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Bacon work falls short of record £26m Bacon painting misses record
(about 21 hours later)
A Francis Bacon painting has been sold at auction for more than £26m. A Francis Bacon painting has sold for more than £26m, just £160,000 short of the auction record for a work by a British or Irish artist.
However, it failed to set a new record for an Irish or British work as expected when it appeared at auction for the first time. Triptych 1974-77, painted in response to the suicide of Bacon's lover George Dyer in 1971, made £26,340,500 at Christie's in London.
Triptych 1974-77 sold for £26,340,500, which is about £150,000 below the current record. But it failed to beat the £26.4m paid for Bacon's Study from Innocent X in New York last year.
It is the last in the series that Bacon painted in response to the suicide of his lover George Dyer in 1971, and was sold at Christie's in London. The Dublin-born figurative painter died in 1992.
Dyer had committed suicide on the eve of the opening of Bacon's last retrospective in Paris, in the hotel room he shared with the artist. Tragic death
Many of Bacon's works after this moment were preoccupied with his lover and the tragic manner of his death. Dyer committed suicide on the eve of the opening of Bacon's last retrospective in Paris, in the hotel room he shared with the artist.
Triptych 1974-77 shows sequential images of dark, ominous umbrellas and Dyer struggling on a near-deserted beach. Many of Bacon's later works were preoccupied with the tragic manner of his lover's death.
Bacon, who died in 1992, currently holds the record for an Irish or British work with Study from Innocent X (1962), which sold in May last year for £26.5m. Triptych 1974-77 - the last of Bacon's paintings created in response to Dyer's death - shows sequential images of dark, ominous umbrellas and his lover struggling on a near-deserted beach.
Bacon's Study Of A Nude With Figure In A Mirror, painted in 1969, is also expected to fetch more than £25m when it is sold at Sotheby's, in London, on 27 February.