Can’t afford Francis Bacon? Buy the plates

A self-portrait by Francis Bacon sold for almost €20 million at Sotheby's in London this week. Two Studies for Self-Portrait, painted in 1977 when the artist was aged 68, made £14.7 million (€19.8 million). The unnamed buyer was a private European collector.

With his paintings now routinely selling for millions, Bacon’s work is now beyond the reach of all but the world’s wealthiest art collectors. But an English auction house has unveiled an unusual Bacon lot to be offered for sale on Thursday.

Duke’s Auctioneers of Dorchester in Dorset will offer “a set of kitchen crockery that was used daily by Francis Bacon, one of Britain’s most important post-war artists” with an estimate of £10,000-£ 15,000. Bacon was born in Ireland and grew up in Co Kildare but he lived and worked in London – in a house with a studio at Reece Mews, South Kensington.

Unique opportunity Auctioneer Amy Brenan of Duke’s said the crockery had been “used by the artist at his London home and later at his country retreat, Dale Farm in Suffolk” and its sale “provides the unique opportunity to own something relating to Bacon without having to spend multiple millions of pounds to secure one of his paintings”.

Although Bacon was famously indifferent towards the country of his birth, ironically the crockery is decorated in those most traditional Irish colours: green, white and gold. The crockery, which includes plates and tureens, was made by the Staffordshire pottery and porcelain manufacturer Cauldon in the late 1930s and sold by the shop Maple and Co Ltd, in London’s Tottenham Court Road.

The auction house said the “simple china” was reputedly a gift to the artist from his sister Winifred Bacon who moved from Ireland, first to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and later to London where she lived just around the corner from her brother at Stanhope Gardens, South Kensington.

Winifred Bacon died in 1981, while Francis Bacon died in 1992.

In a statement, Duke’s auctioneers said: “Francis Bacon’s champagne drinks parties are well documented and one has to wonder who of his artistic friends would have eaten off these plates!

“Lucian Freud and Frank Auerbach were known to have visited both Reece Mews and Dale Farm. Or perhaps he was more inclined to use them for mixing his paintings or the vegetable tureens for storing his paint tubes. To own the service would be to touch part of the genius that was Bacon.”

See dukes-auctions.com