Paying Rent with a Painting? Bacon Did It. Attention Landlords

Bacon's 'rent cheque' to make £9m at Christie's in London on 14 October.

Francis Bacon painting In the early 1970s, the painter Francis Bacon gave the Royal College of Art in London a painting ("Study from the Human Body, Man Turning on the Light") in lieu of rent owed for studio space. Now the college is auctioning it to help fund a new campus and it's estimated to fetch nine million pounds, reports BBC News. Even with the price of developing property in London that ought to be enough for quite a few spectacular studios! (On an aside, did you know Bacon was a self-taught artist and at one stage worked as an interior designer?),[ painting.about.com]

The picture is one of a series of studies of the male nude executed by the artist in the late 1960s and early 1970s. article from BBCnews