Lucian Freud, Bruce Bernard, 1992
Estimate: £4,500,000-5,500,000
Christie’s Post War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale on 20 June 2007
Selected works from the Elaine and Melvin Merians Collection – Post War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale – Christie’s London, Wednesday 20 June 2007
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London – The most important collection of School of London works to ever appear at auction leads Christie’s Post War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale on 20 June 2007. The sale of Selected Works from the Elaine and Melvin Merians Collection is led by the most important painting by Lucian Freud ever to appear at auction, Bruce Bernard, 1992 which is expected to set a new world auction record for the artist* (estimate: £4,500,000-5,500,000). The comprehensive collection features a range of 21 major works by the so-called School of London artists which all appear at auction for the first time. Significant works include Francis Bacon’s Two Men Working in a Field, 1971 (estimate: £5,000,000-7,000,000) and Frank Auerbach’s Tree in Mornington Crescent, 1991-92 (estimate: £1,000,000-1,500,000) together with examples from Michael Andrews, Leon Kossoff, R. B. Kitaj and Paula Rego. The collection is expected to realize in excess of £15 million.
“This is the most important collection of works by the School of London artists ever to appear on the international art market. Over 25 years, Elaine and Melvin Merians have assembled an outstanding collection devoted to this period of British Art in America,” says Pilar Ordovás, Head of Post War & Contemporary Art, Christie’s London. “Lucian Freud is renowned as the most prominent British portrait painter of the 20th century and Christie’s has pioneered the market for the School of London artists, establishing numerous artist records over the years including the current record for Lucian Freud. We expect this record to be broken at Christie’s sale with Bruce Bernard which is an incredibly powerful and
successful portrait of a very close friend of the artist.”
Lucian Freud’s magnificent portrait of Bruce Bernard was painted in 1992. Bruce Bernard, who died in 2000, was a close friend of the artist for many years and a highly respected picture editor of the Sunday Times magazine. Bruce wrote a number of books on photography and painting and was the author of one of the most important monographs on Freud’s work; he was also the brother of the legendary columnist and Soho bon viveur Jeffrey Bernard.
Elaine and Melvin Merians
Drawn initially to the work of Lucian Freud, Elaine and Melvin Merians set out to collect the figurative works of the School of London artists after acquiring their first Lucian Freud from the Marlborough Gallery in 1978. Over the next 25 years, the Merians developed a deep passion for School of London artists and regularly travelled to Britain from their native America to acquire the best possible works directly from the artists and their galleries. The couple have become close friends with a number of the artists they admired and some of the people that they painted.
The Merians’ passion for their collection is such that they have lived with all the works they have acquired. In 2000 their collection was exhibited at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut and then in Neuberger Museum of Art in New York in 2001.
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