May 11, 2017 - Sale 2447

Sale 2447 - Lot 245

Price Realized: $ 6,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 7,000 - $ 10,000
FRANCIS BACON
Triptych.

Color aquatint and etching on Guarro paper, 1981. 385x295 mm; 15 1/4x11 5/8 inches, full margins. Signed and numbered 40/99 in pencil, lower margin. Printed and published by Ediciones Polígrafa, Barcelona. A superb impression of this scarce print with strong colors.

The right panel of the same-titled, three-part work painted by Bacon (1909-1992) from 1974 to 1977. This mysterious triptych, one of the last in a series of triptychs that Bacon painted following the suicide of his long-time companion, George Dyer, in 1971 (Dyer killed himself in the Paris hotel room where he and Bacon were staying on the eve of the opening of a landmark retrospective of Bacon's work at the Grand Palais), is believed to represent Dyer struggling on a beach. In this final panel Dyer is shown under a protective umbrella.

Bacon's oil triptych, on which the aquatints were based, was sold at Christie's, London, February 6, 2008, to a private collector. Sabatier 4 (right panel, see also previous lot).