The auction that used to be the central artwork will take place on June 29 at the London auction house, with professionals anticipating that the piece might bring up to £35 million ($42 million).
The paintings portray British artist Lucien Freud, who was formerly a friend of Bacon’s before becoming a nemesis by the mid-1980s. Shortly after their completion in 1965, the three artworks were shown jointly in Stockholm and Hamburg. One side panel is presently at a Jerusalem museum, while the other is in a gallery.
For the first time in the artwork’s history, a rare portrait by famed painter Francis Bacon will be auctioned this month at Sotheby’s London.
According to Sotheby’s, which will display the painting the weekend before it gets to auction, “Study for Portrait of Lucian Freud” has been kept from public view for the previous 40 years in a private collection of art.
Freud said, “Francis was clearly somebody who he adored and admired. And there weren’t many people my father talked about in that way, the things he repeated about him were just dazzling, utterly disarming and breathtakingly wonderful, and silencing because of their brilliance. I imagine he must have missed that when he stopped being friendly with him.”
The unpleasant friendship between the two artists, according to Bella Freud, a fashion designer and Lucien Freud’s daughter, left a long shadow.
