Francis Bacon’s painting, Three Studies of Lucian Freud which was completed in 1969, fetched the highest price ever at an auction in New York this past week.
According to The BBC, the bidding took place at Christie’s auction house. The bidding started at $85 million, but it didn’t take long for the bidding to really take off. The entire round of bidding lasted less than six minutes and ended with a massive bid of just over $142 million. This auction exceeded expectations and surpassed the previous record price for an auction of $119.9 million for Edvard Munch’s The Scream which was achieved in 2012. Christie’s auction house has said that the winning bidder would like to remain anonymous at this point.
The Three Studies of Lucian Freud Painting is a triptych. A triptych is basically a three piece set of paintings. This piece depicted Francis Bacon’s friend Lucian Freud. It was the first time that the painting had ever been offered for sale.