A BODY OF WORK

Francis Bacon’s Study From the Human Body sold at Christie’s on 22 October for £5.5 million, hitting its estimate of between £4.5 million and £6.5 million. The 1991 work is the last of three large-scale portraits depicting the young artist Anthony Zych – the second of which is held in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh. At the same auction, David Hockney’s Portrait of Sir David Webster, a tribute to the Royal Opera House's former general administrator, sold for just under £12.9 million to raise funds for the London venue.