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Rare Bacon is set to fetch £6m
Louise Jury5 Feb 2009
A Francis Bacon painting bought for £31,500 nearly 40 years ago has gone on public show before an auction where it is expected to fetch up to £6 million.
The work Man in Blue VI is the highlight of next week's post-war and contemporary auction at Christie's.
It was painted in the spring of 1954 which was a period of intense creativity for Bacon. He was in the middle of a tempestuous romance with Peter Lacy, a veteran Spitfire pilot.
The artist said at the time: “Being in love in that extreme way — being totally, physically obsessed by someone — is like having some dreadful disease. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.”
The difficult relationship had prompted Bacon to move out of the cottage that he shared with his lover to stay at the Imperial Hotel in nearby Henley-upon-Thames.
It is thought the sitter was an unknown man Bacon met in the hotel.
The work seems to have been painted from life, even though the artist usually worked from photographs. The finest of seven major paintings Bacon produced at this time, the estimate for next Wednesday's sale is £4 million to £6 million.
The current owner bought the painting in 1971.
The portrait is one of a number not seen at auction for many years. It is on show at Christie's, 85 Old Brompton Road, before auction at its King Street headquarters.
Pilas Ordovás, international director of Christie's Europe, said their sale of post-war and contemporary art included a “carefully curated selection of works by a number of the most established artists of the last 60 years”. Other important pieces include Monkeys (Ladder), 2003, by Jeff Koons which is offered at auction for the first time.
The 9ft tall canvas of two inflatable monkeys set against a naked female torso is expected to make up to £2 million.
Following the major Tate Modern exhibition on Mark Rothko, one of his moody Abstract Expressionist works is on offer with an estimate of £2.5 million to £3.5 million.
Painted in 1968, two years before his suicide, Green, Blue, Green on Blue is described as an “important example” of the paintings produced after he suffered a massive aneurysm.
Auction houses are putting the emphasis on the quality of the works on offer in this month's sales.
Nerves were frazzled last November when an important Bacon failed to sell — just months after a triptych by the same artist set a world record price of $86.2 million (£43 million).
Sotheby's is holding its first big Contemporary Art sale tonight since Damien Hirst's £111 millionbonanza last September and the market catastrophe in New York.
