This storied self portrait by Francis Bacon leads one of the finest groups of School of London paintings ever brought to market. No less than four museum quality works by Bacon, Freud and Kossoff are at Sotheby’s Modern and Contemporary evening auction in London on March 4. The Bacon portrait was painted in 1972 in the shadow of a devastating personal loss. Struggling to cope following the death of his partner George Dyer, he obsessively painted himself again and again. Two career-defining portraits by Lucian Freud, and Leon Kossoff’s Children’s Swimming Pool—widely considered the artist’s masterpiece—complete the group. The School of London was a small group of free spirited artists who pursued their separate but related visions. Fully engaged with the world around them, they up-ended tradition and created a completely new path forward for figurative art.
The UK’s first museum exhibition devoted to works on paper by Lucian Freud is at the National Portrait Gallery in London from February 12-May 4. It will explore the artist’s lifelong preoccupation with the human face and figure from the 1930’s to the early 21st century. The focus will be on Freud’s mastery of drawing in all its forms, from pencil, pen and ink to charcoal and etching. A selected group of paintings will open up the dynamic dialogue between his practice on paper and on canvas. Ahead of the show the Gallery has acquired twelve new works from the estate of Lucian Freud including eight etchings. One of them, pictured here, depicts his fashion designer daughter Bella Freud. Bella in her Pluto T-Shirt dates to 1995.
Lucian Freud – Ria, Naked Portrait. Painted in 2006-2007. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £11,810,000
A seminal work by Lucian Freud – Ria, Naked Portrait – with an estimate of £10 million – £15 million is a highlight at Christie’s 20th/21st century evening sale in London on October 9 during Frieze Week. The painting is deeply rooted in the art historical tradition of the reclining female nude, drawing from a lineage that includes Giorgione, Titian, and Velázquez, and finds a modern culmination in Édouard Manet’s Olympia (1863), a work that Lucian Freud greatly admired.
The sitter, Ria Kirby, was an art handler whom Freud initially met at the Victoria & Albert Museum during his joint exhibition with Frank Auerbach in 2006. Ria went on to become one of his most significant sitters during the final decade of his life, with sessions totalling an intense 2,400 hours over the course of 16 months. Ria, Naked Portrait was completed in 2007 and it is the only portrait of Ria the artist realised. The painting is offered at auction for the first time.
Profile Donegal Man by Lucian Freud at Frieze Masters in London.
Lucian Freud’s Donegal Man will be offered by Dickinson at Frieze in London next week with a price tag of £15 million (€17.28 million). On the market for the first time Freud’s Profile Donegal Man, considered to be one of his greatest late portraits, will highlight the exhibition Artists in SOHO, Lawrence to Freud by London gallery Dickinson at Frieze Masters. Freud met Doherty through mutual friend Andrew Parker-Bowles, another Freud subject. “I used to go round to him every Saturday morning from 8.30 to 11.30” Doherty recalled. “He’d spend about two thirds of the time talking”. The painting, one of three separate portraits of Doherty by Freud, was acquired by Doherty directly from the artist. The first involved 100 sittings, the second 85 and the third, a sketch, took 35 sittings. Each sitting lasted for about three hours. Frieze London, running from October 11-15 at Regent’s Park, will bring together emerging and leading galleries spanning 46 countries. Doherty owns developments including shopping centres and hotels in Ireland, Britain, Europe and the US. The painting WAS on loan to the Irish Museum of Modern Art from 2016 to 2021.
Lucian Freud – Night Interior, 1968-70. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £9,586,700
Lucian Freud’s portrait of Penelope Cuthbertson leads the evening sale of Modern and Contemporary art at Sotheby’s in London on June 27. Night Interior is estimated at £8-12 million. The auction offers four pieces by three visionaries of British Art: Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach and Frank Dobson from a distinguished private collection. All four were created within just a few miles of one another in London. Freud’s meditative portrait will be offered alongside two remarkable paintings from Frank Auerbach’s most revered series’: Mornington Crescent and a portrait of his most famed sitter Juliet Yardley Mills, J.Y.M. Seated II. There is as well a rare to market white marble sculpture of a female form by Frank Dobson. Only ten carvings by the artist have appeared at auction in the last thirty years.
Lucian Freud, Scillonian Beachscape (1945-46) (£3,500,000-5,500,000). UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £4,602,000
Lucian Freud’s fascination with the natural world is underlined by two rare paintings at the 20th/21st century evening sale at Christie’s on February 28. Scillonian Beachscape (1945-46) is one of a handful of works inspired by a formative visit to the Isles of Scilly, accompanied by his close friend, the artist John Craxton. During the trip, Freud created a number of drawings and completed this canvas when he returned to London. Garden from the Window (2002) offers a rare glimpse beyond the studio walls and belongs to a series depicting Freud’s garden at 138 Kensington Church St. in London. Christie’s expect that both works, formerly in the renowned collection of Simon Sainsbury, will resonate with collectors especially given the fact that the National Gallery, London centenary retrospective entitled Lucian Freud; New Perspectives transfers this month at the Thyssen Bornemisza in Madrid.
PAUL CEZANNE (1839-1906) – La montagne Sainte-Victoire Painted in 1888-1899 sold for $137,790,000
The most valuable private-collection sale of all time broke the world-record for a sale just halfway through the bidding at Christie’s in New York last night. The first part of the collection of Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen – just 60 lots – made $1,506,386,000. One highlight after another saw five paintings – the most ever in one sale – bringing more than $100 million each, with each one setting a world record.
Three of the lots were among the top lots sold of all time. Georges Seurat’s groundbreaking statement on pointillism, Les Poseuses, Ensemble (Petite version) led the evening at $149,240,000. Paul Cezanne’s monumental landscape, La Montagne Sainte-Victoire brought $137,790,000. Vincent van Gogh’s Verger avec cyprès, which captures the artist’s early encounter with the South of France, achieved $117,180,000. Paul Gauguin’s Maternité II from 1899, one of his most important years, made $105,730,000. Gustav Klimt’s evocative depiction of a Birch Forest, made $104,585,000. The number and size of the record prices set was unprecedented. 60 masterpieces were sold and 20 artists records were set.
The auction broke the world-record for a sale just halfway through the bidding when the auctioneer, Jussi Pylkkänen, knocked down Alberto Giacometti’s sculpture, Femme de Venise III, for $25,007,500. The auction was 100% sold, and 122% sold against low estimate. All of the estate’s proceeds from this historic sale will be dedicated to philanthropy, pursuant to Mr. Allen’s wishes. The second part of the sale takes place later today.
(See posts on antiquesandartireland.com for November 2 and August 26, 2022)
RECORDS
Seurat, Les Poseuses Ensemble(Petite version) – $149,240,000
Cézanne, La montagne Sainte-Victoire – $137,790,000
Van Gogh, Verger avec cypres – $117,180,000
Gauguin, Maternite II – $105,730,000
Klimt, Birch Forest – $104,585,000
Freud, Large Interior, W11 (After Watteau) – $86,265,000
Johns, Small False Start – $55,350,000
Signac, Concarneau, calm de matin – $39,320,000
Ernst, Le roi jouant avec la reine – $24,435,000
Wyeth, Day Dream – $23,290,000
Rivera, TheRivals – $14,130,000
Francis, Composition in Blue and Black – $13,557,500
Steichen, The Flatiron – $11,840,000
Cross, Rio San Trovaso, Venise – $9,550,000
Brueghel, The Five Senses – $8,634,000
Hepworth, Elegy III – $8,634,000
Benton, Nashaquitsa – $5,580,000
Sidaner, La Serenade Venise – $2,100,000
Singer Sargent, The Façade of La Salute, Venice – $3,660,000 – for work on paper
Klee, Bunte Landschaft – $4,860,000 – for work on paper
LUCIAN FREUD (1922-2011) – Large Interior, W11 (after Watteau) made a record $86,265,000
Francis Bacon – Study for Portrait of Lucian Freud, 1964 (Estimate in excess of £35 million) Courtesy Sotheby’s. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £43,336,000
Francis Bacon’s magnetic portrait of Lucian Freud will highlight British Art: The Jubilee Auction at Sotheby’s in London on June 29. Paintined in 1964 the full-length portrait illuminates the powerful dialogue of friendship and epochal rivalry which would engulf two titans of art history and spur them to create some of their greatest works. The pair had first met 20 years earlier and would go on to share an intense friendship for over 40 years until jealousy and petty rows would ultimately splinter relations forever in the mid-1980’s.
Though their visual styles differed considerably, both artists were deeply committed to the human figure, painting each other on numerous occasions over the years. Indeed, for Bacon, Freud would become a recurrent – and one of the most significant – subjects of his work in the 1960’s. Bacon believed that: “the living quality is what you have to get. In painting a portrait, the problem is to find a technique by which you can give over all the pulsations of a person…The sitter is someone of flesh and blood and what has to be caught is their emanation.”
The black and white photographs taken by their mutual friend John Deakin would become Bacon’s primary source material as he painted Freud obsessively. Of great personal significance, Bacon would keep these photographs with him for the rest of his life, and they were rediscovered torn, crumpled and splattered with paint in his studio following his death.
Pablo Picasso’s La fenêtre ouverte (1929) made £16,319,500
The Shanghai to London sale series at Christie’s established a pioneering cultural dialogue between two of the art market’s major hubs and made a total of £249,070,155. Sell-through rates of 90% by lot and 93% by value demonstrated the confidence of the market, building on the successes we witnessed in 2021. Across the three sales, registered bidders from 34 countries and 5 continents reflect the strength of global demand, with 21% of buyers from Americas, 31% APAC and 49% EMEA. Millennial collectors accounted for 28% of registrants.
Shanghai to London led with museum quality paintings by Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Franz Marc, and Pablo Picasso: Franz Marc’s The Foxes (Die Füchse) sold for £42,654,500, setting a new world auction record for the artist and the highest price ever achieved in Europe for a restituted work of art. Francis Bacon’s Triptych 1986-7 made £38,459,206 and Lucian Freud’s Girl with Closed Eyes (1986-87) made £15,174,500.
BRIDGET RILEY (B. 1931) – Reverse courtesy CHRISTIE’S IMAGES LTD. 2022. UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD
The 20th/21st century Shanghai to London evening sale and the Art of the Surreal evening sale at Christie’s on March 1 are now live online for browsing. The 20/21 Shanghai to London series of sales will also be live and livestreamed to salerooms in Hong Kong and New York. This unique platform showcases the finest examples of art that span the dynamic art movements. Offered from the Neumann Family Collection, Bridget Riley’s Reverse (1963) (£3,000,000-5,000,000) alternates triangles of black and white across a hypnotic expanse. The painting was acquired in 1965 and has been unseen in public since then. Lucian Freud’s intimate and tender portrait, Girl with Closed Eyes (1986-87) (£10,000,000-15,000,000) will also make its auction debut.
Lucian Freud (1922-2011) – Girl with Closed Eyes. courtesy CHRISTIE’S IMAGES LTD. 2022. UPDATE: THIS MADE £15,174,500
