Francis Bacon

Irish painter Francis Bacon (1909-1992) has, to put it mildly, a certain amount of esteem laid upon him. His works are highly regarded and for a short while he held the record for having the most expensive piece of art sold. He is renowned, lauded, and hailed as one of the greatest painters of the 20th century. And his work was dark, grim, and often troubling to look at.

His output can be broadly described as sequences or variations on a single motif; beginning with the 1930s Picasso-informed Furies, moving on to the 1940s male heads isolated in rooms or geometric structures, the 1950s screaming popes, and the mid-to-late 1950s animals and lone figures, the 1960s portraits of friends, the nihilistic 1970s self-portraits, and the cooler more technical 1980s late works.

His works, which changed from decade to decade, have been hailed as grotesque and visionary, with art critic John Russell even going so far as to say, "…there was painting in England before the Three Studies, and painting after them, and no one…can confuse the two." "Three Studies" to which Russell refers to is the 1944 triptych known as Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion. Based upon the Greek figures of the Erinyes, aka "the Furies", the painting shows three figures each on their own panel, each appearing distorted and deformed. Their bodies are alien-shaped and they appear to be in a state of distress and agony, the burnt orange background almost like the flames of some Hellish location they are bound to. The painting was a landmark moment for Bacon and catapulted him to fame.

It was November 12, 2013, when one of the Francis Bacon paintings was sold at auction in New York, setting the world record as the most expensive piece of art sold at auction.

Three Studies of Lucian Freud is a 1969 oil-on-canvas triptych, depicting artist Lucian Freud. It was sold in November 2013 for US$142.4 million, which at the time was the highest price attained at auction for a work of art when not factoring in inflation. That record was surpassed in May 2015 by Version O of Picasso's Les Femmes d'Alger series.