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Video: How one of the most expensive paintings went under the hammer in just 6 minutes: "Three sketches for a portrait of Lucian Freud"
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Three Sketches for a Portrait of Lucian Freud is a 1969 triptych by Irish-born British artist Francis Bacon. The painting depicts his colleague Lucian Freud. The triptych was sold in November 2013 for $ 142.4 million, which at the time of the sale was the highest auction price for a work of art.
History of creation
The triptych was painted in 1969 at the Royal College of Art in London, where Bacon had a studio large enough to simultaneously work on three adjacent canvases. The triptych was exhibited for the first time in 1970 at the Galleria d'Arte Galatea in Turin, and then was included in a retrospective of the Grand Palace in Paris and the Kunsthalle in Düsseldorf. Three panels of the triptych were sold separately in the mid-1970s. At the time, Bacon did not want the panels to be sold separately, writing under the left panel that it was "meaningless unless combined with two other panels." Nevertheless, the panels were held by various collectors until the late 1980s, when one of the original buyers, a collector from Rome, named in some sources as Francesco de Simone Nikes, put the entire composition together. The assembled triptych was exhibited in the United States at the Yale Center for British Art in 1999.
Plot
The plot is impossibly simple: it is a triple portrait of Freud in the geometric plane. The three panels of the triptych are built in the same way: the same background, the same cane chair, the same geometric structure around the hero, the same character Lucian Freud, who wears the same shirt and gray trousers, but different shoes and socks … Three panels seem to create a short film, views of the hero from different angles, different perspectives within one picture. Even the pose of the hero is identical: Freud is depicted sitting, his right leg is crossed over the left, his hands are on his knees. Bacon depicted his hero's legs so infinitely long that they seem to go beyond the boundaries of the imaginary plane of the geometric figure, but the rest of the human figure is inside it.
In his triple portrait of Lucian Freud, the artist uses the archaic format of the Gothic triptych to give the image variety and impressive authority. In the Middle Ages, paintings with many panels were hinged so they could fold and unfold to tell a religious story. In addition, triptychs were often used to decorate the most important parts of the church - the altars.
Perhaps Bacon chose this format out of great respect for his (at that time) friend. Bacon, who prided himself on his Irish heritage, was fascinated by the Christian nature of the triptych. Yes, Francis Bacon is quite difficult to put on a par with Matisse or Cézanne. Bacon paints as if he was taught by the old masters 400 years ago, and then in some unknown way plucked out in the modern era.
Historical sale of the triptych
On November 12, 2013, Elaine Wynn, co-owner of the Wynn Casino Empire chain and ex-wife of Las Vegas tycoon and collector Stephen Wynn, acquired Francis Bacon's Three Sketches for a Portrait of Lucian Freud for a record $ 142.4 million!
Thus, this painting became the most expensive work of art ever sold at a public auction. The whole lot sale process took only six minutes. After "hard" bidding, several bidders increased the price of Bacon's triptych from $ 80 million to the latest price of $ 127 million. The record even broke the acclaimed sale of Edvard Munch's The Scream, which was sold in 2013 at Sotheby's for $ 120 million.
Bacon and Freud
Bacon and Freud were not only friends, but artistic rivals. They were introduced in 1945 by artist Graham Sutherland. They quickly became close friends who met frequently and even painted each other several times, starting in 1951 (the year Freud first posed for Bacon). Three Sketches for a Portrait of Lucian Freud is part of a series of major triptych portraits of Bacon's friends from the 1960s. Other heroes include Isabelle Ravstorn, Muriel Belcher and George Dyer.
After the historic sale of the triptych, two friends, two artists, two peers Freud and Bacon literally revolve around each other as two great British artists of the 20th century. They will likely always be referred to together as individualists who challenged the inevitable progress of contemporary visual art. Unfortunately, the long-term friendship of the craftsmen ended due to a quarrel. A mysterious spat between Bacon and Freud occurred in 1965. They never made up until Bacon's death. The reasons for the incident are still not known for certain. Although, there is an opinion that the art market has already reconciled them. Without their direct participation. Firstly, their works are side by side in leading galleries, their paintings are comparable in prices. And second, when we talk about Bacon, I cannot but mention Freud's influence on him and on his work, as well as vice versa.
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