The Bacon, the auction’s top lot, missed its lower estimate, while paintings by Gerhard Richter and Lucio Fontana set records and a Lucian Freud nude was among the offerings that didn’t sell.

“The gap between the A-plus and the average is getting wider,” said New York art agent Philippe Segalot. “That’s as it should be. A selective market is a healthy market.” The sale, held at a time of growing concern about a recession in the U.S. and a slumping dollar, was a second test of demand for contemporary-art in London this month.

Bacon’s “Study of a Nude With Figure in a Mirror” (1969), which depicts the artist’s friend and model Henrietta Moraes, sold to a European private collector bidding on the telephone. The hammer price of 17.8 million pounds was below the forecast of between 18 million pounds and 25 million pounds. The hammer price doesn’t include commissions. The anonymous seller was guaranteed a minimum amount near the low end of the 2-meter-high (6.5 feet) canvas’s estimate, said Sotheby’s.

The price is the fifth-highest at auction for Bacon, said saleroom-result-tracker Artnet. The painting had come up for auction before, having failed to sell at Sotheby’s in December 1992, against an undisclosed estimate, Artnet said.

The Bacon record is US$52.7 million in May 2007 at Sotheby’s, New York, for the 1962 painting “Study From Innocent X.” In just over a year, nine Bacon works have sold for more than US$15 million each. On Feb. 6, Christie’s International sold “Triptych 1974-77” for 26.3 million pounds including fees, also below estimate.

Sotheby’s 70-lot auction last night raised 95 million pounds with fees, against an estimate of 72 million pounds to 103 million pounds. The total was double the 45.8 million pounds with fees at Sotheby’s equivalent sale last year, when 81 percent of the works offered sold.

Eighty percent of lots found buyers, with 46 percent selling above the estimate with fees. Sixty-four percent of lots sold to buyers from Europe, 30 percent to the U.S., four percent to Asia and two percent to “other” regions, said Sotheby’s.

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