1. Skip to content
  2. Skip to main menu
  3. Skip to more DW sites
In focus
ChristmasSyriaGerman election 2025
Latest audioLatest videos
Live TV

Record price for Bacon artwork

November 13, 2013

A painting by British artist Francis Bacon has become the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction. It fetched a record $142.4 million (106.2 million euros) at Christie's in New York.

https://p.dw.com/p/1AGEE
Artist Francis Bacon's 'Three Studies of Lucian Freud' (photo via reuters)
Image: reuters

Bacon artwork sets new record

The three-paneled artwork entitled "Three Studies of Lucian Freud" sold for $142.4 million at an auction in New York on Tuesday.

"The work was sold for $142,405,000, after six minutes of fierce bidding in the room and on the phone," Christie's said in a statement.

It was the first time the 1969 triptych, by Britain's 20th century figurative artist Francis Bacon, had been offered at auction. It had carried a pre-sale estimate of about $85 million.

The buyer of the artwork has not been disclosed.

The figure easily eclipses the previous record set by Edvard Munch's "The Scream." It sold for $119.9 million in May last year at Sotheby's.

ccp/ch (AFP, Reuters)