Scott Reyburn announces that Christie’s will be selling two expensive Bacon works in the May sale. One is a self portrait triptych and the other is an untitled work annotated as Nude Crouching on a Rail.

Owners of high-value paintings by Bacon are more confident about selling at auction after the 1964 triptych, “Three Studies for a Portrait of Lucian Freud,” fetched 23 million pounds at Sotheby’s in London on Feb. 10.

“That result helped bring Bacons out of the woodwork,” London-based dealer Offer Waterman said in an interview. “Up until then the market had been in a state of flux. Prices had dropped, and people found it difficult to value his paintings.” [...]

The triptych of head-and-shoulder studies, one of 10 self portraits Bacon executed in the 1970s, has been owned for 35 years by the seller, who has been guaranteed a minimum price. The canvas of the nude, which doesn’t have a price guarantee, was one of a group of paintings by the artist discovered in a storeroom in London’s Chelsea in the 1990s, Christie’s said.

Bacon Self-Portrait Trio May Fetch $20 Million as Demand Grows (Bloomberg)