Bacon's $50 Million Nude to Star in Sotheby's London Auction, Yazzy's at www.williamverdult.com

According to Bloomberg News, Sotheby's will offer a Francis Bacon painting of a nude woman for as much as 25 million pounds ($50 million), close to the artist's record, at a February London sale.

Sotheby's contemporary auction will for the first time be held in a different week from the equivalent sale by larger rival Christie's International. Sotheby's sale will be on Feb. 27, 2008, three weeks after its own impressionist and modern auctions, as well as Christie's contemporary sale on Feb. 6.

Bacon's 1969 ``Study of a Nude With Figure in a Mirror'' is up for sale after the record for the artist -- who died in 1992 -- was set in May, when Sotheby's sold one of his pope pictures, ``Study for Innocent X,'' for $52.7 million in New York.

London's February sales will be the Western art market's next test, after an 11-year quadrupling in the prices for top contemporary works. Christie's and Sotheby's sold $1.7 billion of impressionist and contemporary art in New York in November.

``We've seen phenomenal growth in the contemporary market over the last four years,'' said Francis Outred, senior director of contemporary art at Sotheby's. ``We felt the time had come for our sales to be presented on their own. Someone had to jump first.''

On Dec. 12, Sotheby's in Paris sold Bacon's 1961 ``Seated Woman (Portrait of Muriel Belcher)'' for 13.7 million euros ($19.7 million) with commissions, the highest price for any work of art sold in France since 1989. The painting was bought in the room by London dealer Alan Hobart on behalf of a private U.K. collector.

In February 2004, Sotheby's sales of contemporary art in London raised 19.2 million pounds. Four years later, in February 2007, the contemporary auctions reached 63 million pounds.

``We've seen the effect that London's October Frieze Week has had on the market,'' said Outred. ``We're hoping that eventually all three auction houses will hold sales during this standalone week in February. It will be better for the contemporary market in the long run.''

(Scott Reyburn writes about the art market for Bloomberg News. The