A triptych by Irish-born artist Francis Bacon is expected to fetch around £25 million (€33.4 million) when it is sold next month, Christie's said today.
The work, entitled Triptych 1974-77, is a response to the suicide of his lover George Dyer and may challenge the record for the artist which stands at £26.6 million for Study from Innocent X, 1962, sold by Sotheby's in New York in May, 2007.
The triptych will go under the hammer in London on February 6th.
"Painted just in time for his 1974 show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York as a tribute to George Dyer, Triptych 1974-77is the most important triptych by Francis Bacon to appear ever at auction," said Pilar Ordovas, head of postwar and contemporary art at Christie's in London.
The painting features two images of a figure writhing on a beach under dark umbrellas, while the third, central part shows a figure overlooked by two sinister faces.
Dyer committed suicide in 1971 in a Paris hotel room that he and the artist were sharing.
Christie's goes head to head with rival Sotheby's, which is offering Bacon's Study of a Nude with Figure in a Mirroron February 27th. The work is estimated at being worth between £18 million to £25 million.
PA