The long unseen portrait of artist Lucian Freud by his close friend Francis Bacon, estimated at more than £35 million ($43 million), is the central piece of an art sale to be auctioned by Sotheby’s on 29 June along with other artworks from Andy Warhol, Banksy and Claude Monet.

SOUNDBITE 1 – Tom Eddison, Senior director at the contemporary art department, Sotheby’s (male, English, 30 sec): “What we have here is really the two titans of figurative art of the 20th century combined in this one extraordinary canvas. 1964, both artists had met probably about 20 years earlier through the artist Graham Sutherland. So what you have is 20 years of history, of friendship, of artistic rivalry, peer on peer intertwined into this one canvas. So you see Bacon really knowing his subject.”

SOUNDBITE 2 – Tom Eddison, Senior director at the contemporary art department, Sotheby’s (male, English, 29 sec): “That’s a psychological dynamic between both of them. You have Francis Bacon looking at his great peer and rival, and then you have Freud the artist looking back at someone painting him, in this sort of quite unusual circunstances. And I think what you get from that is this intensity. And an intensity that echoes Freud’s own modes of depiction. You have him staring back at the artist intently and his fists clenched, ready to get up of the bench.”

SOUNDBITE 3 – Tom Eddison, Senior director at the contemporary art department, Sotheby’s (male, English, 28 sec): “Works by Bacon do come onto the market, we just sold an exceptional portait ‘Study for a Pope’ in our New York sales in May, selling for over 40 million dollars. The record for a Francis Bacon painting is in fact of Lucian Freud, it was a triptych which sold for 142 million dollars. So this is only one single panel, but there hasn’t been a single panel on Freud on the market of this scale before.”

SOUNDBITE 4 – Helen Newman, Chairman at Sotheby’s Europe and worlwide head of impressionist and modern art (female, English, 29 sec): “The leading works of the sale are obviously the Francis Bacon of Lucian Freud and some great paintings by artists such as Bridget Riley, sculpture by Barbara Hepworth and works by artists such as Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff. But we are also excited to pair the British arts sale with our major auction of international works by modern and contemporary artists.” AFP