Francis Bacon - Evening Editions London Tuesday, February 26, 2013 | Phillips

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  • Literature

    Alexandre Tacou 9
    Bruno Sabatier 14

  • Catalogue Essay

    After Study for a Portrait of Pope Innocent X (After Velazquez), 1956

  • Artist Biography

    Francis Bacon

    Irish-British • 1909 - 1992

    Francis Bacon was a larger-than-life figure during his lifetime and remains one now more than ever. Famous for keeping a messy studio, and even more so for his controversial, celebrated depictions of papal subjects and bullfights, often told in triptychs, Bacon signified the blinding dawn of the Modern era. His signature blurred portraits weren't murky enough to stave off his reputation as highly contentious—his paintings were provocations against social order in the people's eye. But, Bacon often said, "You can't be more horrific than life itself."
     
    In conversation with yet challenging the conventions of Modern art, Bacon was known for his triptychs brutalizing formalist truths, particularly Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, which Bacon debuted in London in 1944, and Three Studies of Lucian Freud, which became famous when it set the record for most expensive work of art at auction at the time it sold in 2013.

    View More Works

19

Study for a Portrait of Pope Innocent

1989
Lithograph in colours, on Rives paper, with full margins,
I. 95 x 69 cm (37 3/8 x 27 1/8 in);
S. 115.5 x 76.8 cm (45 1/2 x 30 1/4 in)

signed and numbered 14/60 in pencil (there were also 20 artist's proofs), published by Michel Archimbaud for the Librarie Séguier, Paris for IRCAM - Centre Pompidou, minor scuffing and scattered foxing throughout margins, otherwise in good condition, framed.

Estimate
£15,000 - 20,000 

Sold for £21,250

Evening Editions

27 February 2013
London