LONDON ART SALE:A PAINTING by Irish-born artist Francis Bacon sold for £21.3 million (€25.4 million) at a Christie's auction in London last night.
Portrait of Henrietta Moraes, painted in 1963 and measuring 65in by 56in, was the star lot in a sale of post-war and contemporary art.
Christie’s had, unusually, declined to publish a pre-sale estimate for the work and said the guide price was “on request”.
Auction-goers in the packed saleroom on central London’s King Street competed with phone and internet bidders worldwide.
Also last night, a newly discovered Irish drawing by Berlin-born British artist Lucian Freud sold for £657,250 – more than double its highest estimate.
For the Bacon work, bidding opened at £12 million and quickly leapt in increments of £500,000 before the hammer fell at £19 million. The successful phone bidder paid precisely £21,321,250, inclusive of the buyer’s premium.
Neither the vendor nor the buyer was named by the auctioneers.
The vendor had acquired the painting from a gallery in Switzerland in 1983 for an undisclosed sum.
The painting was described in the catalogue as “the most seductive painting of a female figure ever realised by Francis Bacon” – an artist better known for his pictures of naked men and screaming popes.
Londoner Henrietta Moraes was an artist’s model whom Bacon painted on a number of occasions.
She lived in Ireland during the late 1970s and early 1980s when she was the “caretaker” of Roundwood House, a then rundown Georgian mansion in Mountrath, Co Laois. Ms Moraes died a pauper in a council flat in Chelsea in 1999.
Dublin-born Francis Bacon spent his childhood in Co Kildare but ran away to England in his teens and spent his working life in London.
Since his death in 1992, prices for his paintings have soared. He is now regarded, alongside Picasso, as one of the 20th century’s greatest artists – and is one of the most expensive to collect.
The record price at auction for one of his paintings was achieved at Sotheby’s, New York, in 2008 when his Triptych, 1976 sold for $86.3 million (€55.6 million).
The buyer, reputedly, was Russian billionaire oligarch Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea Football Club.
The newly discovered Irish drawing by the late Lucian Freud sold for £657,250.
Boat, Connemarawas made during the artist's visit in 1948 to the Zetland Hotel overlooking Cashel Bay, Co Galway. The drawing, on paper, measuring 17.5in by 22in, shows a boat beached at low tide beside the pier with a Connemara pony in the distance.
Freud gave up drawing in the 1950s and subsequently became famous for his oil paintings, especially portraits, which now sell for millions of pounds. He was a friend of Bacon and died last year. Christie’s said the Connemara drawing was one of only two Irish works by the artist.
An exhibition, Lucian Freud Portraits,is currently drawing large crowds to the National Portrait Gallery in London.
Among other highlights in last night’s auction, an untitled painting of the letters “FOOL” sold for £4.9 million.
It was made by American artist Christopher Wool who specialises in “word pictures”.
