Christie's auction house says one of only two portraits of Francis Bacon by his friend and fellow British artist Lucian Freud has sold for more than 5.4 million pounds (US$9.4 million), the associated press reported.
The unfinished oil painting is the only one whose whereabouts are known. Freud's other portrait of Bacon was stolen from an art gallery in Berlin in 1988.
Bacon is known best for his disturbing compositions expressing terror and isolation. He met Freud, the grandson of psychologist Sigmund Freud, in 1945 at the home of a mutual friend.
They formed a close frienship and sat for each other several times. Bacon often painted Freud, but Freud made only two portraits of Bacon - once in 1952 and the work sold at a was the Christie's auction Sunday in 1956-7.