A self-portrait by the Dublin-born artist Francis Bacon has sold for €28.71 million (£19.3 million) at auction in Sotheby's in London.
Once again demand for Bacon's work defied expectations as Self Portrait (1978) was expected to fetch about €19 million when it came up for sale at Sotheby's Sale of Contemporary Art.
The painting was bought by an anonymous telephone bidder from the heirs of a European collector who acquired it in 1980.
It has been a remarkable year for the sale of Bacon's works. Twice his paintings based on Diego Velazquez's masterpiece, Portrait of Pope Innocent X, have broken records.
In Feburary, his Study for Portrait II sold at auction at Christie's for €21.2 million, only to be exceeded last month by his Study For Innocent X which went for €38.6 million at auction in New York.
Bacon painted Self Portrait while coming out of a severe depression caused by the suicide of his lover George Dyer in 1971. It shows the artist dressed in boots and an unbuttoned shirt in a lavender room and is the only full-length Bacon self-portrait ever to go on sale out of the 17 such works Bacon painted after 1956.
At a separate sale at Christie's in London, Bacon's Two Men Working in a Field sold for just over €7.5 million while Landscape With a Car was bought for €6.2 million.
