Lucian Freud’s “Study for Portrait” auctioned: At the “hammer” for over 40 million euros

Portrait of Francis Bacon that did not appear in public, is going to auctioned with an estimated value that exceeds EUR 40 million (35 35 million).

According to the Athenian News Agency, o Sotheby’s house announced on Wednesday that it is believed to be the most valuable contemporary work auctioned in London for almost a decade.

The “Study for Portrait” by Lucian Freud 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 introduced to them 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 work has been in the same private collection for 40 years, according 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.