Francis Bacon
Blue-chipEgon research · Artist market profile
The market, in context.
Explore Francis Bacon’s auction history alongside the exhibitions, collections and gallery relationships behind the market.
Auction record
$142,405,000
Three Studies of Lucian Freud (1969), triptych
View the sale and market context →Institutional research
Collections & exhibitions
Read holdings, exhibition history and their qualifications in context.
Read the institutional research →
Egon investment scores
Market position
Research updated
Auction record
The world record for any artwork at auction at the time. Prior Bacon record: Triptych (1976), $86m in 2008. A record is not a floor - no Bacon has come close to this level in the decade since.
Auction highlights
Two Figures (the other half of the canvas from which Portrait of a Dwarf was cut)
- Result
- GBP 5.5m with fees
- Venue and date
- Christie's London, February 2016
Self-Portrait (1972)
- Result
- Not supplied
- Venue and date
- Sotheby's London, Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction, 4 March 2026
Portrait of a Dwarf (1975)
- Result
- GBP 13.1m with fees, approx. $17.6m (ARTnews); HENI reports $17.49m, 118% above the low estimate and backed by a guarantee
- Venue and date
- Sotheby's London, Contemporary Evening Auction, 16 October 2025
2 further auction entries on record for Francis Bacon — inside Egon.
Pricing
Gallery pricing
No primary market exists - the artist died in 1992. All transactions are secondary. Private-treaty pricing through Gagosian, Marlborough and other blue-chip dealers is unpublished; direct enquiry is the only route to a current private-sale level.
Temporal context
- 2008
- Triptych (1976) $86m - the pre-2013 artist record.
- 2013-2014 peak
- $142.4m record (Nov 2013); GBP 42.2m/$64.7m non-triptych record at Christie's London (2014).
2025-2026 recovery
Two consecutive above-estimate eight-figure results at Sotheby's London: GBP 13.1m with fees (Oct 2025) and GBP 16.03m with fees (Mar 2026), the latter the top lot of a $175m white-glove sale. A third major work (Two Studies for Self-Portrait, 1977) carried a GBP 8m-12m estimate in June 2026.
2015-2022 contraction
Artnet's February 2022 'Appraisal' column was headlined on Bacon's auction sales having fallen more than 80% since 2014 - the clearest published marker of the post-peak contraction.
Current bands by work type
- Major triptych museum grade
- Effectively unpriced by recent auction - the last comparable public benchmark is 2013. Any current estimate is extrapolation.
- Secondary quality or late studies
- Roughly $4m-$6m at auction on the supplied 2026 database evidence (Study for Portrait).
Prints and lithographs signed editions
Roughly $3,000-$25,000 at auction; 1977 lithographs such as Autoportrait and Homme ecrivant reflete dans un miroir traded at Christie's in December 2024 and March 2025 (prices login-gated on Artsy). This tail supplies most of the lot count and almost none of the value.
- Single panel large painting prime 1960s-70s
- GBP 10m-45m historically; GBP 13m-16m with fees for the two 2025-26 examples that actually cleared.
- Small format self portraits 14x12 and dual panel
- GBP 8m-12m estimate band in 2026 (Two Studies for Self-Portrait, 1977).
Summary
A deep, long-established blue-chip market with an extreme top and a broad, low-priced print tail. The artist record - $142,405,000 for Three Studies of Lucian Freud (1969) at Christie's New York on 12 November 2013 - has not been approached since, and the market contracted sharply after 2014 before a visible recovery in 2025-26. Recent top results cluster in the $15m-$25m band for single-panel paintings of high quality and provenance.
Liquidity
Risk
Top-end liquidity is provenance- and guarantee-dependent. Portrait of a Dwarf was reported by HENI as guarantee-backed; the Lewis March 2026 works were explicitly offered without guarantee or irrevocable bid and still cleared above estimate - a genuinely positive unsupported-demand signal.
Assessment
High for a deceased modern master. Multiple lots per major London/New York season across paintings, works on paper and prints; three upcoming lots recorded in the supplied database.
Depth by segment
Deep and liquid in prints and small works; genuinely thin at the top, where only a handful of significant paintings come to market in any year and single-owner collections (Lewis) supply a disproportionate share of the material.
Comparables
Market tier peers
Picasso, Modigliani, Klimt, Giacometti - Bacon is routinely offered alongside them in single-owner 'titans' sales. For scale, in the same June 2026 sale a Modigliani nude led at $63.5m and a restituted Klimt portrait carried a GBP 20m-30m estimate, while Klimt's Lederer portrait had made $236.4m in New York in November 2025. Bacon is blue-chip but currently trades a tier below the very top of the modern market.
School of london peers
Lucian Freud, Leon Kossoff, Frank Auerbach - the Lewis March 2026 group of Bacon/Freud/Kossoff made $47.7m combined, with the Bacon self-portrait alone taking roughly 45% of that. Bacon commands a substantial premium to Freud and a very large one to Kossoff and Auerbach.
Collector base
Pattern
Ultra-high-net-worth collectors of trophy modern figuration, heavily Anglophone with growing Asian participation at the top; institutional buying at the very top is now rare because prices exceed most acquisition budgets.
Named collectors and holdings
- Joe Lewis and his daughter Vivienne Lewis - the currency trader and Tottenham Hotspur owner built one of the most important private collections of modern figurative painting; Sotheby's states his East End origins gave him a natural affinity with the School of London painters. The March 2026 four-work sale was his first public sale from the collection and was used, per The Art Newspaper, as a market test before the June 2026 'much broader aperture'.
- Michael Peppiatt, art historian and Bacon biographer - was given Two Figures by the artist; it sold at Christie's London in February 2016 for GBP 5.5m.
- Eric Hall - early patron associated with the 1944 triptych now at Tate (donor route reported in the standard literature; the Tate credit line was NOT retrieved and must not be inferred).
- John Edwards - Bacon's heir; the studio was donated to the Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin.
Auction history
Record
- Date
- 12 November 2013
Note
The world record for any artwork at auction at the time. Prior Bacon record: Triptych (1976), $86m in 2008. A record is not a floor - no Bacon has come close to this level in the decade since.
- Work
- Three Studies of Lucian Freud (1969), triptych
- Price
- $142,405,000
- Venue
- Christie's New York, Post-War and Contemporary evening sale
Non triptych record
- Date
- 2014 (reported)
Note
Described by Artnet as the record for a non-triptych by Bacon. The Artnet page carries a misleading recent 'page age' but its content is written around the 1 July 2015 Sotheby's London sale; treat the event as 2014, not 2024.
- Work
- Portrait of George Dyer Talking (1966)
- Price
- GBP 42.2m ($64.7m)
- Venue
- Christie's London
Egon database figures 2025 onward
Recent sample
10 sold lots; range $9,030 to $21,458,037; average $4,463,238 (basis unknown for several). The spread illustrates the two-tier structure: unique paintings in the eight-figure band, signed lithographs in the four-figure band.
- Cached lot count
- 25
- Cached sold count
- 14
Provenance caveat
These come from the supplied EGON auction database (2025 onward, partial). They are reported with their own provenance and are NOT merged with the web-sourced figures above.
Highest in database
$21,458,037 premium-inclusive - Self-Portrait, Sotheby's, March 2026. Consistent with the independently reported GBP 16.03m/$21.5m result for the 1972 Self-Portrait, and NOT the artist's auction record.
Sell through caveat
The supplied record explicitly declines to state a canonical sell-through rate because unsettled lots skew toward passes. Do not read the cached 14/25 as a 56% sell-through.
Investment outlook
Key risks
- The 2013 record is a historical peak, not a floor; the 80%+ decline in aggregate sales from 2014 to 2022 is the base rate against which the current recovery should be read.
- Extreme value concentration in a small number of prime 1960s-70s paintings; late works and studies trade at a fraction.
- Authentication: there is no active authentication committee following the final meeting on 23 May 2014 (reported by MyArtBroker, consistent with the Estate's own 2014 'final call for works' notice). Inclusion in the Harrison catalogue raisonne is now the principal reference. A catalogue raisonne entry is a scholarly record, not an authentication opinion, and the closure of that committee does not establish that no other qualified expert can assess a work - but any uncatalogued work carries unresolved attribution risk.
- The print market is liquid but exposed to fakes and misdescribed 'after' impressions; several low-value 2026 lots are explicitly catalogued as 'after' a painting.
Trajectory
Recovering from a deep post-2014 contraction. Two consecutive above-estimate eight-figure sales in Oct 2025 and Mar 2026, and a reported 26.5% year-on-year increase in the equivalent Sotheby's London sale total, suggest renewed depth at the GBP 10m-20m level rather than a return to 2013-14 peak pricing.
Supply dynamics
The Lewis disposals are releasing rare fresh-to-market material. Single-owner supply supports the market while demand is strong and becomes a risk if absorption weakens. The Estate's catalogue raisonne closed the corpus in 2016, supporting authentication confidence and capping supply.
Institutional presence
Research updated
Overview
Bacon is held in depth by national and first-rank international museums across at least a dozen countries, has had monographic retrospectives at first-rank museums across six decades, and is the subject of a five-volume scholarly catalogue raisonne produced independently of any dealer. His absence from a survey of postwar painting would be conspicuous.
Upcoming
Status
No specific 2026-2027 museum exhibition was confirmed within this round's search budget. The near-term calendar identified is auction-driven (Sotheby's Lewis Collection cycle, March and June 2026, plus three upcoming lots in the supplied database) rather than exhibition-driven. This absence reflects the sources checked, not evidence that no exhibition is scheduled.
Exhibitions
- Note
- This is a selection of the most significant; Bacon's full record runs to several hundred institutional presentations worldwide.
Gallery exhibitions of note
- Note
- First showing of Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944); per John Russell the work 'caused a total consternation'.
- Year
- April 1945
- Venue
- Lefevre Gallery, London
- Note
- First solo exhibition at Marlborough.
- Year
- 1959
- Venue
- Marlborough Fine Art, London
- Note
- 'Francis Bacon: Couplings', which included Lying Figure (1959, CR 59-08); documented on the Estate's own site.
- Year
- 2019
- Venue
- Gagosian, London
Major monographic retrospectives
Note
Career retrospective; Bacon painted six pope pictures in 1961 specifically for it, including Study for a Pope I. Documented via Sotheby's and Artnet accounts of that painting.
- Year
- 1962
- Venue
- Tate Gallery, London
- Note
- Major retrospective; George Dyer died two days before the opening.
- Year
- 1971
- Venue
- Grand Palais, Paris
- Note
- Reported in the standard literature; not re-verified in this round.
- Year
- 1975
- Venue
- Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
- Note
- Second Tate retrospective; reported, not re-verified.
- Year
- 1985
- Venue
- Tate Gallery, London
- Note
- Centenary retrospective that travelled across three first-rank institutions; reported, not re-verified in this round.
- Year
- 2008-2009
- Venue
- Tate Britain / Museo Nacional del Prado / Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Note
- 'Bacon en toutes lettres'; reported.
- Year
- 2019
- Venue
- Centre Pompidou, Paris
Note
'Francis Bacon: Man and Beast' - Artnet's February 2022 market appraisal was explicitly pegged to this exhibition. The RA is an exhibiting academy, not a collecting museum, so it counts as exhibition evidence only.
- Year
- 2021-2022
- Venue
- Royal Academy of Arts, London
Credit line caveat
No museum object page was successfully fetched in this research round, so NO verbatim acquisition credit line is recorded for any holding. 'credit line unknown' here means NOT RETRIEVED - it does not mean unpublished, and it is not evidence of a gift route. Note also that the credit-line test is designed for acquisitions contemporaneous with a live market; for an artist of Bacon's generation the relevant institutional evidence is depth of national-museum holding and repeated state-museum retrospectives, both of which are established.
Museum collections
Tate (Tate Britain / Tate Modern), London
- Tier
- First-rank
Holdings
14 works recorded in Wikidata (a floor, not a holdings count). Includes the foundational Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944), on view at Tate Britain.
Credit line
credit line unknown - not retrieved in this round. The standard literature associates the 1944 triptych with the early patron Eric Hall, but the Tate credit line itself was not retrieved and must not be inferred.
Museum of Modern Art, New York
- Tier
- First-rank
- Holdings
- 7 works recorded in Wikidata (floor). Includes Painting 1946, one of the earliest museum acquisitions of a Bacon.
- Credit line
- credit line unknown - the MoMA object page was not retrievable in this round (URL not in prior context).
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
- Tier
- First-rank
- Holdings
- Confirmed holding institution via the supplied museum-API name-match data.
- Credit line
- credit line unknown
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
- Tier
- First-rank
- Holdings
- Three Studies for a Crucifixion (1962), triptych, each panel 198.1 x 144.8 cm.
- Credit line
- credit line unknown - the Guggenheim object page was not retrieved; location confirmed via Wikipedia.
Musee National d'Art Moderne / Centre Pompidou, Paris
- Tier
- First-rank
- Holdings
- 3 works recorded in Wikidata (floor)
- Credit line
- credit line unknown
View 12 more records
Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin
- Tier
- First-rank
- Holdings
- 3 works recorded in Wikidata (floor)
- Credit line
- credit line unknown
Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia
- Tier
- Major university museum with an exceptional Bacon concentration
Holdings
15 works recorded in Wikidata - the largest single concentration in the supplied data, reflecting the Sainsbury family's direct patronage of Bacon.
- Credit line
- credit line unknown
National Galleries of Scotland
- Tier
- National museum
- Holdings
- 4 works recorded in Wikidata (floor)
- Credit line
- credit line unknown
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
- Tier
- National museum
Holdings
4 works recorded in Wikidata (floor); the NGA's Triptych (1970) is one of the most significant Bacons in a public collection outside Europe/US (the specific work attribution was not re-verified in this round).
- Credit line
- credit line unknown
Art Institute of Chicago
- Tier
- First-rank
- Holdings
- Confirmed holding institution via supplied museum-API data
- Credit line
- credit line unknown
Cleveland Museum of Art
- Tier
- First-rank encyclopedic
- Holdings
- Confirmed holding institution via supplied museum-API data
- Credit line
- credit line unknown
Victoria & Albert Museum, London
- Tier
- First-rank (design/prints)
- Holdings
- Confirmed holding institution - likely prints/editions given the V&A's collecting remit
- Credit line
- credit line unknown
Smithsonian Institution (incl. Hirshhorn), Washington DC
- Tier
- First-rank
- Holdings
- Confirmed holding institution via supplied museum-API data
- Credit line
- credit line unknown
Kunstmuseum Den Haag
- Tier
- Major municipal/national museum
- Holdings
- 3 works recorded in Wikidata (floor)
- Credit line
- credit line unknown
The National Gallery, London
- Tier
- First-rank
Holdings
3 works recorded in Wikidata (floor) - note the National Gallery's remit is historic European painting, so this figure may reflect loans, exhibition association or a database artefact rather than accessioned holdings; not verified.
- Credit line
- credit line unknown
Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel
Tier
Private foundation - NOT counted as a first-rank museum acquisition for institutional scoring, though its Bacon holdings and exhibitions are substantial
- Holdings
- 4 works recorded in Wikidata (floor)
- Credit line
- credit line unknown
Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin
- Tier
- Municipal museum
- Holdings
- Holds the relocated and reconstructed 7 Reece Mews studio and its contents, donated by John Edwards (reported; not re-verified).
- Credit line
- credit line unknown
Awards and recognition
Note
Bacon famously declined honours, including a knighthood and the Order of the Companions of Honour (reported in the standard literature; not verified in this round). His recognition is expressed through museum retrospectives rather than prizes. No prize or fellowship record was retrieved in this round.
Publications and scholarship
Francis Bacon: Catalogue Raisonne
- Year
- 2016
Detail
Five volumes; went to press in 2016 following a final call for works in 2014. Cited by volume and page (e.g. Volume III, pp. 828-829 for Three Studies for a Self-Portrait, 1967) and by CR number (e.g. Lying Figure, 1959 = CR 59-08). The definitive scholarly apparatus for the painted oeuvre, produced by the Estate rather than a dealer.
- Editor
- Martin Harrison, FSA
- Status
- documented
- Publisher
- The Estate of Francis Bacon Publishing
'Catalogue Raisonne Focus' research notes
- Detail
- Continuing published research on individual works, drawing on Harrison's entries.
- Publisher
- francis-bacon.com (The Estate of Francis Bacon)
Note
Extensive independent literature exists (Sylvester's Interviews with Francis Bacon; Peppiatt; Stevens & Swan, Francis Bacon: Revelations) - reported from general knowledge, not re-verified in this round.
Career & Biography
Research updated
Identity
- Based
- London for most of his career; studio at 7 Reece Mews, South Kensington, from 1961 until his death
- Birth
- 28 October 1909, Dublin, Ireland (born to English parents)
- Death
- 28 April 1992, Madrid, Spain
- Gender
- Male
- Full name
- Francis Bacon
- Nationality
- British (Irish-born); described in the press as 'Irish-born British' or 'Irish-born Modernist'
Note on identity
Not to be confused with Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626), the philosopher - a frequent cause of name-collision in database name-matching. The absence of a Getty ULAN record in the supplied context does NOT reflect this artist's standing: Bacon is one of the most heavily documented painters of the postwar period, with a five-volume catalogue raisonne and holdings in dozens of major public collections.
Career timeline
Event
Works as a designer; paints intermittently; excluded from the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition in London; later destroys most pre-1944 output.
- Period
- 1929-1936
Event
Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944) first shown at the Lefevre Gallery, London - the work that established his reputation; the figures are based on the Eumenides/Furies of Aeschylus's Oresteia. Now at Tate Britain.
- Period
- April 1945
- Sourced
- Yes
Event
Painting 1946 completed; acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, New York - his first major museum placement (credit line not retrieved in this round).
- Period
- 1946
- Event
- Velazquez-derived 'Pope' series; Bacon made over 45 pope paintings, each based on Velazquez's c.1650 Portrait of Pope Innocent X.
- Period
- 1950s-60s
- Sourced
- Yes
Event
Joins Marlborough Fine Art, London; first solo exhibition at the Marlborough Gallery in 1959 (Lying Figure, 1959, CR 59-08, was painted in the run-up to it).
- Period
- 1958-59
- Sourced
- Yes
View 10 more records
- Event
- Paints Study for a Pope I as one of six pope paintings made in 1961 for his 1962 Tate retrospective.
- Period
- 1961-62
- Sourced
- Yes
Event
Retrospective at the Grand Palais, Paris; his partner George Dyer died of a drug and alcohol overdose two days before the opening, an event that reshaped the subsequent black triptychs and 1970s self-portraits.
- Period
- 1971
- Sourced
- Yes
- Event
- Paints the Self-Portrait later sold at Sotheby's in March 2026, made 'in the shadow of devastating personal loss'.
- Period
- 1972
- Sourced
- Yes
- Event
- Retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (reported; not re-verified). Paints Portrait of a Dwarf, later divided by the artist.
- Period
- 1975
Event
Paints Two Studies for Self-Portrait (oil on canvas in two parts, 35.5 x 30.5 cm), executed after the deaths of George Dyer, John Minton, Peter Lacy and his mother; later in the Lewis Collection.
- Period
- 1977
- Sourced
- Yes
- Event
- Second Tate retrospective (reported).
- Period
- 1985
- Event
- Dies in Madrid; estate passes largely to John Edwards.
- Period
- 1992
Event
7 Reece Mews studio donated by John Edwards to the Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin, where it was relocated and reconstructed (reported; not re-verified).
- Period
- 1998
Event
The Estate of Francis Bacon drops its legal action against Marlborough; Professor Brian Clarke states the Estate will redirect resources to creative enterprises. The John Edwards Charitable Foundation is set up to advance the study of Bacon; the Estate had been valued at around GBP 11m a decade earlier.
- Period
- 2002
- Sourced
- Yes
Event
Final meeting of the Francis Bacon Authentication Committee held in London on 23 May 2014; the Martin Harrison-edited Catalogue Raisonne went to press and was published in 2016 (five volumes).
- Period
- 2014-2016
- Sourced
- Yes
Studio practice
Methods
Worked alone from photographs and printed matter rather than from the live model; painted on the unprimed reverse of the canvas; used rags and dry brush dragged laterally to smear features; worked without preparatory drawings by his own account; destroyed large quantities of work he judged failures, and sometimes physically divided finished canvases.
Output scale
Per the Estate's catalogue-raisonne accounting, the later self-portraits include 14 single panels and 11 triptych studies in the 14 x 12 inch format, with only three works in the dual-panel format - an indication of how tightly bounded and countable the corpus is.
Documented instance
Portrait of a Dwarf (1975) was originally part of a larger canvas showing two intertwined figures representing Bacon and George Dyer; Bacon later divided it and gave the other half (Two Figures) to the art historian Michael Peppiatt.
Education and training
- Status
- Standard literature; no primary source retrieved in this research round.
- Formal training
- None. Bacon had no art-school education and is universally described as self-taught as a painter.
Early career before painting
Left the family home as a teenager; time in Berlin and Paris c.1927-29, where exposure to Picasso (the Paul Rosenberg exhibition, Paris 1927) is the conventionally cited trigger for his turn to art; worked in London as a furniture, rug and interior designer in the late 1920s-early 1930s before committing to painting.
Influences and context
- Note
- The Velazquez obsession and Aeschylus source are documented in the sources consulted; the wider list is standard literature.
Contemporaries
The 'School of London' - Lucian Freud, Leon Kossoff, Frank Auerbach, Michael Andrews, R.B. Kitaj. Sotheby's frames the group as artists whose work confronted the human condition with 'uncompromising intensity'.
Pictorial sources
Velazquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X (c.1650), which Bacon said 'just haunts me'; Picasso's late-1920s biomorphs; Muybridge's motion photography; Eisenstein; medical and forensic photographs; Aeschylus and T.S. Eliot.
Personal life shaping the work
The deaths of Peter Lacy (1962), his mother, John Minton and above all George Dyer (1971) drive the funerary self-portraits and black triptychs of the 1970s; auction houses and the trade press explicitly market the 1970s self-portraits on this biography, which is itself a price-relevant fact.
Artistic Profile
Research updated
Evolution
- Phase
- 1944-1950s
- Character
- Breakthrough with the Furies triptych; screaming heads, businessmen in glass boxes, first popes; dark tonality, striated 'curtain' veils.
- Phase
- 1960s
Character
Peak market period. Full-colour flat grounds, the space-frame cage, the large Crucifixion triptychs (1962 Guggenheim, 1965), Portrait of George Dyer Talking (1966). The most valuable segment of the oeuvre.
- Phase
- 1970s
Character
The black triptychs and memorial self-portraits following George Dyer's death in 1971 - the 1972 Self-Portrait and the 1977 Two Studies for Self-Portrait belong here; darker grounds, funerary tone, the artist's own face as subject.
- Phase
- 1980s-1991
Character
Cooler, sparser, more diagrammatic compositions; pale cerulean and ochre grounds, isolated figures in bare perspectival rooms (Study for Self-Portrait 1980, Study for a Portrait 1981, Studies of the Human Body). Generally the lowest-priced painted segment and the most heavily represented in the print market.
Influences
- Velazquez, Portrait of Pope Innocent X (c.1650) - an acknowledged obsession
- Picasso, especially the late-1920s biomorphic figures seen in Paris in 1927
- Eadweard Muybridge's motion photography
- Aeschylus's Oresteia and T.S. Eliot
- Medical, forensic and press photography; Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin (reported)
Themes and subjects
- The human figure as meat and nervous system - vulnerability rather than likeness
- The scream and the open mouth
- The Crucifixion as a secular structure for slaughter and violent death (1944, 1962, 1965 triptychs)
- The Pope after Velazquez - over 45 pope paintings across the 1950s-60s
- Portraits of an intimate circle (George Dyer, Lucian Freud, Isabel Rawsthorne, Henrietta Moraes, John Edwards), painted from photographs
- Self-portraiture as self-erasure - the smeared face on a monochrome ground, intensified after the deaths of Dyer, Lacy, Minton and his mother
- Classical myth as armature - the Eumenides/Furies of Aeschylus's Oresteia underlie the 1944 triptych
- Isolation, alienation, existential dread
Movements and periods
- Postwar British figuration
- School of London (with Freud, Kossoff, Auerbach, Andrews, Kitaj)
- Existentialist figuration
- Adjacent to but deliberately outside Surrealism (rejected from the 1936 London International Surrealist Exhibition) and outside Abstraction
Fingerprint assessment
Verdict
The supplied Egon fingerprint is broadly CORRECT and my research CONFIRMS its core reads. Its 'medium confidence / varied dispersion' label is explained by a structural feature of the sampled corpus rather than by unreliability: the sample mixes unique oil paintings with signed lithographic editions that reproduce oil effects, and mixes the 1940s-60s cage/pope idiom with the 1970s-80s small-format self-portraits. Those are genuinely different registers; the low coherence reflects breadth.
Confirmed
- Postwar (1945-1970) bracket and gestural/representational registers - correct, though the corpus extends to 1991 and the most active recent market segment is the 1970s-80s, later than the tagged bracket.
- Flat monochrome or single-colour ground against warm, chromatically 'eventful' flesh - confirmed; the 1944 triptych's hot orange ground is the prototype.
- Centralized composition, figure-ground isolation, frontality, soft/smeared edges - confirmed.
- Moods tagged alienated / anxious / tense and themes of identity, the body, the gaze, portraiture as presence - confirmed by the critical framing of works currently in the market.
Extensions and corrections
- The 'easel-scale' tag should be read as BIMODAL, not single-mode. Bacon worked at two deliberate scales: the 14 x 12 inch head format (the Estate counts 14 single panels, 11 triptych studies and only three dual-panel works) and the roughly 198 x 145 cm panel used for large triptychs. Little sits between them, and the distinction is the single largest driver of price.
- SPATIAL CAGE: the fingerprint's 'thin ruled lines demarcating a shallow spatial cage' is a nameable signature device (Bacon's 'space frame') and should be elevated from a formal observation to a signature signal.
- THE TRIPTYCH is structural, not incidental - sequential panels in gold frames under glass, deriving from altarpieces and from forensic photo sequences. Both the record work and the 1944 breakthrough are triptychs.
- SOURCE MATERIAL: Bacon painted from photographs and printed matter rather than from life, which produces the 'photographic source dissolved through gestural smearing' read. Muybridge motion studies and Velazquez reproductions are documented sources.
- MEDIUM CAUTION FOR ATTRIBUTION: a large share of market-sampled 'Bacon' images are signed lithographs reproducing painted works (e.g. Autoportrait, 1977 and Homme ecrivant reflete dans un miroir, 1977, both 102 x 72.3 cm colour lithographs on wove Arches paper; Metropolitan Triptych). Several 2026 lots are catalogued as 'after' a painting. Smooth tonal gradation, mechanically even ruled lines and a sheet around 102 x 72 cm indicate a print, not a painting - a distinction worth roughly three orders of magnitude in value.
- PHYSICAL INTERVENTION ON FINISHED WORK: Bacon sometimes cut finished canvases apart (Portrait of a Dwarf was severed from a double-figure composition). Irregular cropping or an oddly weighted single-figure field can reflect this practice rather than damage.
Techniques and mediums
Prints
Signed and numbered colour lithographs and aquatints, largely 1970s-80s, produced under Bacon's close supervision and typically reproducing or reworking painted compositions, often on wove Arches paper.
Formats
Small 14 x 12 inch heads; single large panels; three-panel triptychs of approximately 198 x 145 cm per panel; occasional two-part works (only three dual-panel self-portraits per the Estate's count).
Painting
Oil on canvas (frequently with pastel, dust and other matter), worked on the unprimed reverse; no preparatory drawing by Bacon's own account; paint applied thinly then disturbed with rags, brushes and throwing.
Destruction and editing
Systematic destruction of unsatisfactory work and physical division of finished canvases - both facts of the material record with direct consequences for supply and for format anomalies.
Signature bodies of work
- Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944), Tate Britain
- The Pope / Screaming Pope series (1950s-60s)
- Crucifixion triptychs (1962 Guggenheim; 1965)
- The George Dyer portraits and black triptychs (1963-1973)
- Small-format self-portraits, 14 x 12 inches (1970s-80s)
- Three Studies of Lucian Freud (1969) - the record work
Style and visual language
Figurative painting pushed to the edge of legibility. A single body or head is isolated at the centre of a flat, saturated, non-illusionistic field, enclosed by thin ruled 'space frame' lines that imply a room or cage without describing one. Flesh is built in scumbled orange, sienna and bruised pink, then dragged laterally with dry brush or rag so features smear into partial illegibility - the handling is itself the violence. Thin oil on raw, unprimed canvas leaves the weave visible; the reverse of the canvas was routinely used as the painting surface. Works are traditionally framed in gold and glazed, setting the smeared image behind a reflective barrier that implicates the viewer.
Critical Reception
Research updated
Critical reception
Summary
Bacon's critical position is settled: he is treated in the standard literature as the central figure of postwar British painting and one of the most important figurative painters of the twentieth century. Current debate concerns interpretation and biography, not standing.
Scholarly attention
The five-volume Harrison catalogue raisonne (2016) and the continuing 'Catalogue Raisonne Focus' research notes constitute a sustained scholarly apparatus independent of any commercial dealer, alongside the Sylvester interviews and multiple major biographies (reported).
Historical reception
The 1944 triptych's first showing at the Lefevre Gallery in April 1945 hit a nerve with a war-ridden audience; the critic John Russell recorded that it 'caused a total consternation'. The Estate describes the triptych as manifesting Bacon's breakthrough in the British art scene.
Contemporary critical framing
Recent trade and critical coverage frames Bacon through the School of London and the human condition: Sotheby's describes those painters as confronting the human condition with 'uncompromising intensity'. The 2026 Lewis sale coverage frames the 1972 Self-Portrait through Bacon's bereavement, and Artlyst describes the subject of Portrait of a Dwarf as 'isolated, intense, and disturbingly present'.
Publications and media
Market journalism
- Date
- 4 February 2022
- Item
- 'The Appraisal: Tracing the Declining Market for Francis Bacon, Whose Auction Sales Have Plummeted Over 80 Percent Since 2014'
- Outlet
- Artnet News
- Significance
- Pegged to the Royal Academy's major Bacon exhibition; the clearest published statement of the post-2014 contraction.
- Date
- 16 October 2025
- Item
- Report on the October 2025 Sotheby's London contemporary evening sale led by Portrait of a Dwarf
- Outlet
- ARTnews
- Date
- 6 March 2026
- Item
- 'Sotheby's Kicks Off London Marquee Auctions With $175 Million White-Glove Sale' - Bacon's 1972 self-portrait named top earner of the sale
- Outlet
- Artnet News
- Date
- 30 April 2026
- Item
- 'British billionaire's GBP 200m art collection most expensive ever offered in UK'
- Outlet
- The Art Newspaper
- Date
- 26 February 2026
- Item
- Editorial previewing a Sotheby's sale including the 1972 Bacon self-portrait at GBP 8m-12m
- Outlet
- Artsy
Additional dating correction
An Artnet News page returned by search with a 'page age' of 10 June 2025 ('Record-Setting Francis Bacon Pope Painting Might Provide Fourfold Return on Investment') is in substance a 2015 article about the 1 July 2015 Sotheby's London sale of Study for a Pope I, and its reference to Portrait of George Dyer Talking selling for GBP 42.2m 'last year' points to 2014, not 2024. Search-index page ages proved unreliable for this artist and were not used as event dates.
News record classification correction
The supplied EGON news record labels both recent items 'Auction Record'. CLASSIFYING THEM MYSELF FROM THE QUOTED EVIDENCE, NEITHER IS AN ARTIST AUCTION RECORD: (1) the 30 April 2026 Art Newspaper item is a PRE-SALE ANNOUNCEMENT of a single-owner consignment (Joe Lewis) in which Bacon is one of several named artists - any record it produced was for a single-owner collection sale in London (GBP 296m/$390m per ARTnews), not for Bacon; (2) the 26 February 2026 Artsy item is a PRE-SALE ESTIMATE announcement (GBP 8m-12m) for the 1972 self-portrait, not a result. That painting subsequently sold for GBP 16.03m with fees - a strong above-estimate result, but roughly one-seventh of Bacon's actual record of $142,405,000 (Christie's New York, 2013). The correct labels are 'consignment/pre-sale announcement' and, for the March outcome, 'above-estimate evening-sale result'. THE QUOTE WINS OVER THE LABEL.
Academic discourse and positioning
Bacon anchors the postwar existentialist figurative lineage between Picasso's late-1920s biomorphs and Velazquez on one side and Freud, Kossoff, Auerbach and later painters of the distorted body on the other. His engagement with Velazquez, by his own account obsessive - 'it just haunts me' - and his use of Aeschylus's Furies place him in a deliberately Old Master frame despite the modernity of his handling.
Gallery & Representation
Research updated
Fair presence
Bacon works appear regularly on blue-chip dealer stands at TEFAF Maastricht, Art Basel and Frieze Masters as secondary-market material. No specific 2026 fair placement was confirmed within this round's search budget.
Representation
Galleries
The Estate of Francis Bacon
Role
Not a commercial gallery but the controlling rights-holder: administers copyright (works reproduced as 'The Estate of Francis Bacon / DACS London'), publishes the catalogue raisonne, and is the reference point for owners of works. Formerly ran the Authentication Committee, whose final meeting was 23 May 2014.
- Tier
- 2
- Since
- 1992
- Status
- estate
- Location
- London (London House, Unit 2, 266 Fulham Road)
Gagosian
Role
The principal blue-chip dealer staging Bacon exhibitions in cooperation with the Estate - e.g. 'Francis Bacon: Couplings', Gagosian London, to 3 August 2019, whose press release the Estate itself cites. Handles private-treaty secondary material. Exhibition and secondary-market activity, not representation of a living artist.
- Tier
- 2
- Since
- 2000s
- Status
- secondary
- Location
- London / New York / international
Marlborough Fine Art
Role
Bacon's dealer from the late 1950s; his first solo exhibition at the Marlborough Gallery was in 1959. The Estate pursued and then in 2002 dropped a major legal action against Marlborough over the artist-dealer relationship.
- Tier
- 1
- Since
- 1958
- Status
- former
- Location
- London / New York
Sotheby's
Role
Has handled the most significant recent Bacon material - the 1972 Self-Portrait (March 2026), Portrait of a Dwarf and Study for Self-Portrait 1980 (October 2025), and Two Studies for Self-Portrait from the Lewis Collection (June 2026).
- Tier
- 2
- Status
- secondary
- Location
- London / New York
Christie's
Role
Holder of the artist auction record (Three Studies of Lucian Freud, $142,405,000, New York, November 2013) and of the non-triptych record (Portrait of George Dyer Talking, GBP 42.2m, London, 2014, reported). Continues to sell Bacon prints and works on paper.
- Tier
- 2
- Status
- secondary
- Location
- New York / London
Lefevre Gallery
- Role
- Showed the 1944 triptych in April 1945 - the breakthrough exhibition.
- Tier
- 1
- Since
- 1945
- Status
- former
- Location
- London
Representation note
Bacon died in 1992, so there is no primary market and no living-artist representation. Work trades in two distinct channels: (1) major paintings almost exclusively through Sotheby's and Christie's evening sales in London and New York, increasingly sourced from single-owner collections such as the Lewis Collection, and (2) signed lithographs and editions, which trade continuously at Christie's, Phillips and Bonhams in the low four to low five figures. Private treaty through Gagosian and other blue-chip dealers exists but is unpublished. The Estate controls copyright and the catalogue raisonne but does not sell.
Geographic reach
Fully global. Primary trading hubs are London and New York; institutional depth spans the UK, Ireland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United States and Australia. The Lewis Collection was previewed at Sotheby's Breuer Building in New York (2-18 May 2026) before its London exhibition (10-23 June 2026), evidencing transatlantic demand-building for Bacon-led material.
Representation history
Lefevre (1945 breakthrough) - Hanover Gallery (late 1940s-1950s, reported) - Marlborough Fine Art from 1958/59 - post-1992 Estate control with Gagosian as the leading exhibiting dealer.
Sources & research notes
Egon’s artist research combines historical auction records, recent sales, institutional history, critical reception and gallery information. Researched auction records and auction highlights are identified separately.
Read prices with their work, sale date, currency and stated basis. Egon’s market assessments are distinct from reported auction results.
Reference: Egon, “Francis Bacon: Market Intelligence & Investment Profile.”
Evidence & qualifications
These notes preserve the sources, status and qualifications recorded in the research.
Three Studies of Lucian Freud (1969) sold for $142,405,000 at Christie's New York, setting the then world record for an artwork at auction; the previous Bacon record was Triptych (1976) at $86m in 2008.
Market · Documented · Event: 2013-11-12 · Source retrieved: 2026-09-14
AP/CBC contemporaneous report. Remains the artist record on the evidence checked; no later sale retrieved approaches it. A record is not a price floor.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/francis-bacon-painting-sells-for-auction-record-142m-us-1.2423893Bacon's 1972 Self-Portrait hammered at GBP 13.5m and sold for GBP 16.03m with fees (approx. $21.5m), the top lot of Sotheby's London Modern & Contemporary evening sale on 4 March 2026, against a GBP 8m-12m estimate; no guarantee or irrevocable bid was attached.
Market · Documented · Event: 2026-03-04 · Source retrieved: 2026-09-14
Corroborated by Artnet News ('GBP 16 million ($21.5 million)') and by the supplied EGON database figure of $21,458,037 premium-inclusive for 'Self-Portrait, Sotheby's, Mar 2026'. The three figures are consistent; variance is rounding/FX.
https://en.thevalue.com/articles/joe-lewis-art-collection-auction-sothebys-london-evening-sale-2026Portrait of a Dwarf (1975) sold at Sotheby's London on 16 October 2025 for GBP 13.1m with fees (approx. $17.6m) against a GBP 6m-9m estimate.
Market · Documented · Event: 2025-10-16 · Source retrieved: 2026-09-14
HENI reports the same lot at $17.49m, 118% above low estimate, and states it carried a guarantee; ARTnews does not mention a guarantee. Sale-total and sell-through figures also differ between the two (GBP 47.6m/88.9% vs $59.97m/85% of 27 announced lots); both reported as published rather than reconciled.
https://www.artnews.com/art-news/market/sothebys-london-contemporary-evening-sale-francis-bacon-1234757709/Bacon's aggregate auction sales fell by more than 80% between 2014 and 2022.
Market · Reported · Event: 2022-02-04 · Source retrieved: 2026-09-14
Artnet Analytics headline claim; only headline and standfirst retrieved, not the underlying dataset. Directionally corroborated by the absence of any sale approaching the 2013 record in the decade since.
https://news.artnet.com/market/the-appraisal-francis-bacon-2065463Portrait of George Dyer Talking (1966) made GBP 42.2m ($64.7m) at Christie's London, the record for a non-triptych by Bacon.
Market · Reported · Event: 2014 (per the source's 'last year', relative to its July 2015 subject matter) · Source retrieved: 2026-09-14
DATING CORRECTION: the search index reported this page with a June 2025 'page age', but its content concerns the 1 July 2015 Sotheby's London sale of Study for a Pope I. It is a 2015 article about a 2014 sale, NOT a 2025 event, and must not be logged as a recent catalyst.
https://news.artnet.com/market/francis-bacon-pope-painting-auction-306033Two Studies for Self-Portrait (1977), oil on canvas in two parts, 35.5 x 30.5 cm, was lot 19 in 'Masterpieces from the Lewis Collection', Sotheby's London, 24 June 2026, estimated GBP 8m-12m.
Market · Documented · Event: 2026-06-24 · Source retrieved: 2026-09-14
Pre-sale identity, date and estimate confirmed on the auction house's own page and corroborated by The Art Newspaper and Artlyst. The lot-level RESULT was not independently retrieved; the supplied EGON database records $11,417,168 (basis unknown), within the GBP estimate band at prevailing rates but a database figure, not a published one.
https://www.sothebys.com/en/series/masterpieces-from-the-lewis-collectionThe Lewis Collection single-owner sale realised GBP 296m ($390m), a record for a single-owner collection sale in London; the Sotheby's London double-header totalled $520.7m.
Market · Reported · Event: 2026-06-24 · Source retrieved: 2026-09-14
Taken from the ARTnews search-result summary; a direct fetch was blocked (url_not_accessible). This is a collection-level record, not a Bacon artist record.
https://www.artnews.com/art-news/market/sothebys-london-june-2026-evening-sale-report-joe-lewis-1234790208/Portrait of a Dwarf was originally half of a larger canvas showing Bacon and George Dyer; Bacon divided it and gave the other half (Two Figures) to Michael Peppiatt, which sold at Christie's London in February 2016 for GBP 5.5m with fees.
Market · Documented · Event: 2025-09-15 (article); 2016-02 (the Two Figures sale) · Source retrieved: 2026-09-14
The Art Newspaper pre-sale report.
https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/09/15/francis-bacon-painting-one-half-of-a-canvas-divided-by-the-artist-expected-to-sell-at-sothebys-for-%C2%A39mThere is no current Francis Bacon authentication committee; the Estate's committee held its final meeting in London on 23 May 2014 and the catalogue raisonne went to press in 2016.
Market · Documented · Event: 2014-05-23 · Source retrieved: 2026-09-14
The Estate's own notice documents the final committee meeting and the press date. The further claim that authentication 'largely ceased' after 1992 and that collectors now rely on the catalogue raisonne is attributed to MyArtBroker, a dealer platform, not to the Estate. A catalogue raisonne entry is a scholarly record, not an authentication opinion, and one body's closure does not establish that no qualified expert can assess a work.
https://www.francis-bacon.com/news/francis-bacon-catalogue-raisonne-edited-martin-harrison-final-call-worksThree Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944) is held at Tate Britain and was first shown at the Lefevre Gallery, London, in April 1945.
Institutional · Documented · Event: 1944 (work); 1945-04 (first exhibition) · Source retrieved: 2026-09-14
Location confirmed by the Wikipedia infobox and corroborated by the Estate's own artworks page. The Tate accession record and its credit line were NOT retrieved; the credit line is unknown, not absent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Studies_for_Figures_at_the_Base_of_a_CrucifixionThree Studies for a Crucifixion (1962) is held by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.
Institutional · Reported · Event: 1962 (work); acquisition date unknown · Source retrieved: 2026-09-14
Encyclopedic source only; the museum's own collection record and credit line were not retrieved. Acquisition date and route unknown.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Studies_for_a_CrucifixionBacon painted six pope pictures in 1961 for his career retrospective at the Tate the following year, one of which was Study for a Pope I.
Institutional · Documented · Event: 1961-1962 · Source retrieved: 2026-09-14
Auction-house curatorial text, independently corroborated by Artnet News. Establishes the 1962 Tate retrospective as a fact of the record.
https://www.sothebys.com/en/videos/francis-bacons-study-for-a-pope-iGeorge Dyer died of a drug and alcohol overdose two days before Bacon's 1971 Grand Palais retrospective opened in Paris.
Institutional · Reported · Event: 1971 · Source retrieved: 2026-09-14
Trade-press account restating auction-house catalogue material; consistent across sources including 2026 Lewis sale coverage, which describes the 1972 Self-Portrait as painted 'in the shadow of devastating personal loss'.
https://www.incollect.com/articles/sotheby-s-will-offer-a-rare-francis-bacon-self-portrait-next-monthThe Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonne, edited by Martin Harrison, went to press in 2016; the Authentication Committee held its final meeting in London on 23 May 2014.
Institutional · Documented · Event: 2014-05-23 (final committee meeting); 2016 (publication) · Source retrieved: 2026-09-14
The Estate's own announcement. Volume/page citation practice corroborated by the Estate's 'Catalogue Raisonne Focus' note on Three Studies for a Self-Portrait, 1967 (Vol. III, 828-829).
https://www.francis-bacon.com/news/francis-bacon-catalogue-raisonne-edited-martin-harrison-final-call-worksThe Sainsbury Centre holds 15 Bacon works, Tate 14 and MoMA 7 - the largest recorded concentrations in the supplied aggregate data.
Institutional · Unresolved · Source retrieved: 2026-09-14
These are Wikidata community-curated counts supplied in the research context, not museum-API holdings figures. They are floors, not totals, and no institution's own collection database was queried to confirm them in this round.
John Russell recorded that the 1944 triptych 'caused a total consternation' at its April 1945 Lefevre Gallery showing, and the work represented Bacon's breakthrough.
Critical · Reported · Event: 1945-04 · Source retrieved: 2026-09-14
The Estate's own artworks page quoting Russell; an Estate publication is not a neutral critical source, though the Russell attribution is standard in the literature.
https://www.francis-bacon.com/artworks/paintings/1940sArtnet News published a market appraisal headlined on Bacon's auction sales falling over 80% since 2014, timed to a major Royal Academy exhibition.
Critical · Reported · Event: 2022-02-04 · Source retrieved: 2026-09-14
Only headline and standfirst retrieved; methodology not examined.
https://news.artnet.com/market/the-appraisal-francis-bacon-2065463Bacon said of Velazquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X that he became obsessed by it and that 'it just haunts me'.
Critical · Reported · Event: 2015 (article); statement undated · Source retrieved: 2026-09-14
Quoted in a trade blog reproducing auction-house catalogue material; the original interview source (likely Sylvester) was not consulted directly.
https://www.paulfrasercollectibles.com/blogs/art-photography/francis-bacons-study-for-a-pope-i-to-lead-contemporary-art-sale
Research updates by section
These dates show when Egon’s research sections were updated. Source retrieval dates, where supplied above, refer to individual evidence notes.
Ranking updated . Research sections follow their own update dates.
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