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£14m Bacon sale crowns record auction week
By Tom Teodorczuk, Evening Standard 09.02.07
The prize: Bacon's papal figure presides over Christie's London saleroom
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An American art dealer helped send art records tumbling yet again when he paid £14 million for a Francis Bacon painting at Christie's.
New Yorker Andrew Fabricant bought Bacon's 1956 Study For Portrait II, inspired by Diego Vel·zquez's 1650 portrait of Pope Innocent X, for a mystery American buyer.
It is the latest record-breaking sale in an astonishing week for the British art world at both Sotheby's and Christie's auction houses.
Last night's Christie's Post-War and Contemporary Art sale raised £70.4million pounds, against a high estimate of £56million - breaking the record for the contemporary art sale in Europe which Sotheby's had set only 24 hours earlier with its £45.8 million haul.
Eleven world records were established at Christie's King Street HQ and sixteen works sold for over a million, including Roy Lichtenstein and three pictures by Andy Warhol.
Bacon's papal portrait, understood to be sold by Sophia Loren from the collection of her late film producer husband Carlo Ponti, made a world record for a Bacon painting and exceeded the £12 million estimate.
Mr Fabricant, director of the Richard Gray Gallery, admitted after the auction that he was selling the work to a North American client, but declined to elaborate further. The Richard Gray Gallery is one of the leading dealers in modern and contemporary US and European art and has galleries in both New York and Chicago.
But last night's sale just fell short of the record established for a post-war work of art at auction in New York last autumn - £14.3 million for Willem De Kooning's Untitled XXV.
Other works under the hammer included an Warhol's 1978 Brigitte Bardot which was sold for £5.4million to a French collector - £3.4million more than its high estimate.
The artist's sinister 1963 photo Three Women, depicting a trio of prostitutes covering their faces with pillows, fetched £4.4 million against a predicted high estimate of £3.5million, while 1981's Dollar Sign made £1.98million.
Mark Rothko's Untitled (Black, Red, Black on Brown) (1968) realised £3.38 million, a world record for a work on paper by the artist.
Lucian Freud also achieved his highest sale for a work on paper when his 1945 drawing Boy In Red And Blue Jacket sold for £468,000 - beating a high estimate of £350,000.
Late New York 1980s street artist Keith Haring, Italian abstract painter Alberto Burri and German pop artist Sigmar Polke also achieved record prices for their work.
The London sale proved for the first time more lucrative than Christie's modern art sale in New York. Christie's Amy Cappellazzo, representing American collectors at last night's sale, said: "I found myself outbid by my London colleagues."
Pilar Ordovas, head of Post-War and Contemporary Art at Christie's, said: "It is particularly encouraging to see the majority of works this evening bought by European-based clients, highlighting the intrinsic role of London within the international art market."
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