A painting by Francis Bacon was sold for £3,083,750 sterling to a private collector at an auction last night in Christie's in London.
The oil on canvas, a triptych entitled Three Studies for a Portrait of John Edwards, was expected to fetch between £3 million and £4 million sterling.
"All we know at the moment is that it is a private collector," a spokeswoman for Christie's said.
Painted in 1984, the three-panelled work shows Mr Edwards, who was a companion to Bacon until the artist's death in 1992, seated on a stool in an empty studio space. It is considered a rare and important portrait of the artist's last companion.
Speaking about his triptychs, Bacon once said: "In the series, one picture reflects on the other continuously, and sometimes they are better in series than they are separately . . . one thing against the other seems to be able to say the thing more."
This three-panelled portrait was chosen by Bacon to be the final work of his second Tate retrospective exhibition.