Francis Bacon – Portrait of Man with Glasses III, 1963. UPDATE: THIS MADE £6,635,000
Francis Bacon’s Portrait of Man with Glasses III from 1963 will be a highlight at Christie’s 20th/21st Century evening sale in London on March 5. At auction for the first time it has been exhibited extensively worldwide featuring in 17 major international retrospectives and serving as the cover image for the catalogue of the Francis Bacon/Henry Moore: Flesh and Bone exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford in 2013. Most recently, it was displayed at London’s National Portrait Gallery as part of Francis Bacon: Human Presence, reaffirming its status as a cornerstone of Bacon’s oeuvre.
The painting’s distorted yet captivating features reflect Bacon’s deep exploration of emotion, form, and the human condition: the bared teeth, rendered with thick impasto and delicate colour, embody his ambition to “paint the mouth like Monet painted a sunset”. The estimate is £6 million – £9 million.