NEWS

EWBANK SALE EXPECTED TO RAISE £50,000 MAKES £1.13 MILLION

Previously unseen paintings, personal letters, diaries, photographs and other private documentary material from the famously chaotic London studio of Francis Bacon, the most important British artist of the 20th century, sold for a staggering total of £1,134,450 on 24th April The sale had been expected to raise around £50,000.

Ewbank Auctioneers had been commissioned to sell the archive by Mac Robertson, who intervened when Bacon instructed workmen to throw the material into a skip. The sale came just four days short of the 15th anniversary of Bacon's death.
About 100 buyers crowded into Ewbank's saleroom, joining Internet bidders and dozens more on 10 telephone lines to compete for just 45 lots, ignoring pre-sale estimates and bidding with gusto.

"Bids were coming from everywhere," said auctioneer Chris Ewbank. "There were three of four bidders on every lot and it was a challenge keeping up with them. Our estimates look tame by comparison with the results, but we found it impossible to value the material as there was no precedent to help us. Major works by Francis Bacon can sell for many millions but there have been few, if any, auctions of the kind of material in this archive. We anticipated the sale would be of interest to art historians, and we hoped it would enable buyers and collectors of modest means to acquire works directly from Bacon's studio but we were staggered by the response.

Unidentified Portait by Francis Bacon

The most valuable lot in the sale proved to be one of three oil portraits in the sale of an unidentified figure on a green background. It sold to a continental buyer for an amazing £470,000. It had been estimated at £12,000-18,000.The portrait had certain similarities to those of Lucien Freud but the sitter might also have been Bacon's lover George Dyer, whom the artist painted probably more than anyone else both before and after Dyer's death.

The second highest price of the evening was the £305,500 paid by a London dealer for one of three studies of a dog at rest. Bids from buyers in the room, on the telephone and on the Internet drove the price way beyond the £2,000-3,000 estimate. Two other similar works sold for £35,250 and £21,150 respectively.

Two other portraits by Bacon also sailed past their estimates to be secured by private buyers. One showing the ghostly shape of a man's head on a dark background sold for £50,040, while another sold for £41,125. Each had been estimated at £1,500-2,000. The latter portrait was thickly painted and very dark. It was Bacon's habit to seek to improve his paintings by adding to them later, but this appeared to have been finally abandoned to become a palette for mixing oil paints on the reverse.

Study of a Dog at Rest by Francis Bacon

It was also Bacon's practice to self-edit and destroy a large part of what he painted and the sale included four mutilated portraits in which the facial features had been cut from the canvas, leaving a central hole. Each had been estimated at £1,500-2,500 but the most expensive sold to a continental buyer for £47,000. Two of the others each sold for £35,250 and the fourth for £8,225. A paint spattered canvas from the studio, the front and back with notes in Bacon's hand was purchased by a New York gallery bidding by telephone for £25,850.

Lost to the art world for nearly 30 years, the archive was destined to be thrown out as so much rubbish by an incensed Bacon after he discovered electricians working in his Reece Mews studio had disturbed his workspace. Mac Robertson, who was overseeing the work, arrived to calm Bacon down. As he watched the material being thrown in to the skip, he asked Bacon if he could keep some of it and he filled three bin bags and pit them into the back of his car.

Said auctioneer Chris Ewbank: "If it had not been for the intervention of Mac Robertson, Bacon would have discarded this collection and it would have been lost to the art world. A photograph included in the archive clearly showed the chaotic circumstances in which Bacon worked but far from being rubbish, the material in the sale was a compelling and often poignant link to this artistic genius." The photograph sold for £1,058, more than three times its estimate.

The sale was a unique opportunity for collectors of more modest means to acquire something from the studio. A postcard addressed to Bacon and postmarked 1970 was sent by Richard Hamilton and sold for £940, while a cheque for £10 signed by Bacon, and stubs including one for £500 to Wheelers, one of Bacon's favourite restaurants, and another to his mother for £100 sold for £646.

An unpublished inscribed photograph showing Bacon with his lover Peter Lacy together on a terrace sold for £705 and Bacon's pocket diary for 1971 recording the death and burial of George Dyer sold for £2,350.

Even transparency photographs of Bacon's paintings and photographs he used in his pictures which he preferred to life models were sought after. A group of four transparencies from a triptych and a fourth of a portrait which had been estimated at £200-400 sold for £2,703, and dearest among a group of photographic contact sheets by an unknown New York photographer overturned a £300-500 estimate to sell for £10,810.