Lavery and Bacon in New York

ART VALUED AT hundreds of millions of dollars will go under the hammer in a series of auctions in New York over the next fortnight.

Irish interest begins with Sotheby’s auction, next Thursday, where The Green Sofa by Sir John Lavery has a top estimate of $1 million (€0.78m).

The painting, dating from circa 1903, is from the collection of the late US collector Katherine W Mellon and depicts Mary Auras, a German model who worked in Paris and often sat for Lavery.

The following week, two major works by Francis Bacon – also at Sotheby’s – could make a total of $37 million (€28.8m).

First up is Untitled (Pope) one of the most important versions of the artist’s well-known images of a “screaming Pope” dating from circa 1954.

According to Sotheby’s, “Bacon’s pope series was inspired by Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X and Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 film Battleship Potemkin. It became a way for the artist to express post-war horror and what mankind was capable of.”

The estimate is $18 million-$25 million ($14m-€19.5).

A second painting by Bacon, Study for Head of Isabel Rawsthorne, dates from 1967. Rawsthorne was an artist who moved in the same circles as Bacon in London and was the subject of many of his paintings. The estimate is $9 million-$12 million.

Both paintings have been in separate private US collections and have not been seen publicly for decades.

Oliver Barker, Sotheby’s senior international specialist in contemporary art, says: “Bacon is the artist everybody is seeking at the moment. He is in many ways top of the pile.”