One of his most widely known themes, on which he based a series of works produced from 1959 to 1962, was that of nude females.
Now the main piece from that period, Crouching Nude, is to be sold as part of Sotheby's Contemporary Art Evening Auction on Wednesday June 29.
It is set to be the star attraction at the event, with an estimated value of £9m ($14.9m).
 Francis Bacon's famous depiction of a nude female stars at Sotheby's |
Very much in keeping with Francis Bacon's traditional style of placing subjects against a blank or nondescript background, to draw the attention of the eye, this painting puts the focus entirely on the naked woman and forces the viewer to look at her.
With a typically anguished look on her face, similar to expressions worn by many of his subjects throughout his work, it is a painting which is designed to repulse yet intrigue us at the same time.
The piece does mark a point however in which Bacon shifted from using static poses, like that of 1953's famous painting Study after Velázquez's Portrait, showing the pope sitting down and fixed, to what has been called an 'explosion of mobile, anatomies' afterwards. The tangled torso of the female here certainly shows that shift in style well.
With the history behind the work, and the name of a legend like Francis Bacon attached to it, there is little doubt that this painting will sell for a huge amount of money, and is a piece any serious art collector needs to invest in.
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