A Richard Prince ‘Nurse’ and an Antony Gormley ‘Angel of the North” were among 10 works to set records for their makers at Sotheby’s contemporary-art auction in London, where a Francis Bacon portrait was the star attraction and Irish rock band U2 among the sellers.

Bacon’s status as the world’s most expensive postwar artist was bolstered last night by the sale of a painting of his lover, George Dyer, which fetched a top price of 1$27.5 million with fees.

Sotheby’s is testing demand after wealthy buyers from Russia and elsewhere shrugged off an economic slowdown to pay record pricesat New York in May. Yesterday’s auction made a total 94.7 million pounds with fees, the second highest for a contemporary-art sale in Europe, Sotheby’s said. Former tennis champion John McEnroe sold an Andy Warhol portrait and U2 sold a Jean-Michel Basquiat.

“People are more interested in quality than price,” a London dealer, Serge Tiroche, said. “In the old days they used to look at a work’s size and period. Now they’re looking at aesthetics.”

Sotheby’s said 71 of the 75 lots found buyers. The sale had been estimated to make 67.4 million pounds to 96.6 million pounds. Its total missed the 95 million pounds made by Sotheby’s, London, in February.

Petty Criminal

‘Study for Head of George Dye’ had been expected to fetch in excess of 8 million pounds, said the auction house. Bacon and the London petty criminal Dyer became lovers in 1963. The stormy relationship ended when Dyer committed suicide in 1971.

Bacon’s expressive 14-inch-high canvas, dating from 1967, had never been offered at auction before, Sotheby’s said. It sold on the telephone to Sotheby’s European chairman of contemporary art, Cheyenne Westphal, bidding on behalf of an anonymous collector.

A triptych of similarly sized self-portraits by Bacon, dating from 1975, topped Christie’s International’s June 30 London auction, fetching 17.3 million pounds with fees.

In May, Bacon’s ‘Triptych, 1976,’ sold at Sotheby’s, New York, for $86 million, the highest price paid for a postwar work of art. Sotheby’s auction last night included the larger, 6-foot, 6-inch-high Bacon canvas, ‘Figure Turning,’ dating from 1962. Regarded by dealers as a less desirable work, this failed to sell against its low estimate of 10 million pounds.

Minimum Prices

Sellers had been guaranteed minimum prices on 25 of the lots, New York-based Sotheby’s said. All 12 lots from German collectors Helga and the late Walther Lauffs — 20 of whose works fetched $96.1 million with fees at Sotheby’s New York in May — were guaranteed, according to the catalog. None of the evening’s four unsold lots carried guarantees.

The Lauffs group fetched 19 million pounds with fees against an upper estimate of 8.9 million pounds. All the works found buyers, led by the 4.2 million pounds paid by a telephone bidder for the 1961 Yves Klein work ‘ANT 131’ from the ‘Anthropometries’ series, made by dragging a model through blue pigment. This had been estimated at between 700,000 pounds and 900,000 pounds.

“If you’ve got quality and provenance, it pays off,” a Paris-based art adviser, Hugues Joffre, said. “There was a mood created by the success of the Lauffs Collection in New York. People are also reassessing the work of artists like Klein.”

Last night, 47 lots sold above their high estimates and 27 works fetched more than 1 million pounds. The average value per lot was a record 1.33 million pounds, Sotheby’s senior international specialist, Oliver Barker, said.

Art ‘Nerves’

“People with huge amounts of money aren’t affected by the stock market,” Mr. Joffre said. “People who can only afford to spend $500,000 on a work of art are nervous at the moment.”

Prince’s 2002 inkjet and acrylic-on-canvas “Overseas Nurse” sold for a record 4.2 million pounds with fees to a European collector in the room, beating a low estimate of 4 million pounds.

Another record was the 2.3 million pounds with fees paid by a telephone bidder for Gormley’s cast-iron life-size maquette of his “Angel of the North” sculpture, estimated up to 800,000 pounds. The third from an edition of five, the angelic form based on Gormley’s own body cast had a 17-foot, 6-inch wingspan.

There were also records for Marlene Dumas, whose 1995 canvas “The Visitor” fetched 3.2 million pounds, and for Bridget Riley, whose 1967 stripe-painting “Chant 2” sold for 2.6 million pounds.

The band U2 decided not to accept a guaranteed price for the 1982-83 Basquiat work “Untitled (Pecho/Oreja)” kept in a Dublin recording studio for the last 19 years.

The quartet was rewarded with a premium-inclusive price of 5.1 million pounds from a telephone bidder against a lower estimate of 4 million pounds.

A housing charity was the beneficiary of the 241,250 pounds with fees paid by a buyer in the room for Warhol’s 1986 acrylic and silkscreen “Portrait of John McEnroe and Tatum O’Neal.” It had been estimated to fetch up to 350,000 pounds.