Sotheby’s estimates that the “Study for Portrait” painted in 1964 will sell for over 40 million euros.
Portrait of Lucian Freud created by Francis Bacon and has not appeared in public since it was first exhibited 58 years ago auctioned with an estimated value in excess of EUR 40 million (GBP 35 million).
THE Sotheby’s house announced on Wednesday that it is believed to be the most valuable contemporary work auctioned in London in almost a decade.
The «Study for Portrait» painted in 1964 and shows Freud with his bare chest and face monstrous and confused, sitting on a bench with his arms outstretched and his fists clenched.
It is based on a black and white photograph by English photographer John Dickin, a mutual friend of the two artists, and sheds light on a friendship and rivalry that was incredibly intense, but also incredibly bitter.
The painting was the central panel in a triptych exhibited in 1965 at a touring exhibition in Hamburg, Stockholm and Dublin. With Bacon’s consent, the triptych was disbanded, with the left panel now belonging to a private collection and the right to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
Bacon and Freud met in 1944 when they were introduced by the painter Graham Sutherland. They immediately became friends and in the 50’s and 60’s they saw each other almost every day, both in their studios and eating and drinking in the most famous hangouts of Soho.
By the 1980s, they had left because of petty quarrels and jealousy, with Freud clearly tired of Bacon.
The project is in the same private collection for 40 yearsaccording to a newspaper article The Guardian and will be on public display at Sotheby’s Gallery on New Bond Street in London from 23 to 29 June.
It will go on sale on June 29 at British Art: The Jubilee Season, along with a portrait of Banksy’s Winston Churchill and a painting by David Hockney’s Woldgate Woods.
