Just last week, during Christie’s auction of Peter Simon’s ‘Monsoon’ collection, Francis Bacon’s Figure in Movement (1978) was sold at a whopping £17,185,000. Falling within the upper end of Christie’s estimated valuation of £14 to 18m, the piece was described by the auction house as ‘an extraordinary example of Bacon’s practice.’ The piece’s Fair Market Value (FMV) is usually estimated through specialist evaluation of artist reputation, gallery representation, market longevity, physical attributes, and provenance.
Bacon, an Irish-born self-taught painter, is well recognised for his ‘distinctive and disturbing realism‘. He is frequently described as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century, ‘having escaped the orbit of the pure abstract expressionists to create his own visceral mode of painting portraits‘. In recent decades, his works have skyrocketed in price with his total capitalisation estimated to be around £69m across all mediums.
In addition to Bacon’s growing presence in the fine arts market, the piece was painted on an incredibly large scale (198 x 147.5cm), and has been exhibited in notable galleries such as Tate Gallery, the Hayward Gallery and the Yale Center for British Art. Prior to entering Peter Simon’s private collection in 2006, the piece was owned by several art dealers in London and New York.
Figure in Movement (1978) is one of the artist’s many depictions of his muse and great love, George Dyer, in the years following Dyer’s passing in 1971. Carrying the hallmarks of Bacon’s style, Figure in Movement seems to stray from his usual themes of melancholy and grief. It has been notably suggested that the figure conflates Bacon and Dyer into a single entity, combining Dyer’s frame with Bacon’s sandy-coloured hair, seemingly marking a period of acceptance for the artist. This deviation from Bacon’s usually grim Dyer paintings is perhaps the reason for the piece’s lower price point in comparison to works like Figure in Movement (1976).
Photo by Sydney Moore on Unsplash
