Francis Bacon’s Portrait of a Dwarf (1975) led Sotheby’s contemporary evening auction in London on October 16th, selling for £13.11 million ($17.58 million). The work sold for well in excess of its £9 million ($12.06 million) high estimate and was the subject of a 20-minute bidding war. In total, the 27-lot sale made £47.56 million ($63.34 million), up 25% from the same sale last year. All prices include fees.
Portrait of a Dwarf is a rare, vertically composed work by Bacon and is thought to be an amalgamation of late partner George Dyer, American photographer Peter Beard, and painter Lucian Freud. Drawing inspiration from Diego Velázquez’s court portraits—particularly A Dwarf Sitting on the Floor—and Auguste Rodin’s expressive sculptures, Bacon places his contorted subject within a shuttered, claustrophobic space. The artist valued the painting deeply, retaining it for years and sometimes showing it publicly as “property of the artist.” Bacon’s current auction record is $142.4 million, set by Three Studies of Lucian Freud (1969), which sold at Christie’s in 2013.
The sale also yielded significant results for several women artists. The top sale was Lucy Bull’s 9:59 (2021), which sold for £1.26 million ($1.68 million), well past its £500,000 high estimate, with seven bidders vying for the painting. This neared the 34-year-old artist’s auction record, which was set at Sotheby’s in 2024 when 16:10 (2020) sold for $1.81 million..
The only auction set on the evening was for Ser Serpas’s Untitled (2022), which sold for £27,940 ($37,400), despite still landing below its low estimate of £30,000 ($40,200).
Following Bacon’s Portrait of a Dwarf, the top lots of the evening overall are as follows:
- Bacon’s Study for Self Portrait (1980) sold for £5.77 million ($7.73 million).
- Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled (The Arm) (1982) sold for £5.53 million ($7.41 million).
- Andy Warhol’s Four Pink Marilyns (Reversal Series) (1986) sold for £4.32 million ($5.78 million).
- Lucio Fontana’s Concetto spaziale, Attese (1964) sold for £2.78 million ($3.72 million).
- Thomas Schütte’s Großer Geist Nr.6 (1998) sold for £2.72 million ($3.64 million).
