Bacon’s George Dyer triptych sells for £26.3m at Christie’s

A huge triptych painted in the 1970s by the late Francis Bacon fell just short of breaking a world record when it sold for £26.3m at Christie's last night. It capped a week of London art sales that have seen good but not ludicrous sums paid. Bill Jackson, an art consultant, who advises Deloitte on its collection, said: "People are more discerning and are getting good professional advice; when exceptional work comes up for sale they buy it."

He told the Guardian that the art market was "very buoyant" and there was no sign of a downturn. "I think it can last because there are a lot of very rich people who are not affected by mini-recessions or the market effect."

Two bidders competed for the Bacon, a harrowing work painted by the artist after his companion George Dyer committed suicide in 1971 in a Paris hotel room. Each of the huge panels - 6ft by 4ft - depicts Dyer writhing on a beach. The story behind the title - Triptych 1974-1977 - is that in 1974, when he made the work, Bacon painted a prone figure on the central panel who seemed to be crawling along the surface. But in 1977 he painted it out, saying he felt the figure interfered with the rest of the composition.

The price paid for the painting was the most ever paid at a European auction for a post-war work. But it just failed to match the world record paid for Bacon's 1962 painting Study From Innocent X in New York last May.

Other contemporary works sold last night included Zwei Liebespaare, a black and white painting of embracing lovers by Gerhard Richter - the German reckoned by many to be the world's most important living artist - which fetched £7.3m against an estimate of £7m, and Settlement Nurse, a canvas by the American Richard Prince which sold to the dealer Larry Gagosian for £2.1m against an estimate of £2m to £3m.