The Power of Paint

Photo courtesy Christie's

A work from the Merians collection offered at Christie's London June 20: Francis Bacon, "Two Men Working in a Field" (1971), est. $10-14 million

Lucian Freud Francis Bacon Frank Auerbach Tyeb Mehta FIAC Lures Iconic (and Expensive) Works to Paris The Pavilion Heats Up Hirst Among the Masters Splashy Hirst Show Opens to Rough Reviews

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In varying combinations, the men shared meals and a dealer, went to the same parties and bars and painted one another. "I think it is a question of spirit," Auerbach told Michael Peppiatt, Francis Bacon's biographer, in discussing what these artists had in common, "and a sense of isolation and a certain degree of puritanical thoroughness."

By 1976, when the London-based American painter R.B. Kitaj coined the phrase School of London, hoping it would put local artists on the international map, the five men who have remained its core had been painting for more than a quarter century; Bacon, born in 1909 and the oldest of the group, had been at work even longer. From the start all had been almost devotionally committed to routine. Some, like Kossoff, were early to bed, early to the studio. Others—most infamously Bacon—might stay out late or even all night, getting up to things best left unsaid, but were early to the studio every morning just the same.

Another shared trait was a desire, or need, for intimate, unbroken connection with their work, and their subjects. London neighborhoods, friends, family—in Freud's case, his dogs—are repeatedly depicted. Collector Ruth Bromberg, author of catalogues raisonnes of Canaletto and Walter Sickert prints, has sat for Auerbach every Thursday since 1991. And she's a relative newcomer. Others have been sitting for him religiously twice as long.

The late Helen Lessore, a painter and dealer, was another thread drawing these five artists together. In 1953, Lessore (later this writer's mother-in-law) showed Bacon at the Beaux Arts Gallery in Mayfair. In 1955, after seeing Auerbach's thickly painted work at the Royal College of Art, she bought six pictures from him—for a total of £60. Lessore gave repeated shows to Auerbach, Kossoff and Andrews. (Her planned show of Freud didn't come off because he went instead to Marlborough Fine Art.) Bacon, a friend until his death, compared Lessore's role in the London art world of the 1950s and '60s to Vollard's in the Paris of an earlier era.

In 1995 the influential critic David Sylvester, who had known the artists from early on, wrote of Auerbach's and Kossoff's "fine disregard for fashion." He could have said the same about Freud, Bacon and Andrews. Each painter has had his singular vision and development, certainly. But all have kept the figure as their focus throughout the decades, as art styles evolved from Abstract Expressionism through Pop, Minimalism, and Conceptualism to pickled sharks.

"They haven't changed, but fashion has," says Michael Findlay, director of New York's Acquavella Gallery, Freud's dealer since 1992. "People are excited to see the power of the loaded brush." Auction specialists see a similar shift.

"Now the trend is back to painting and the figure," says Pilar Ordovas, head of Christie's London postwar and contemporary department. Recognition and higher prices for the School of London have followed.

In February, Bacon and Auerbach made news when paintings by them set world auction records that were multiples of previous highs. At Christie’s King Street, Bacon's haunting 1956 pope, Study for a Portrait 11, sold for £14,020,000 ($27.5 million), nearly twice the $15,024,000 (£7.9 million) brought in November 2006 at Sotheby's New York by his Version No. 2 Lying Figure With Hypodermic Syringe (1968). And Auerbach's 1977 Camden Theatre in the Rain made £1,924,000 ($3.8 million) at Sotheby’s London, almost quadrupling the £456,000 ($844,400) of his 1993 Mornington Crescent.

Immediately people began to wonder: Were these sales mere hot spots in a notably torrid contemporary-art market, fated to be followed by a fast cooling down? Or were they a platform from which prices would rocket higher still? And if so, would the value of other School of London painters shoot up too?

Bacon had an international audience almost from the start of his career; in fact, Peppiatt points out that collectors abroad seemed to appreciate his work before those at home. In contrast, although the others have had buyers outside Britain, their collectors have been more local. Secondary-market dealer Ivor Braka, who has handled School of London artists for some 30 years and says he has "sold more Bacons and Auerbachs than anybody else, aside from the primary galleries," believes that it wasn’t until 1992 that a major change occurred in this situation.

"What springboarded the whole thing was Bill Acquavella taking Lucian Freud," he says, adding that when the Metropolitan Museum then exhibited the painter in 1993, it was "a wake-up call for American buyers." The raised awareness of and prices for one School of London member served as a sort of pulley system, hoisting up the rest.

"Bacon's prices have escalated the whole group's," says Ordovas. Interest in that artist's work increased international awareness of Freud, for many years Bacon's friend. Freud's pictures in turn opened eyes to the output of Auerbach, of whom Freud is a great booster. That led to greater appreciation of Kossoff, Auerbach’s friend from art school (although Kossoff's often thickly impastoed work is generally offered in British modern rather than contemporary sales, indicating that he hasn't yet reached his colleagues' level of international recognition). So far, Michael Andrews appears to be the odd man out, despite the poetry of his often thinly painted landscapes of lushly green Scottish estates and Australia's arid, red Ayers Rock.

At the beginning of his career, Andrews, like Freud, sold to a small group of friends—aristocrats, landed gentry, industrialists—who would never have a financial need to sell. Unlike Freud, his patronage never expanded much beyond this circle. Probably the biggest reason for this is the small number of pictures he finished. Helen Lessore noted that in the 20 years following art school, he completed no more than one large work a year. As a result, should an Andrews come on the market privately today, people would have no idea how to price it.

In contrast, Auerbach, Kossoff and Freud—although prolific only when compared with Andrews—have unquestionably each completed enough works in their long careers to establish market values. The first big leap in those values took place almost exactly a year before the record-breaking auctions of this winter, and it set the tone for all that followed.

In February 2006, Christie's London sold "The Collection of the Late Miss Valerie Beston: Artists From the London School." Although many of the pictures were small, almost everything was fresh to the market and choice. Miss Beston, as she was known, spent her entire working life as a gallery administrator at Marlborough Fine Art, which was Bacon's dealer from 1958 until his death, in 1992; it also handled Freud for a time and Kossoff briefly and has represented Auerbach since 1964.

Beston formed a strong bond with a tiny group of artists she admired, Bacon above all. Many of the lots in the sale were gifts to her, including Bacon's sad, puzzled self-portrait. It fetched £5,160,000 ($9 million) against a high estimate of £1,800,000 ($3.2 million). Auerbach's jagged, electric 1986 Tree on Primrose Hill went for £433,600 ($755,800), against a high estimate of £100,000 ($177,200), and Andrews's 1968 Study of a Head for Lights, a seven-inch-square portrait of a full-lipped, androgynous youth, sold for £176,000 ($306,800) against a high estimate of £60,000 ($106,300).

"Everybody perceived the Beston sale as the break-open for Bacon and Auerbach," says Oliver Barker, head of contemporary art at Sotheby's London.

The sale also set a world auction record for Andrews. It did not, however, include any Kossoffs, whose works in general have seen more action privately than at auction. "It is not a secret that his auction prices have been below the gallery list," says Braka.

The fact is that in recent years the market hasn't had much chance to take gallery list into account for Kossoff. "In a period of 19 years, Leon has had two commercial gallery exhibitions," says Peter Goulds, director of LA Louver, Kossoff's West Coast dealer. The artist's most recent show, in 2000, was at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, which represents him in New York. (Kossoff's London dealer is Annely Juda.) His drawings were priced at about $15,000; his paintings up to $350,000. "All have been placed," says Goulds. Since then only two paintings have left Kossoff's studio, both sold to publishing magnate S.I. Newhouse.

No date has been set for Kossoff's next gallery exhibition—or for Auerbach's or Freud's, for that matter. (However, Kossoff's current work can be seen in England at the large, impressive exhibition "Drawing From Paintings," at London's National Gallery, which also includes five paintings; at the Fitzwilliam, in Cambridge, there is a fine show of Auerbach's complete etchings and drypoints, many the gift of James Kirkman, who was with Marlborough before becoming a private dealer.) Kossoff's dealers are hoping for a show in the coming year. Whenever it happens, Goulds believes that the prices quoted "will set the pace for how his work is considered in the future, financially speaking."

Kossoff's market is changing, says Christie's Ordovas, "but it is happening much slower. He is behind Auerbach, and Auerbach's prices will be pulling his up. Perhaps he needs just one painting that will do that." Braka is more bullish: "Kossoff's work is of tremendous quality. He is a fabulous artist. It is inevitable that we will see strong gains in his prices in the next few years."

The dealer is not shy about making other predictions. "For Francis Bacon," he says, "the February price is only the beginning. He is a giant in postwar painting." Noting private sales had surpassed the almost $28 million paid at Christie's in February, Braka states that "there is no justification in art-historical terms for the gap" between sums fetched by Bacons and by New York School stars like Willem de Kooning: "The financial imbalance is going to be redressed." Auction houses appear to agree. On May 15, Sotheby’s New York had Bacon’s 1962 Study for Innocent X—a full-length image of a furious, anguished pope—up for sale, and it was estimated to bring more than $30 million. It sold for a record $52,680,000.

Braka is enthusiastic about Auerbach too. "While we have all known that Auerbach is one of the truly great postwar artists, prices haven't reflected this," he says. "I have been telling collectors for the last 15 years that, money aside, just buy the paintings. As a result, I now have rather a lot of happy clients." He laughs, aware that, in one sense, the joke is on him. "I had Auerbachs I bought for £7,000, kept for 10 years and sold for £400,000," he notes. "If I'd kept them for an extra year and a half, they would have been £2 million." At Christie's King Street sale in February, Braka bought Auerbach's 1997 To the Studio 11 for £1,252,000 ($2.5 million).

Although demand outstrips supply for post-1970 Auerbachs, it may be that the steep increase in prices this past year will be followed by a leveling out. Sotheby's Barker and Christie's Ordovas, however, don't believe that a plateau has been reached. "There should be a lot more movement for Auerbach as well as Bacon," says Ordovas. One thing holding back Auerbach may have been the scarcity of his pictures. But that was remedied when Christie's suddenly announced it was auctioning works owned by two devoted American collectors.

While enthusiasm for Auerbach is building, interest in Freud is already clearly keen. During its 2004 exhibition of some of his recent work, the Wallace Collection had crowd-control problems for the first time since it opened, in 1900. The pictures went on to Acquavella, where they all sold quickly. "We had 20,000 people in the space of two or three weeks," says Michael Findlay. The auction market for Freud, says Ordovas, "has been dramatically reassessed." That was proved by the February 2005 sale at Christie's London, when the artist's 1962–63 Red-Haired Man on a Chair set a world auction record of £4,152,000 ($7.7 million).

London itself has changed dramatically since the School of London painters were starting out. It has become glossy, cosmopolitan, buoyed by the tremendous riches of Russian oligarchs, Indian tycoons, and investment bankers. Yet the three surviving members of the group appear not to care, or even notice.

"I hate leaving my studio," Auerbach told a London Times reviewer. "I hate leaving London. I don't think I've spent more than four weeks abroad since I was 7." The others may have traveled more (Bacon lived in Tangiers and the south of France and kept an apartment in Paris), yet they, too, continue to be as deeply attached to London, for all its apparent changes, as they are untouched by its art fads. Whether it is in spite of, or because of that, their paintings have now taken wing.

“The Power of Paint” was originally published in the June 2007 issue of Art & Auction magazine.