The discarded Bacon Pope that could fetch $8m
The painting is covered in a thick varnish, which Bacon would never have approved of
Apainting by Francis Bacon that the artist described as “a throwout” and gave to a friend to paint on is estimated to fetch up to $8million (£6.2million) at Sotheby’s New York next month. The painting is one of at least 50 he made depicting a seated figure on a throne, based on the famous 1650 painting of Pope Innocent X by Diego Velázquez.
The Sotheby’s painting dates from the late Fifties, when Bacon was often in Tangier, Morocco, where his lover, the former fighter pilot Peter Lacy, was living. Their relationship ended in tears. Bacon destroyed much of what he made in Morocco, partly because he was not happy with it and partly in an effort to delete the memory of Lacy, whose presence haunts the paintings.
The example at Sotheby’s is one of only six Tangier paintings that survived the cull. One is in the Musées royaux des Beaux-arts, Brussels. The artist gave the other five to his friend, the artist Nicolas Brusilowski, to use for his own paintings.
Almost inevitably, Brusilowski kept and sold them. They should have been included in Ronald Alley’s 1964 Bacon catalogue raisonné, but Alley was never told about them. Had he known, he would, no doubt, have included them in his section on Bacon’s “abandoned paintings”, which neither the artist nor his gallery, Marlborough, would exhibit or sell. Thus demoted, they would have had little value.
It was not until 10 years after Bacon died in 1992 and control of his estate moved away from Marlborough to the artist’s lover, John Edwards, alongside two dealers appointed by the executor to represent the estate in the market, that Bacon’s abandoned paintings gained some credence. Many, after all, were inherited by the estate, which, by the time Edwards had spent most of his inheritance, needed income.
Then, in 2006, the estate began work on a new catalogue raisonné, and works that had not been approved of previously were reinstated, without the previous “abandoned” stigma.
Some sold for impressive sums on the open market: in 2007 and 2008, two Tangier Pope paintings that had been given to Brusilowski appeared at auction in Paris, bearing certificates of authenticity from the Bacon estate’s authentication committee. One sold at Christie’s above estimate for €6.9million (£4.7million), and another at Sotheby’s for €4.6million. Grégoire Billault, the Sotheby’s expert at the sale, was, coincidentally, previously a researcher for the Bacon estate, and is now presiding over the latest Tangier painting sale in New York.
Here, the seller is the Brooklyn Museum, to which it was gifted by a private collector in 1981. Because Bacon never gave it a title, the museum called it “Personnage”. But since then – and since the publication of the catalogue raisonné in 2016 – its title has been changed to Pope, which lends it more status in connection with Bacon’s famous series.
In its sale catalogue, Sotheby’s describes Pope as “akin to the greatest portraits the artist produced”. And, yet, when Bacon discovered that the painting he had given to Brusilowski to paint on had been donated to Brooklyn, he wrote to the museum, stating: “It was a throw-out, and it depresses me [Brusilowski] did not destroy the image as he undertook and that it has, years later, found its way on to the art market, and I would prefer if it were not exhibited.” The letter is quoted in the printed version of the artist’s catalogue raisonné, but not in the Sotheby’s sale catalogue.
Sources in the art market who prefer not to be identified have rated the painting as of inferior quality. Apart from being poorly constructed, they say, it is covered in a thick varnish, something Bacon would never have approved of. This, and Bacon’s attitude to it, explains why it is valued at nearly one tenth of a smaller, but finished, screaming Pope painting that sold in May for $50million.
But, it’s still a Bacon. For a collector who is not fussed about the quality or what the artist thought, it has the full approval of the estate and could, therefore, be seen as a bargain. Certainly, someone shares that view – the painting comes with a third-party guarantee, so is effectively already sold.