Francis Bacon Portrait Prints For Sale

Bacon made surprisingly few prints across his entire career, somewhere in the region of 36 to 40 editions in total, which puts his print output on a completely different scale to painters like Warhol or Picasso who worked in the medium prolifically. He resisted printmaking for most of his career, preferring the immediacy and physical risk of oil on canvas, and only began working seriously with lithography and etching in the 1970s, collaborating with specialist publishers including Marlborough Graphics and Galerie Lelong, and master printer Georges Visat. That reluctance matters for anyone buying into this part of his output: a Bacon print wasn't something he made routinely or in volume, and each one represents a rare moment of him working outside the medium he trusted most, which is part of why his editions carry the weight they do in the market.

The portraits themselves draw on the same small, intense circle of people who appear throughout Bacon's work, close friends, lovers and the handful of individuals he returned to again and again rather than working from a wide range of sitters. Lucian Freud, Isabel Rawsthorne and George Dyer all recur across his career, and later, following Dyer's death in the 1970s, John Edwards became the central figure in the portraits Bacon made in his final years, including a lithograph study made in 1986. Reading the portraits in sequence gives a rough map of Bacon's own life, who he was close to, who he lost, and who remained by the end, in a way that his more abstract or triptych-based work doesn't offer in the same direct way.

Portrait subjects tend to command particular attention within Bacon's print market specifically because the human figure, distorted and psychologically charged, is the subject his entire body of work is built around, making the portraits arguably the most representative entry point into his practice as a printmaker.

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  • Francis Bacon Portraits

    Explore Francis Bacon Portraits For Sale
    • Francis Bacon, Portrait of Freud, 1967
      Francis Bacon, Portrait of Freud, 1967
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    • Francis Bacon, after the Central Panel of the Triptych Three Studies for a Portrait of Peter Beard (1975), 1976
      Francis Bacon, after the Central Panel of the Triptych Three Studies for a Portrait of Peter Beard (1975), 1976
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    • Francis Bacon, after Portrait of Michel Leiris (1976), 1977
      Francis Bacon, after Portrait of Michel Leiris (1976), 1977
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    • Francis Bacon, after Seated Figure – from Study for a Portrait (1981), 1983
      Francis Bacon, after Seated Figure – from Study for a Portrait (1981), 1983
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    • Francis Bacon, after Self-Portrait (1973), 1977
      Francis Bacon, after Self-Portrait (1973), 1977
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    • Francis Bacon, after Study for Portrait of John Edwards (1986), 1987
      Francis Bacon, after Study for Portrait of John Edwards (1986), 1987
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    • Francis Bacon, Study for Portrait of Pope Innocent X after Velázquez, 1989
      Francis Bacon, Study for Portrait of Pope Innocent X after Velázquez, 1989
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    • Francis Bacon, Three Studies for a Portrait of John Edwards (Right Panel)
      Francis Bacon, Three Studies for a Portrait of John Edwards (Right Panel)
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    • Francis Bacon, after Three Studies for a Self-Portrait (1979), 1981
      Francis Bacon, after Three Studies for a Self-Portrait (1979), 1981
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    • Francis Bacon, Masque mortuaire de William Blake, 1991
      Francis Bacon, Masque mortuaire de William Blake, 1991
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    • Francis Bacon, AFter Three Studies for a Self-Portrait (1983), 1990
      Francis Bacon, AFter Three Studies for a Self-Portrait (1983), 1990
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  • The Bacon Portrait Market in 2026, An Overview

    The Bacon Portrait Market in 2026

    An Overview

    Bacon's portraits remain some of the most sought-after works in his entire output, both on paper and on canvas. Figure in Movement, a 1976 painting depicting his lover George Dyer, sold at Christie's in November 2023 for £42.5 million, one of the strongest results achieved for any Bacon portrait at auction in recent years and a clear signal that demand for this part of his practice has held firm well beyond his headline-grabbing early records. His prints of the same intimate subjects continue to move steadily through the market at a fraction of that price, giving collectors direct access to the same psychologically charged imagery that drives his painting sales.

    Portrait prints start from around £18,000, reflecting consistent demand across a market where named, identifiable sitters carry particular weight. Prices have stayed remarkably stable in recent years, with strong, repeatable results rather than the kind of volatility seen elsewhere in the wider contemporary print market.

  • The Francis Bacon Market in 2026, An Overview

    The Francis Bacon Market in 2026

    An Overview

    Francis Bacon's market is defined as much by what the headline auction figures don't capture as by what they do. His public auction record remains extraordinary: Three Studies of Lucien Freud sold at Christie's in November 2013 for over £89 million, still one of the highest prices ever achieved for any artwork at auction, and Bacon's works resold publicly between 2003 and 2017 delivered an average annual return of nearly 14%, with the vast majority increasing in value. But the years since that 2013 peak have seen public auction activity for his work cool considerably from those extraordinary highs, a pattern common to artists whose careers include a single, once-in-a-generation result that skews the picture of everything that follows it.

    His print market tells a steadier story. Turnover has held in a consistent £700,000 to £1.3 million range annually over the past decade, settling at just over £900,000 in 2024 after peaking above £1.3 million in 2022, figures that point to a stable, ongoing base of collector demand rather than a market riding on one or two headline results. Individual signed prints typically trade from around £18,000 to over £50,000, and his benchmark print result, a complete set of the four Miroir de la Tauromachie lithographs, sold at Sotheby's in 2015 for £85,000. A meaningful share of Bacon's market, prints especially, moves through private sale rather than public auction, meaning the visible auction data understates real demand for his work, a gap that reflects how much of this market operates outside the headlines rather than any weakening of collector interest.