[5] All three panels, in Bacon's typical abstract, distorted, isolated style,[8] show Freud sitting on a cane-bottomed wooden chair within a cage, on a curved mottled-brown surface with a solid orange background.

[11] Francis Outred of Christie's describes the 1969 triptych as "a true masterpiece" and "an undeniable icon of 20th Century art" which "marks Bacon and Freud's relationship, paying tribute to the creative and emotional kinship between the two artists.

[6] The triptych was painted in 1969 at the Royal College of Art in London, where Bacon had a large enough studio to work on three adjacent canvases simultaneously.

[4][5][12][13] When inflation is taken into account, a higher price was reached at the same auction house for Van Gogh's Portrait of Dr. Gachet, which in 1990 sold for $192 million current dollars.

Bacon's triptych did surpass the constant dollar record of $119.9 million set by the fourth version of Edvard Munch's The Scream in May 2012.

[4][14] The 2013 sale also represents the highest price paid for a work by a British or Irish artist, beating Bacon's Triptych 1976, which fetched $86.3 million in May 2008.