A TRIPTYCH BY the Irish artist Francis Bacon is expected to fetch €80 million (€58 million) in an auction at Christie’s New York today.

‘Three Studies for a Portrait of John Edwards’ is part of Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Art sale.

Source: Dominic Lipinski

Irish-born Bacon painted the portraits in 1984 and comes on the market a year after Christie’s sold his 1969 “Three Studies of Lucian Freud” for $142.4 million (€103 million), setting a world record for the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction.

Bacon, who died in 1992, named Edwards his sole heir.

Edwards oversaw the British artist’s archives until his death in 2003. The three-panel work shows him in a relaxed pose sitting on a stool with his right leg crossed over his left knee.

Christie’s says it is one of the greatest paintings from the artist’s late period.

Other paintings such as a provocative image by Andy Warhol of the 1963 Birmingham, Alabama race riots are also going under the hammer today.

Warhol’s “Race Riot, 1964,” a rare four-panel painting from his “Death and Disaster” series, is estimated to sell for $45 million.

Andy Warhol's 1964 Race Riot Source: AP

Another “Death and Disaster” painting at the sale is “White Marilyn.” Warhol painted it in 1962 shortly after the Hollywood star took her life. It has a pre-sale estimate of $12 million to $18 million.

The current Warhol auction record is $105 million for his “Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster).”

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