LONDON — Powered by a rare-to-market Francis Bacon painting of a reclining female nude, Christie’s Postwar and Contemporary Art evening sale shot to £80,576,100 ($126,504,477), the highest contemporary mark for the house here since June 2008.

The tally came close to the high end of the £56.77 to 84 million ($88.96-131.9 million) estimate range, selling 58 of the 65 lots offered. Percentage wise, 11 percent by lot failed to sell and only five percent by value. Three artist records were set, 16 lots fetched over a million pounds, and 26 exceeded one million dollars. It surpassed the February 2011 figure of £61.4 million ($99.2 million) and ranks as the second highest earning contemporary London sale for Christie’s, trailing only June 2008’s boom-time figure of £86.2 million ($172 million).

Deep pocket bidding was felt early on as Christopher Wool’s ultra-graphic, enamel-on-aluminum word painting, “Untitled,” from 1990, spelling out the word FOOL, sold to an anonymous telephone bidder for a record £4.91 million ($7.71 million) (est.£2.5-3.5 million). It vanquished the previous Wool mark of $5 million set for “Blue Fool” at Christie’s New York in May 2010. It was one of three works carrying so-called third-party guarantees, meaning a sale was guaranteed no matter what the outcome.

At least five bidders chased the work, including Paris dealer John Sayegh-Belchatowski, who dropped out at £4 million, a mere £350,000 shy of the winning hammer bid. “It’s a masterpiece,” opined Sayegh-Belchatowski, “but at this level, it’s not for a dealer.”  

The same anonymous telephone, bearing paddle number 905, bagged the next lot, Gilbert & George’s red-hued, early mixed-media piece in 16 parts from 1975, “Bloody Life No.13.” The winning bid was £1.27 million ($2 million) (est. £700,000-1 million).

British-bred art played hard all evening as a long undiscovered Lucian Freud ink-and-tempera on paper, “Boat, Connemara” from August 1948, considered Freud’s only landscape executed on site in Ireland, sold to London dealer Stephen Ongpin for £657,250 ($1.03 million) (est. £200-300,000). “I think I went up to £450,000,” said London dealer Ofer Waterman for the sharply observed scene of a boat in dry dock, “and I thought it was a great drawing, but you have to set a limit and it was enough.”

That sentiment also played a supporting role for Freud’s page-sized “Small Figure” of a reclining female nude from from 1983-84, that sold to New York’s Acquavella Galleries for £1.6 million ($2.52 million) (est. £1.5-2 million). It last sold at Sotheby’s London in June 1996 for £122,000.

“The Freud market seems to be strong to us, that’s for sure,” said Eleanor Acquavella — who also acquired Alexander Calder’s standing mobile, “Petits disques blancs (Small White Discs)” from 1953 for £1.55 million ($2.44 million) (est. £700,000-1 million) — as she exited the salesroom with her brother Alex. The fact that Freud died last year and is the subject of a just opened retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery here, as well as a major drawing show opening tomorrow at Blain/Southern in Mayfair, certainly helped the atmosphere for acquisition.

But all stops were unplugged for Freud’s one-time pal Francis Bacon and his “Portrait of Henrietta Moraes” (1963), a sizzling, full-figured reclining nude on a bed with legs suggestively spread and set against a spectacular lilac-hued background. Pegged at an unpublished "estimate on request" price of £15-20 million, bidding opened at £12 million for the cover lot and ticked along with a small global posse of telephone bidders chasing the raw fleshed trophy at £500,000 increments until £19 million. The final price with buyer’s premium was £21.3 million ($33.5 million), making it the seventh most expensive Bacon to sell at auction. It also crushed last week’s top price for an Impressionist-Modern work with Henry Moore’s large-scaled bronze, “Reclining Figure: Festival” (1951) that made £19 million ($30.1 million) at Christie’s.

Bacon’s seller this evening was New York real estate magnate Sheldon Solow, the same consignor as the top-drawer Moore as well as the Joan Miro “Painting-Poem” that made £16.8 million ($26.6 million) from last week. Solow apparently acquired the 65-by-56-inch Bacon privately from a European collection in 1983, and the paintings hasn’t been on public view in years. The edgy and downright erotic nude's pose is based on black-and-white photographs of the model who was also a one-time lover and model of Lucian Freud, snapped by Bacon’s friend John Deakin, according to Bacon’s strict instructions. Bacon painted Moraes 16 times, but this example apparently takes the prize.

Another, decidedly less interesting Bacon, the two-part oil-on-canvas “Studies of Isabel Rawsthorne” from 1983 sold for £1.7 million ($2.7 million) (est. £1.8-2.5 million). It last sold at auction for £1.8 million at Sotheby’s London in October 2007, right at the top of the market, proving those happy days are not quite here again.

But it was hardly a British and Irish evening alone. Gerhard Richter’s grandly scaled and lusciously colored “Abstraktes Bild” from 1994 soared to £9.9 million (£15.5 million) (est. £5-7 million) and Nicolas de Stael’s brilliant, color-drenched seascape, “Agrigente” from 1953, surged to £5.3 million ($8.3 million) (est. £3.5-5 million). There were also a few scattered works by younger, blue-chip in waiting artists, including the Maurizio Cattlean like sculpture "K 36 (The Black horse)” (2003), comprised of a stitched horse hide plus other elements, which fetched a record £325,250 ($510,643) (est. £200-300,000).

One surprise was the 11th hour withdrawal of a major Mark Rothko painting, “Untitled” (1955), a square-shaped canvas in reddish hues that was expected to sell between £9-12 million. “It was withdrawn for a private sale,” said Christie’s contemporary head Francis Outred, though he couldn’t confirm the sale had as yet finalized.

There was no problem dispatching more of the remarkable collection of the late German cinema magnate Hubertus Wald and his eponymous charitable foundation as Piero Manzoni’s stunning white abstraction, “Achrome” (ca. 1959) made £1.7 million ($4.2 million) (est. £1.8-2.5 million). Nine works from Wald tallied £6.5 million, close to the £7 million high end of the pre-sale expectation.

The action resumes tomorrow evening at Sotheby’s.

To see some of the star lots from Christie's London's Postwar and Contemporary Art evening sale, click on the slide show.