Paris record mostly made of bacon

Apollo, Feb, 2008

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Sotheby's, Paris, staged its first evening sale of contemporary art on 12 December and notched up a record 23.1m [euro], its highest ever total in France. Francis Bacon's Seated Woman (Portrait of Muriel Belcher) made the lion's share, 13.7m [euro]-a record for a contemporary work auctioned in France. Belcher was the striking, outspoken bartender at Bacon's favoured Soho haunt, the Colony Room, who became one of the artist's preferred models after he commissioned a series of photographs of her in 1959.