(London) A portrait of British artist Lucian Freud, painted by his friend the painter Francis Bacon, sold for more than 43.3 million pounds at auction in London on Wednesday.
Posted at 1:48 p.m.
The portrait, which had been estimated at more than 35 million pounds, was the centerpiece of a sale organized by Sotheby’s, bringing together works by Andy Warhol, Banksy and David Hockney.
On this canvas, which belonged to a private European collector and had not been shown to the public since 1965, Lucian Freud stares at the artist with clenched fists, ready to get up from the bench on which he is sitting.
It is “a testament to Francis Bacon’s ability to evoke emotion and capture in paint the complexities of the human psyche,” Sotheby’s said.
Painted in 1964 by the artist at the height of his career, the painting illustrates “the powerful dialogue of friendship and rivalry that would overwhelm the two titans of art and spur them to create some of their greatest works”. added the auction house in a press release.
The two artists, who had met 20 years earlier, shared an intense friendship for more than four decades until jealousy and feuds put an end to it in the 1980s.
Before the sale, Tom Eddison, director of the contemporary art department at Sotheby’s, had pointed out to AFP that the portrait conceals “20 years of history, friendship, artistic rivalry, peer to peer intertwined”.
Francis Bacon painted Lucian Freud, a major 20th century painter and grandson of the founder of psychoanalysis, 14 times between 1964 and 1971.
A triptych dedicated to his friend was sold for more than 142 million dollars in 2013 in New York, a record for the British painter.
Born in 1909 in Dublin, Francis Bacon died in Madrid in 1992.