Notes

Valentino Garavani in his Paris home with Francis Bacon's 'Portrait of George Dyer' (1967). The painting was first owned by Manhattan-based lawyer, Harry Torczyner. Torczyner, a prolific collector, was a close friend and patron of the famed surrealist painter, Rene Magritte. Throughout the 1950s, Torczyner commissioned Magritte to make a number of paintings for him, one of them being Magritte's masterpiece, 'The Castle of the Pyrenees' (1959), which, curiously, was created so that Torczyner could cover up the ugly view from a small window in his office. The Bacon was another treasured part of Torczyner's collection — he held onto the painting until his death in March of 1998. A few months later, the painting came to auction at Christie's where Valentino acquired it for $2 million. The painting comes from a series of ten monumental portraits of Bacon's lover and muse, George Dyer, created between 1966 and 1968. Together, the group of paintings see Dyer experiencing the full range of emotions that defined their tumultuous affair. Earlier this year, another of the George Dyer portraits sold at Sotheby's for $24.5 million. Photographed by Pascal Chevallier. Via Lucas Oliver Mill for Collectorwalls