Bacon’s rent painting gets $16 million

A Francis Bacon painting the artist donated to an art college in lieu of rent decades ago has sold for $16.4 million at an auction where solid but unspectacular results suggest global financial turmoil may be unsettling the art market.

“Study From the Human Body, Man Turning On the Light” was bought late Sunday by an anonymous bidder at Christie’s auction house in London. The painting was given by Bacon to the Royal College of Art in 1969 as payment for renting a studio, and the college sold it Sunday to fund a new campus in south London.

This month’s London auctions are being closely watched for signs that, after several years of rising prices, the red-hot art market may be cooling.

The total for the Christie’s sale was $80.6 million -- nearly double the total for the same sale last year. But 15% of the artwork went unsold -- including works by Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat.