'Rubbish' Francis Bacon works fetch a fortune

LONDON: Francis Bacon thought they were rubbish, but the painter's discarded works and artefacts raised nearly one million pounds at auction.

Electrician Mac Robertson, while working at Bacon's west London studio in 1978, persuaded the artist to let him keep a host of material earmarked for the skip.

The discarded paintings, diaries, photographs, cheque stubs and other clutter fetched 965,490 pounds ($1.93 million) at auction on Tuesday.

Several of the 45 lots sold went well over their estimated price at the small Ewbank fine art auction house in Woking, southwest of London.

The most expensive work, an untitled portrait listed at 12,000-18,000 pounds, sold for 400,000 pounds to a telephone bidder.

A painting of a reclining dog, estimated at 2,000-3,000 pounds, sold for 260,000 pounds.

Some paintings had holes in them, while some of the diaires were blank.

"Bacon was renowned for self-editing his work and if he wasn't satisfied, he would cut out the parts he didn't like.

Sometimes it would be a chin or an ear," said Chris Proudlove, on behalf of Ewbank.

"There have been few, if any, auctions of the kind of the material in this archive, so we had no precedence on which to base estimates," he added.

Bacon, who ran a famously chaotic studio, threatened to throw all the items in a skip, but allowed Robertson to take some of it.

"He filled three bin bags," Proudlove said.