Rare pair of Francis Bacon rugs to go on sale
It had been thought that only three of the painter's early carpet designs remained, including one held by the Victoria and Albert Museum.
But an auction house in Wiltshire claims to have found the only surviving works from Bacon's first exhibition of his own designs in 1929.
They were apparently donated by an Iranian carpet dealer who had cleaned out one of her storerooms.
Ian Bennett, a textile specialist at Netherhampton Salerooms, near Salisbury, told The Times newspaper that the donor was unaware of the rugs' significance.
He said: "This particular batch of rugs contained the usual mix of good, bad and indifferent, but there were a lot of them and initially they had to be gone through fairly quickly.
"All of a sudden, in the middle of a pile of Persian tribal weavings in varying stages of disintegration, there appeared two obviously European Modernist rugs, which I threw aside with an instant semi-automatic valuation of a few hundred pounds.
"Just as they were about to be covered up by other rugs, I vaguely noted the presence of writing at the bottom of each piece and suddenly what I had only half seen came into sharp focus. I said, 'Hang on a minute!'. In large capital letters was the name Francis Bacon."..
Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)
But an auction house in Wiltshire claims to have found the only surviving works from Bacon's first exhibition of his own designs in 1929.
They were apparently donated by an Iranian carpet dealer who had cleaned out one of her storerooms.
Ian Bennett, a textile specialist at Netherhampton Salerooms, near Salisbury, told The Times newspaper that the donor was unaware of the rugs' significance.
He said: "This particular batch of rugs contained the usual mix of good, bad and indifferent, but there were a lot of them and initially they had to be gone through fairly quickly.
"All of a sudden, in the middle of a pile of Persian tribal weavings in varying stages of disintegration, there appeared two obviously European Modernist rugs, which I threw aside with an instant semi-automatic valuation of a few hundred pounds.
"Just as they were about to be covered up by other rugs, I vaguely noted the presence of writing at the bottom of each piece and suddenly what I had only half seen came into sharp focus. I said, 'Hang on a minute!'. In large capital letters was the name Francis Bacon."..