Francis Bacon Portrait Fails to Sell at London Auction
Published February 12th, 2009
Bacon’s Man in Blue VI was one of a series of seven paintings he completed in the spring of 1954.
It had been estimated to fetch a price of between £4m and £6m when it went under the hammer at Christie’s auction house in London on Wednesday
The auction house blamed the style of the painting itself rather than its price tag in the economic gloom for disinterest in the sale.
A Christie’s spokesman said: “I don’t think we can blame the credit crunch for the Bacon picture not selling. It was quite an academic piece.
At a similar sale last year, a Bacon artwork sold for £26.3m.
In May a Bacon masterpiece broke the artist’s record at auction after selling for $86.3m (£43m) in New York. The sale of Triptych (1976) beat the previous record of £27m paid for Study For Innocent X.
