"sexually charged" nude portrait by Francis Bacon has sold for £21 million (Photo)

A nude portrait by Francis Bacon, of the Soho model Henrietta Moraes, has sold for £21m at Christie's in London.

The Portrait Of Henrietta Moraes, one of the Irish artists favorite models, beat its estimate by £1 million, selling for a total of £21,321,250.
She lies, legs spread wide and one breast exposed, in a pose that — for all the accomplishment of the artist — fails to convey what is so utterly fascinating about the beguiling model Henrietta Moraes.
She was the legendary Fifties beauty who sat, or more properly reclined, for the Francis Bacon portrait — described as 'sexually charged' by Christie's.

The painting had been in the hands of a private collector and has not been seen in public for 15 years. The amount was one of the highest fetched by a work of post-war contemporary art at Christie's.

"sexually charged" nude portrait by Francis Bacon
has sold for £21 million

The current record for a Bacon was set at Sotheby's in New York in May 2008, when one of the Irish-born artist's Triptychs sold for $86.3m (£55m).

Bacon painted more than a dozen portraits of Moraes, a familar Soho denizen who also posed for Lucien Freud. Francis Outred, of Christie's, said the painting sold this week was "one of the most seductive and sexually-charged" he had ever encountered.

The £21.3m price - paid by an anonymous bidder - was more than £1m above the auction house's top estimate. The same event also saw a Lucien Freud etching sold for £145,250 - the highest amount that one of the late artist's prints has ever fetched at auction.