Auction house brings home the €25.4m Bacon

It took less than five minutes to more than realise the price Christie’s auction house had hoped for, but Francis Bacon’s work has that affect on buyers.

Last night, an unknown art lover forked out £21.3 million (€25.4m) for Bacon’s 1963 Portrait of Henrietta Moraes in the space of time it takes most of us to buy €4 Lotto quickpick.

Bacon’s portrait of Henrietta — a larger-than-life figure in 1960s Soho and the former lover of Lucian Freud — is seen as a breakthrough in his painting of female nudes.