Following the excitement of $21.1 million paid for a painting by the African-American artist Kerry James Marshall at Sotheby’s Wednesday night, the top end of the art market returned to more tried and tested brands at Christie’s and Phillips evening contemporary auctions that concluded New York’s spring season of marquee sales.
Buyers were looking for works fresh to the market from long-term collections, rather than resales.
Christie’s included an impressive gold-framed 1977 “Study for Portrait” by Francis Bacon fresh from the Monaco-based collection of Magnus Konow, a friend of the artist, who acquired the work soon after it was painted. It was estimated to sell for at least $30 million and — pushed by four telephone bidders — it reached $49.8 million with fees, the top contemporary price of the week.
The 78-inch-high canvas featured a partially clothed male figure — and bloody shadow — inspired by Bacon’s lover, George Dyer, who committed suicide in 1971, just before the opening the artist’s first retrospective in Paris. Paintings from this period that evoke Bacon’s grief for Dyer are among the British artist’s most admired works, and this was a work that had never been offered at auction before.
“It was a good picture and a good price,” said Ivor Braka, a London dealer who specializes in Bacon.
Market freshness was also on tap with “Blueberry,” a sumptuous 1969 painting by the French-based Abstract Expressionist painter Joan Mitchell offered by the Hillman Family Foundation. It had been bought by the distinguished American collectors Henry and Elsie Hillman back in 1970.