Ever since Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich paid a record US$86.3 million for Francis Bacon’s 1976 “Triptych” at Sotheby’s New York in 2008, the art collecting world has seen a surge in demand for U.K.’s most expensive artist.

A 1961 female nude – boldly titled Crouching Nude – by Bacon is expected to fetch US$15 million pounds at a Sotheby’s auction next month. The canvas of a grinning woman in an interior was on show at Sotheby’s New York, the auction house said in an e-mailed statement. Featuring a composite of Bacon’s friends Isabel Rawsthorne, Henrietta Moraes and Muriel Belcher, Crouching Nude was one of 90 works included in a Tate Gallery traveling retrospective in 1962. It was also in a 2006 exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery in London, where it was bought by an unidentified private collector, who is re-offering the piece now.

London-based dealer James Holland-Hibbert was hesitant about valuing the work “The market needed good works to gauge the new levels. Prices went up so quickly, then the crash came and no one was quite sure what Bacon was worth. The estimates had got too high.”

While Oliver Barker, Sotheby’s European deputy chairman, said that the seller hasn’t been offered a guaranteed price, he offers some tips in a highly-selective market “Conservative estimates are the way to get the best auction prices”.

via [Bloomberg]