheyenne Westphal, Sotheby’s Chairman of Contemporary Art Europe, said in a press release:

This striking painting has everything a collector in the current market is looking for.

It is an artwork that radiates ‘wall-power’ with its brilliant colour and dramatic brushstrokes.

It narrates one of the most impressive artistic relationships of the 20th Century between two titans of British Art and is desirably fresh to the market having remained in the same collection for almost half a century.