Francis Bacon (painter)

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Francis Bacon (28 October 1909 – 28 April 1992) was an Anglo-Irish figurative painter. He was a collateral descendant of the Elizabethan philosopher Francis Bacon. His artwork was well-known for its bold, austere, and often grotesque or nightmarish imagery.

Early life

Francis Bacon was born in 63 Lower Baggot Street, Dublin, to English parents. His father, Eddy Bacon, was a forty year old retired Hussars Captain, recently turned thoroughbred racehorse-trainer. His mother Winnie (née Firth) was twenty-six and noted for her outgoing, gregarious nature, in stark contrast to her highly-strung and argumentative husband. Francis was cared for by the family nurse, thirty nine year old Jessie Lightfoot. A sickly child with asthma and a violent allergy to dogs and horses, Bacon was often given morphine to ease suffering during attacks. The family changed houses often, and moved back and forth between Ireland and England several times during this period, leading to a feeling of displacement that would stay with the artist throughout his life. In 1911 the family lived in Cannycourt House near Kilcullen, County Kildare, but later moved to Westbourne Terrace, London, close by to where Eddy Bacon worked at the Territorial Force Records Office.

Abbeyleix

On returning to Ireland after the War, Francis Bacon was sent to live for a time with his maternal grandmother Winifred Supple and her husband Kerry at Farmleigh, Abbeyleix, County Laois. Eddy Bacon later bought Farmleigh from his mother-in-law, though they soon moved again to Straffan Lodge in Naas, County Kildare, the birthplace of both parents. Though Francis was a shy child, he enjoyed dressing up. This, coupled with his effeminate manner, often enraged his father and created a distance between them. A story emerged in 1992^[1] of his father having had Francis horsewhipped by their Irish groom. By the age of fourteen he was - he claimed - engaging in sodomy with these grooms. In 1924 his parents moved to Gloucestershire, first to Prescott House in Gotherington, then to Linton Hall, situated near the boundary with Herefordshire. Francis spent eighteen months boarding at Dean Close School, Cheltenham, from the third term of 1924 until April 1926. This was to be his only brush with a formal education, though he ran away after several weeks.

At a fancy-dress party at the Firth family house at Cavendish Hall, Suffolk, Francis dressed up as a flapper with an Eton crop, beaded dress, lipstick, high heels, and a long cigarette holder.

In 1926 the family moved back to Ireland, and Straffan Lodge. His sister, Ianthe (b. 1921), recalls that Bacon made drawings of 1920s ladies with cloche hats and long cigarette holders^[2]. Later that year, Francis was banished from Straffan Lodge following an incident in which his father found him admiring himself in front of a large mirror draped in his mother's underwear.

London, Berlin and Paris

Bacon spent the autumn and winter of 1926 in London, with the help of an allowance of £3 a week from his mother's trust fund, living on his instincts, simply 'drifting', and reading Nietzsche. When he was broke, Bacon found that by the simple expedient of rent-dodging and petty theft, he could manage a reasonable economy. To supplement his income, he briefly tried his hand at domestic service, but although he enjoyed cooking, he quickly became bored and resigned. He was sacked from a telephone answering position at a shop selling women's clothes in Poland Street, Soho, after writing a poison pen letter to the owner.

It has been suggested (by his cousin Diana Watson) that the seventeen-year old Bacon may have taken a few drawing lessons around this time at St Martin's School of Art.^{[citation needed]}

Bacon discovered that he attracted a certain type of rich man, an attraction he was quick to take advantage of, having developed a taste for good food and wine. One of the men was an ex-army friend of his father, an uncle, again a breeder of race-horses, named Harcourt-Smith. Bacon later claimed that his father had asked this friend to take him 'in-hand' and 'make a man of him'. Doubtless, Eddy Bacon was aware of his friend's impeccable reputation for virility, but not of his penchant for young men.

In the early Spring of 1927 Bacon was taken by Harcourt-Smith to the opulent, decadent, "wide open" Berlin of the Weimar Republic, staying together at the Hotel Adlon.^[3] It is likely that Bacon saw Fritz Lang's Metropolis at this time.

Bacon spent two months in Berlin, though his uncle left after just one - "He soon got tired of me, of course, and went off with a woman...I didn't really know what to do, so I hung on for a while, and then, since I'd managed to keep a bit of money, I decided to go to Paris."

Bacon then spent the next year and a half in Paris. He met Yvonne Bocquentin, pianist and connoisseur, at the opening of an exhibition. Aware of his own need to learn the French language, Bacon lived for three months with Madame Bocquentin and her family at their house near Chantilly. At the Château de Chantilly (Musée Condé) he saw Nicolas Poussin's Massacre of the Innocents, a painting to which he was often to refer in his own later work.

From Chantilly Bacon went to an exhibition that was largely to inspire him to take up painting and become a world renowned legendary artist. A 1927 exhibition of 106 drawings by Picasso at the Galerie Paul Rosenberg, Paris. His interest aroused he often took the train into Paris five or more times a week to see similar shows. Bacon saw Abel Gance's epic silent film Napoléon at the Paris Opéra when it premiered in April 1927. From the autumn of 1927, Bacon stayed at the Paris Hôtel Delambre in Montparnasse.

 

1930s

Bacon returned to London in late 1928 or early 1929, and started work as an interior designer. He took a studio in a converted garage, 17 Queensberry Mews West, South Kensington, and shared the upper floor with Eric Alden (who was later to become his first collector) and his nanny, Jessie Lightfoot. In the first issue of Cahiers d'Art for 1929, Bacon saw Picasso's painted biomorphic figures, reproduced in an article by editor Christian Zervos: Picasso à Dinard, Été 1928. (Likely to have been bought either from Zwemmers bookshop, on the Charing Cross Road, or in Paris.) The 1927 show at Rosenberg's in Paris had been of Neo-classical drawings, and it was the 1928 Les Baigneuses and Le Baiser in Cahiers d'Art, that gave Bacon his direction as a painter.

Bacon was befriended by Geoffrey Gilbey, then the racing correspondent for the Daily Express, and for a time worked as his racing secretary. Gilbey had a house in Ormonde Gate, Chelsea. Bacon advertised himself as a "gentleman's companion" in The Times, on the front page (then reserved for personal messages and insertions).^[4] Among the many answers carefully vetted by Nanny Lightfoot was one from an elderly cousin of Douglas Cooper, at that time owner of one of the finest collection of modern art in England. The gentleman, having paid Bacon for his services, found him part-time work as a telephone operator in a London club and further sought Cooper's help in promoting Bacon's developing skill as a designer of furniture and interiors. Cooper also commissioned a desk from Bacon in battleship grey around this time.

In 1929 he met Eric Hall at the Bath Club, Dover Street, London, where Bacon was working at the telephone exchange. Hall (who was general manager of Peter Jones) was to be both patron and lover to Bacon, in an often torturous relationship.

 

'The 1930 Look in British Decoration'

The first show in the winter of 1929, at Queensberry Mews, was of Bacon's rugs and furniture (a rug was purchased by Hall), but may have included Painted screen (c.1929 - 1930) and Watercolour (1929), both bought by Eric Alden. Watercolour (1929) his earliest surviving painting, seems to have evolved from his rug designs, in turn influenced by the paintings and tapestries of Jean Lurçat.

Sydney Butler (daughter of Samuel Courtauld and wife of Rab Butler) commissioned a glass and steel table and a set of stools for the dining room of her Smith Square house.

Bacon's Queensberry Mews studio was featured in the August 1930 issue of The Studio magazine, in a double page article entitled "The 1930 Look in British Decoration". The piece showed work including a large round mirror, some rugs and tubular steel and glass furniture largely influenced by the International Style, Marcel Breuer, Le Corbusier / Charlotte Perriand and Eileen Gray.

Bacon returned to Germany in 1930. A dramatic studio portrait taken of Bacon by Helmar Lerski, a Swiss photographer and cinematographer, probably dates from this visit. Bacon was later to tell Stephen Spender that he had been very impressed by the work of a photographer who had produced striking effects using mirrors and natural light filtered through screens, but that he could not remember the artist's name.

Later that year Francis Bacon met Roy de Maistre, an Australian painter who was to become a close friend and mentor. De Maistre's circle included Graham Sutherland, Henry Moore and Douglas Cooper.

A second exhibit was held between November 4th & 22nd at 17 Queensberry Mews West. Alongside de Maistre and Jean Sheppeard, Bacon showed four paintings and one print. Gouache (1929) may be the piece titled as A Brick Wall in the hand-list. Painting (1929 - 1930) (probably the work listed as Tree by the Sea) is Bacon's earliest surviving oil painting. Both were bought by Alden. The two other paintings (Self-portrait and Two Brothers) and print (Dark Child in an edition of three) are now lost.

Bacon left the Queensberry Mews West studio in 1931, and was not to have a settled space for some years. Bacon probably shared a studio with Roy de Maistre, about 1931/1932, at Carlyle Studios, (just off the Kings Road), in Chelsea.

Portrait (1932) and Portrait (c.1931 - 1932) (the latter bought by Diana Watson) both show a round-faced youth with diseased skin (painted after Bacon saw Ibsen's Ghosts), and date from a brief stay in a studio on the Fulham Road.

In 1932, Bacon was commissioned by Gladys MacDermot, an Irish woman who had lived in Australia, to redesign much of the decoration and furniture of her flat at 98 Ridgmount Gardens in Bloomsbury. Bacon recalled that she was 'always filling me up with food'.

In April 1933, Bacon moved to 71 Royal Hospital Road, Chelsea (just across Pimlico Road from Ebury Street, where de Maistre had his temporary studio). The studio there was in a converted garage (like the Queensberry Mews West studio), a friend, the interior designer (and property developer) Arundell Clarke, had had his showroom there before moving on to Mayfair.

Crucifixion (1933)

Douglas Cooper, then curator (and part owner/co-director with Fred Mayor) of the Mayor Gallery, in Cork Street, arranged for one of Bacon's paintings, Women in the Sunlight (destroyed without trace), to be included a group show in April 1933.

It was also thanks to Cooper that Bacon's Crucifixion (1933) was reproduced in Herbert Read's book Art Now (opposite a 1929 Baigneuse by Picasso - plates 60/61). The publication was accompanied by an exhibition of the works, in October, at the Mayor Gallery, where Crucifixion (1933) was shown as Composition. 1933.

Crucifixion (1933) (oil on canvas) was subsequently purchased by Sir Michael Sadler (who, other than friends or relations, was the first to buy a painting), and who also commissioned a second version, Crucifixion (1933) (chalk, gouache and pencil), and sent Bacon an x-ray photograph of his own skull, with a request that he paint a portrait from it. Bacon duly incorporated the x-ray directly into The Crucifixion (1933)..

Wound for a Crucifixion

At the start of 1934, with the help of Arundell Clarke, who had just taken over the building, Bacon set up a gallery space in the cellar of Sunderland House, Curzon Street, Mayfair, with plans to deal in his own work and organize his own shows.

In February 1934, Bacon had his first solo show, Paintings by Francis Bacon, of seven of his oil paintings and five or six gouaches, at the new Transition gallery. This was to be the only show at the Transition gallery.

All but two gouaches of figures in flight (Composition (Figure) (1933) (gouache, pastel and pen and ink on paper) and Composition (Figures) (1933) (gouache, pastel and pen and ink on paper)) purchased by his cousin Diana Watson were afterwards destroyed by Bacon.

Among these was the 'very beautiful' Wound for a Crucifixion, destroyed despite having a prospective purchaser in Eric Alden, and one of a very few that Bacon was to express regret at its loss.

Two studio interiors survive from 1934: Studio Interior (1934) and Corner of the Studio (1934) (purchased by Gladys MacDermot). Interior of a Room survives from circa 1935 (c.1933 in Alley/Rothenstein).

Bacon visited Paris in 1935, purchasing there a second-hand book on diseases of the mouth containing high quality hand-coloured plates of both open mouths and oral interiors, which both haunted and obsessed him for the remainder of his life. (Bacon had sinus problems since childhood and had an undergone an operation on the roof of his mouth at some stage in the mid-1930s.) He also saw, for the first of many times, Eisenstein's The Battleship Potemkin in 1935^[5], the scene of the nurse screaming on the Odessa steps later becoming a major theme in his paintings, with the angularity of Eisenstein's image often combined with the thick red pallet of his recently purchased medical tome.

In the Winter of 1935-6, Roland Penrose and Herbert Read, making a first selection for the International Surrealist Exhibition (which was to be held in London from 11 June to 4 July 1936), visited his studio at 71 Royal Hospital Road, Chelsea, saw "three or four large canvases including one with a grandfather clock," but found his work "insufficiently surreal to be included in the show." Bacon claimed that Penrose had said to him "Mr. Bacon don't you realize a lot has happened in painting since the Impressionists?"

In 1937 (or late in 1936), Bacon moved from 71 Royal Hospital Road to the top floor of 1 Glebe Place, Chelsea, which Eric Hall had rented (and kept until 1943).

Patrick White had moved to London, into a small flat in Ebury Street, in 1936, and, on meeting de Maistre in his ground-floor studio there, quickly fell in love with him. The following year, White moved to the top two floors of the building where de Maistre now had his studio, on Eccleston Street, and commissioned from Bacon, who was by now a friend, a writing desk (with wide drawers and a red linoleum top). White also bought the glass and steel dining table from Rab and Sydney Butler.

Abstraction, Abstraction from the Human Form

In January 1937, at Thomas Agnew and Sons, 43 Old Bond Street, London, Bacon was in a group show, Young British Painters, with Graham Sutherland, John Piper, Victor Pasmore, Ivon Hitchens, Roy de Maistre, Ceri Richards, and Julian Trevelyan. Eric Hall, who was also a friend of Jerry Agnew, organized the show; Agnew's was then known for shows of Old Master paintings.

Four works by Bacon were shown: Figures in a Garden (1936), purchased by Diana Watson; Abstraction, and Abstraction from the Human Form, known from magazine photographs (they prefigure Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944) in variously having a tripod structure (Abstraction), bared teeth (Abstraction from the Human Form), and both being biomorphic in form); Seated Figure is lost entirely.

Figures in a Garden alone remains of paintings from 1936, however, a small sketch in black ink on lined paper, Biomorphic Drawing, in the collection of the Estate, at the Hugh Lane gallery, which resembles Abstraction (1936), may be a survivor from this year.

A small self-portrait, putatively dated to 1930 and identified with the self-portrait in the hand-list to the Queensberry Mews show, was exhibited at the Fine Arts and Antiques Fair, Olympia, London in 1998; however, it has been claimed on technical grounds that it dates from 1937 onwards (the canvas board on which it was painted was not available until then, although this has been disputed). Stylistically, the work fits best around the mid 1930s. The work has an unusual provenance (it was kept by Bacon until 1982 and then given away), but the attribution to Bacon is sound (although a detailed technical analysis remains to be done).

On 1 June 1940 Bacon's father died. Bacon was named sole Trustee and Executor of his father's will, which requested that the funeral be as 'private and simple as possible'.

Figure Getting Out of a Car (c. 1939 - 1940)

Bacon, unfit for active service, volunteered for Civil Defence and worked full-time in the ARP (Air Raid Precautions) rescue service. But the fine dust of bombed London worsened his asthma and he was discharged. So, at the height of The Blitz, Eric Hall rented a cottage for Bacon and himself at Bedales Lodge, Steep, near Petersfield, Hampshire.

Figure Getting Out of a Car (c. 1939 - 1940) was painted here but is known only from an early 1946 photograph taken by Peter Rose Pulham (taken shortly before it was painted over by Bacon and retitled Landscape with Car). An ancestor to the biomorphic form of the central panel of Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944), the composition was suggested by a photograph of Hitler getting out of a car at one of the Nuremberg rallies, (Bacon claims to have "copied the car and not much else.")

Man in a Cap, and Seated Man (recto) / Man Standing (verso) (now separated), both on composition board and from about 1943, are abandoned works. The composition of Man in a Cap derives from a picture of Joseph Goebbels that appeared in Picture Post. A photograph of Hitler from the same issue was the basis for Seated Man, and the more roughly painted Man Standing.

The Millais House studio, 7 Cromwell Place: 1943 - 1951

Returning from Hampshire at the latter part of 1943, Bacon and Hall took the ground floor of 7 Cromwell Place, South Kensington, John Everett Millais' old house and studio. High vaulted and north lit, it had had its roof recently bombed - Bacon was able to adopt a large old billiard room at the back of the house as his own studio. Nanny Lightfoot, lacking an alternative location, slept on the kitchen table. Illicit roulette parties were held there, organized by Bacon with assistance by Hall, to the financial benefit of both.

Now home to the National Art Collections Fund, the Millais house is just a short walk from the Victoria and Albert Museum, holder of a National collection of paintings by John Constable, whose oil sketches were much admired by Bacon. It was also at the V&A that Bacon would first discover and study the photographs of Eadweard Muybridge.

The April 1945 show Recent Paintings by Francis Bacon, Frances Hodgkins, Matthew Smith, Henry Moore and Graham Sutherland at the Lefevre gallery (then on New Bond Street, London) had two paintings by Bacon - Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944) and Figure in a landscape (1945).

Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion

Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944) is a key precursor to Bacon's later themes: the triptych format, the placement behind glass in heavily gilded frames, the open mouth, and the use of painterly distortion; the Eumenides, or Furies, in the Oresteia of Aeschylus and the theme of the Crucifixion (Figures at the Foot of the Cross was the first attempt at the title).

Done in oil paint and pastel on Sundeala fibre board within the space of two weeks, Bacon considered Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944) to be the true start to his oeuvre - his masterpiece in the original sense.

Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944) was presented to the Tate Gallery by Eric Hall in 1953.

Untitled (1944) a variant of the right-hand panel of Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944) was shown at Francis Bacon: The Human Body, curated by David Sylvester, at the Hayward Gallery in 1998. A version of the left-hand panel: Study for a Figure (c.1944) was among the abandoned pictures in the 1964 catalogue raisonné.

Figure in a landscape (1945)

A photograph of Eric Hall dozing on a seat in Hyde Park was the basis of the other painting in the Lefevre show, Figure in a landscape (1945) which was bought by Diana Watson and, in 1950, by the Tate Gallery (with the support of Graham Sutherland, then a trustee (1948 – 1954)).

Figure Study (1945) was destroyed; Figure Study I and Figure Study II are from 1945 or 1946.

Study for Man with Microphones (1946), was shown at the Lefevre gallery, (British Painters Past and Present July - August 1946), and at the Anglo-French Art Centre, (Seventh Exhibition November - December 1946). Bacon was clearly unhappy with this picture: it was listed as an abandoned work in the 1964 catalogue raisonné, and was passed on to the Estate in 1992 as a slashed canvas.

At some point in 1947 - 1948, Bacon returned to make a second version, Study for Man with Microphones (1947-48) (shown February to March 1948, at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Contemporary Painters (last (monochrome) plate in the catalogue by James Thrall Soby) as Study for Man with Microphones (1946); and from October to November 1962 in Francis Bacon at the Galleria d'Arte Galatea, Milan as Gorilla with Microphones (1945-46)).

Crucifixion (1933) (oil on canvas) was shown at the Summer Exhibition (July - September 1946) at the Redfern Gallery, 19/20 Cork Street, London, and bought by Sir Colin Anderson.

Painting (1946)

If Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944) is Bacon's masterpiece, then Painting (1946) has a good claim to be his Magnum opus. Originally to be a painting of a chimpanzee in long grass (parts of which may be still visible), he then attempted to portray a bird of prey landing in a field. Bacon described it as his most unconscious^[6] work - the marks suddenly suggesting this image - at once magnificent and appalling.

FB:"Well, one of the pictures I did in 1946, which was the thing that's in the Museum of Modern Art…"

DS:"The butcher-shop picture."

FB:"Yes. It came to me as an accident. I was attempting to make a bird alighting on a field. And it may have been bound up in some way with the three forms that had gone before, but suddenly the line that I had drawn suggested something totally different and out of this suggestion arose this picture. I had no intention to do this picture; I never thought of it in that way. It was like one continuous accident mounting on top of another."

- Excerpt from the October 1962 interview with David Sylvester for the BBC.

Graham Sutherland saw Painting (1946) in the Cromwell Place studio, and urged his dealer, Erica Brausen, then of the Redfern Gallery, to go to see the painting and to buy it. Brausen wrote to Bacon several times, and visited his studio in early autumn 1946 and promptly bought the work for £200. (Painting (1946) was shown in several group shows including in the British section of Exposition internationale d'arte moderne (18 November - 28 December 1946) at the Musée National d'Art Moderne, for which Bacon travelled to Paris.)

Within a fortnight of the sale of Painting (1946) to the Hanover Gallery, with the proceeds, Bacon had decamped from London to Monte Carlo. After staying at a succession of hotels and flats, including the Hôtel de Ré, Bacon settled in a large villa, La Frontalière, in the hills above the town. Eric Hall and Nanny Lightfoot would come to stay. Bacon spent much of the next few years in Monte Carlo, short visits to London apart. From Monte Carlo, Bacon wrote to Graham Sutherland and Erica Brausen. His letters to Erica Brausen show that he did paint there, but no paintings are known to survive.

In 1948, Painting (1946) finally sold to Alfred Barr for the Museum of Modern Art in New York for £240. Bacon wrote to Sutherland asking that he apply fixative to the patches of pastel on Painting (1946) before it was shipped to New York. Painting (1946) is now too fragile to be moved from MoMA for exhibition elsewhere.

Head I, Head II - Head VI

Bacon returned to London and Cromwell Place to paint, late in 1948. Head I was shown at the Summer Exhibition at the Redfern gallery from July to September 1948.

By the end of 1948 Erica Brausen, who had advanced Bacon money for works, left the Redfern Gallery. Brausen had found private capital to start her own gallery in Mayfair. In the spring, a Bacon painting, presumably Head I, was shown at Erica Brausen's new Hanover Gallery (and was noted by Wyndham Lewis in an exhibition review of 12 May 1949).

Held between November 8th and December 10th 1949 at the Hanover Gallery, Francis Bacon: Paintings; Robert Ironside: Coloured Drawings, was in effect, his first professional one-man show (Robert Ironside's watercolours were on an upper floor). A series of six paintings Head I to Head VI, with Study from the Human Body (1949) and Study for Portrait (1949) formed the core of the show with four other paintings by Bacon.

Bacon's paintings attracted the support of Wyndham Lewis writing in The Spectator.

Head I differs from Head II - Head VI in one important respect: while the first is painted on hardboard and dates from 1948 (or 1947-8), the rest of the series date from 1949 and are painted on the reverse of a (commercially) primed canvas.

"well, I was living once down in Monte Carlo and I had lost all my money, and, I had no canvases left and so, the few I had I just turned them, and I found that the, that the, what is called the wrong side, the unprimed side of the canvas worked for me very much better. So I've always used them. So it was just by chance that I had no money to buy canvases with."

- Excerpt from an interview with Melvyn Bragg in Francis Bacon (1985), for the 'South Bank Show' for London Weekend Television.

Head II is, for Bacon, very thickly painted, this was one of very few instances when he had been able to 'rescue' a painting after it had become overworked and the weave of the canvas clogged^[7] (as happened with two abandoned works on canvas from the Head series, from 1949, also in the 1949 Hanover show). The arrow, or pointer, motif in Head II is taken from the book Positioning in Radiography by Kathleen Clara Clark, 1939.

Head VI was Bacon's first surviving engagement with Velázquez's great Portrait of Pope Innocent X (three 'popes' were painted in Monte Carlo in 1946 but were destroyed). The Cobalt Violet mozzetta, crimson in Velázquez's painting, may reflect Bacon's use of printed reproductions of the painting. Bacon later said that, although he admired "the magnificent colour" of the Velázquez, Velázquez "wanted to make it as much like a Titian as possible but, in a curious way he cooled Titian".

An article by Robert Melville titled Francis Bacon appeared in the December 1949 – January 1950 issue of Horizon magazine (edited by Cyril Connolly). Melville placed Bacon in the context of European painting and film, comparing and contrasting his work with that of Picasso, Duchamp, Eisenstein and, in particular, Salvador Dalí and Buñuel's Un Chien Andalou. The piece, along with Reproductions of Paintings by Francis Bacon, was printed between a short story by James Lord and an essay on the Marquis de Sade by Maurice Blanchot).

The Colony Room

The Colony Room, a private drinking club, at 41 Dean Street, Soho, also known as Muriel's after Muriel Belcher, the formidable proprietor. Belcher, who had run a club called the Music-box in Leicester Square during the war, had secured a 3pm - 11pm drinking licence for the Colony Room bar as a private-members club (public houses had to close at 2:30pm). Bacon was a founding member, walking in the day after the opening in 1948. He was 'adopted' by Belcher as a 'daughter' and was allowed free drinks and £10 a week to bring in friends and rich patrons. It was here that Bacon became friends with Lady Rose McLaren.

Bacon met the painter and illustrator John Minton in 1948. Minton was soon to become a regular at 'Muriel's, as were the painters Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, Timothy Behrens, Michael Andrews, the two Roberts, Colquhoun and MacBride, and above all the sometime Vogue photographer, John Deakin.

In 1950 Bacon met the art critic David Sylvester, then known for his writing on Henry Moore and praise for Alberto Giacometti's work. Sylvester had admired and written about his work (first writing about Bacon for a French periodical, L'Age nouveau, in 1948) but had erroneously perceived it to be a form of Expressionism. Head I, in particular, at the 1949 Hanover Gallery show, was, for Sylvester, proof of Bacon's importance as a painter.

In September 1950 John Minton left for the West Indies for a few months. Aware that Bacon was in need of money, Minton asked him to take over his post as a tutor at the school of painting at the Royal College of Art. On condition that he did no formal teaching, Bacon agreed. So for three months, he was on hand to talk to the students for two days a week.

Painting (1950) and Fragment of a Crucifixion (1950) were among the works shown at Francis Bacon: Recent Paintings; Hilly: Paintings, at the Hanover gallery, 14 September - 21 October 1950. Also Study for Figure (1950) (destroyed) and Man at a Curtain (1949) - an abandoned work.

Study after Velázquez

This series of three paintings after Velázquez were painted for the September 1950 Hanover gallery exhibition. The exhibition was advertised as Francis Bacon: Three Studies from the Painting of Innocent X by Velázquez but the series was withdrawn before the start of the show by Bacon.

In November 1950, after Bacon had gone off to South Africa, the Hanover gallery offered on his behalf Study after Velázquez (1950) to the Arts Council, for the Festival of Britain show Sixty Paintings for '51. On his return in May, Bacon again withdrew the painting before it was shown, although it is in the catalogue to the exhibition. Study after Velázquez (1950) and Study after Velázquez II (1950) were sent to his art supplier for the frames and stretchers to be reused. Bacon apparently believed them destroyed.

Study after Velázquez (1950) and Study after Velázquez II (1950) were rediscovered carefully rolled-up at Bacon's art supplier in September 1998 (and shown at the Tony Shafrazi gallery). Study after Velázquez II (1950) (also known as Untitled (Pope) (1950)) is an abandoned work. Study after Velázquez III (1950) is destroyed (but was photographed).

January 1951 Bacon was featured in World Review in The Iconoclasm of Francis Bacon by Robert Melville (describing Study after Velázquez (1950) seen at the studio and on the destruction of the three paintings in the series of studies after Velázquez; Fragment of a Crucifixion (1950) and Man at a Curtain (1949) are shown in monochrome).

Painting (Head of a Man) (1950).

Untitled (Marching Figures). (c.1950) (on a stylistic basis it may be later, 1952 or 1953).

Study for Nude Figures (1950) (also known as Untitled (Crouching Figure) (1950)), and Figure in Frame (1950) (also known as Untitled (figure) (1950-1)), were among the abandoned paintings found in storage after the painter's death. Figure in Frame (1950), in particular, is a compellingly beautiful wreck, with thin dry-brushed paint on raw linen over a spectral smear and scrapes of oil paint.

By 1950 Bacon's affair with Eric Hall had come to an end - he no longer appears on the electoral register with Bacon and Jessie Lightfoot at 7 Cromwell Place - but he was to remain a loyal patron, friend and supporter.

November 1950 Bacon visited his mother in South Africa. This suited his asthma better than spending winter in London. Bacon was impressed by the African landscapes and wildlife, and took photographs in Kruger National Park. On his return journey he spent a few days in Cairo, and wrote to Erica Brausen of his intent to visit Karnak and Luxor, and then go via Alexandria to Marseilles. The visit confirmed his belief in the supremacy of Egyptian art, embodied by the Sphinx. He returned in the Spring of 1951.

30 April 1951 Jessie Lightfoot, Bacon's old nurse died at Cromwell Place. Bacon was gambling in Nice when he learnt of her death. Nanny Lightfoot, 'Nan', Bacon's closest companion, had joined him in London, on his return from Paris and had lived with him and Eric Alden at Queensberry Mews West, and with him and Eric Hall at the cottage near Petersfield, in Monte Carlo and at Cromwell Place. Stricken Bacon sold the 7 Cromwell Place apartment.

After 7 Cromwell Place 1951 - 1953

Bacon took a place in Carlyle Studios Chelsea near the King's Road and, for a time, Bacon worked at the Royal College of Art, in a studio lent by Rodrigo Moynihan.

Head (1951), Figure with Monkey (1951), Study for Nude (1951), Portrait of Lucian Freud (1951), and a series of three popes Pope I (1951), Pope II (1951) and Pope III (1951) were shown at Francis Bacon at the Hanover gallery December 1951 - February 1952.

Study for Nude (1951), which relates in form to Study for Nude Figures (1950), is one of very few paintings by Bacon for which a sketch for the composition survives (in Chinese ink over a photograph in a 1920s Naturist book Man and Sunlight by Hans Surén).

Portrait of Lucian Freud (1951) is based on a photograph of Kafka printed as the frontispiece to Max Brod's Franz Kafka: eine Biographie Prague: 1937.

Pope II (1951) was actually painted first in the 1951 series of three popes (P. II, P. I, P. III) based not so much on Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X, but on a photograph of Pope Pius XII being carried on a sedia gestatoria through a fan vaulted room in the Vatican. (The series was hung as a triptych at the 1962 Tate retrospective.)

The January 1952 Magazine of Art article by Sam Hunter: Francis Bacon: The Anatomy of Horror, places Bacon in a British context, of Sutherland, Wyndham Lewis and Sickert (and even, in passing, Aubrey Beardsley). The article also reproduced two photographs Hunter had taken, in the Summer of 1950, of Bacon's photographic source material; Hunter had found the tables of the 7 Cromwell Place studio littered with newspaper clippings, magazine illustrations and reproductions torn from art books, he had arranged them to put the most images in frame and photographed them in situ.

Study for Crouching Nude

Painted in the Spring of 1952, Study for Crouching Nude, the perched figure of which may derive in form from Muybridge (Man Performing a Standing Jump), was first shown at Recent Trends in Realist Painting (organized by Robert Melville and David Sylvester) at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, from July to August 1952, in place of Study for Portrait (1949).

By the Spring or Summer of 1952, Bacon had met Peter Lacey, a former RAF fighter pilot, at the Colony Room in Soho. Bacon embarked on an affair with Lacey, his first sustained relationship with a younger man. Peter Lacey, a man with independent means, a slight stammer, a ready wit and a violent temper, had no regard for Bacon's paintings. He was, however, a sexual sadist. On being in love with Lacey, Bacon was to say: "Being in love in that extreme way - being totally, physically obsessed by someone - is like having some dreadful disease. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy."

Lacey rented a house called Long Cottage, in the village of Hurst, Berkshire near Henley-on-Thames. Bacon was invited to come to stay.

House in Barbados (1952), painted at The Royal College of Art, was, on Lacey's direction, closely copied from a photograph of a house he owned there. This was an unusual commission for Bacon, and he asked his friend, Denis Wirth-Miller, for help with it.

Dog (1952) (also known as Study of a Dog (1952)) (based on one photograph in a series by Muybridge of a walking mastiff and postcards of Monte Carlo) and Landscape (1952) (based on photographs of Kruger National Park) were painted a few weeks before his second visit to South Africa. Landscape (1952) (also known as Landscape after Van Gogh (1952) also has 'a few brush-strokes' added by Denis Wirth-Miller.

Bacon spent some months of 1952 in South Africa visiting his mother, who had remarried and settled there. Again owing a considerable sum to Erica Brausen of the Hanover gallery, Bacon returned to London to paint.

Dog (1952)

Two further studies from the Muybridge photograph: Dog (1952) (de-accessioned in 2003 from MoMA to Gerard Faggionato, presumably to help fund the acquisition of Triptych (1991) from Tony Shafrazi in 2004) and Dog (1952) (in a private collection) were painted shortly after his return from South Africa.

Elephant Fording a River (1952), rhinoceros (1952) (destroyed?) and a series of crouching figures in long grass: Landscape (1952), Study for Figure in a Landscape (1952), Man Kneeling in Grass (1952) were also painted for the Hanover gallery show: Francis Bacon December 1952 - January 1953.

Landscape, South of France (1952) (also known as Elephant in Jungle Grass (1952) (a complete misnomer - there is no elephant, nor is this an 'African' painting)) was also painted at this date.

Figure in a Landscape (c. 1952) - an oil sketch on paper in the Tate collection (the earliest of four given to Stephen Spender in the early '60s) - relates in form to Study for Figure in a Landscape (1952).

Crouching Nude on Rail (1952) (also known as Untitled (Crouching Nude on Rail) (1952)), one of the overworked and clogged canvases abandoned by Bacon and recovered by the Estate in 1998, the thickly painted pale cerulean strokes provide an unusual sustained delicacy of hue.

At some latter part of 1952, Bacon moved to 6 Beaufort Gardens, in Chelsea. Study for Head (1952) (also known as Study for Portrait (Man Screaming) (1952)) and Man Eating a Leg of Chicken (1952), were painted in the autumn of that year, shortly followed by Man in a Chair (1952). All have been cut down from larger canvases and have an 'encrusted' texture from Bacon's experiments with mixing sand with the paint.

These three were sold privately in December 1952 to Helen Lessore of the Beaux-Arts gallery, London, for ready cash, with David Sylvester acting as Bacon's agent (with a 20% commission). The Hanover's advances were too modest for Bacon's needs, so these unofficial sales (negotiated by Sylvester) to friends or to rival galleries such as the Mayor, Beaux-Arts or the Redfern, were quite frequent between 1953 and 1955.

Eric Hall bought Dog (1952), (the first of the three) from the Hanover on New Year's Eve 1952 with instructions for it to be delivered to the Tate gallery. The second in the series was bought for MoMA in 1953.

Study of a Nude (1952–1953)

Study for a Portrait (1952), was shown in January at the New Year Exhibition 1953 at the Leicester galleries, London along with Study of a Head (1952) (also known as Study for the Head of a Screaming Pope (1952)), which was shown as Study for a Pope.

There were two other pictures in this series of (four) head and shoulder studies: Study of a Head (1952), and Study for a Portrait (1952) (also known as Study for a Portrait of a Man in Blue (1952)). The first three of the series are 'Papal' portraits with zucchetto, open mouth and pince-nez deriving from a film still of the nurse in the Odessa Steps sequence of 'The Battleship Potemkin'. The last may have been painted prior to his second visit to Africa, and may be of Peter Lacey.

Study of a Nude (1952–1953) (also known as Study from the Human Body) was started in December 1952 and completed in January 1953. The figure derives from one of a Muybridge series of a man preparing for a standing high jump. Uniquely among the paintings the figure is painted one-eighth life-size, rather than the almost unvarying range of between two-thirds and three-quarters.

Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X

Completed, and delivered to the Beaux-Arts gallery in February 1953, of Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1953), Bacon said "I wanted to paint a head as if folded in on itself, like the folds of a curtain"^[8]. The Titian Portrait of Cardinal Filippo Archinto (c.1551-1562) is often cited as an ancestor to this device.

Bacon was 'painting hard' in the Spring of 1953, according to David Sylvester, but practically all work executed in this period was destroyed; only Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X, and Study for a Portrait (1953) survive.

Man with Dog (1953) was painted in June 1953 according to the Hanover gallery records. The composition derives from the same Muybridge photograph of a walking mastiff as the Dog (1952) series. The Futurist painter Giacomo Balla's Leash in Motion (1912) (Dinamismo di un cane al guinzaglio (Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash)), which was shown at the Tate gallery in the summer 1952, was also a source for the painting. 'Bacon - the elephant' is inscribed (possibly in another hand) on the stretcher. It was reported in the 1964 catalogue raisonné, that Bacon had confirmed that the picture has nothing to do with an elephant.

Study for Portrait I - VIII (1953)

In 1953, Bacon moved from 6 Beaufort Gardens to 9 Apollo Place, also in Chelsea. David Sylvester, living at the same address at the time, had four sittings for a portrait that on the final sitting metamorphosed into a pope - Study for Portrait I (1953). This was to be the first of a series of eight (the longest of his career) papal portraits painted that summer, with the remaining seven studies painted quickly within the space of two weeks.

Influences

Main article: Influences on painter Francis Bacon

Later life

In 1964, Bacon began a relationship with 39-year-old Eastender George Dyer, whom he met, he claimed, while the latter was burgling his apartment. A petty criminal with a history of borstal and prison, Dyer was a somewhat tortured individual, insecure, alcoholic, appearance obsessed and never really fitting in within the bohemian set surrounding Francis. The relationship was stormy and in 1971, on the eve of Bacon's major retrospective at the Paris Grand Palais, Dyer committed suicide in the hotel room they were sharing, overdosing on barbiturates. The event was recorded in Bacon's 1973 masterpiece Triptych, May - June, 1973.

In 1974, Bacon met John Edwards, a young, handsome Eastender with whom he formed one of his most enduring friendships, eventually bequeathing his £11m fortune to Edwards after his death.

Bacon died April 28, 1992, in Madrid.

The Estate

Main article:The Estate of Francis Bacon

Bacon bequeathed his entire estate (then valued at £11 million) to John Edwards after his death. Edwards, in turn, donated the contents of Francis Bacon's chaotic studio at 7 Reece Mews, South Kensington, to the Hugh Lane gallery in Dublin. Bacon's studio contents were moved and the studio carefully reconstructed in the gallery. Additionally draft materials, perhaps intended for destruction, were according to Canadian Barry Joule bequeathed to Joule who later forwarded most of the materials to create the Barry Joule Archive in Dublin with other parts of the collection given later to the Tate museum.

Bacon was disdainful of his early works and destroyed the majority of it. He also destroyed an unknown number of works throughout his lifetime, and fragments of canvases were found in his studio after his death. About the studio, Bacon remarked: "for me, chaos suggests images."

Bacon's legacy

The best-known pictures of Bacon were taken by photographer John Minihan, who photographed him between 1963 and 1991 and developed such a good relationship with the writer that he became, in effect, his official photographer.

Motion picture

Bacon's Soho life was portrayed by John Maybury, with Derek Jacobi as Bacon and Daniel Craig as George Dyer (and with Tilda Swinton as Muriel Belcher), in the film Love is the Devil (1998), based on Daniel Farson's 1993 biography The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon. Bacon is also cited in interviews with contemporary British artist Damien Hirst as being one of the latter's principal influences.

Trivia

His painting, "Figure with Meat", was spared by the Joker in Batman (1989 film).

References

• Archimbaud, Michel (1994) Francis Bacon: The Final Vision New York: Phaidon Press ISBN 0-7148-2983-8
• Baldassari, Anne (2005) Bacon-Picasso: The Life of Images London: Flammarion ISBN 2-08-030486-0
• Brighton, Andrew (2001) Francis Bacon London: Tate Publising Ltd ISBN 1-85437-307-2
• Cappock, Margarita (2005) Francis Bacon's Studio London: Merrell Publishers Ltd ISBN 1-85894-276-4
• Deleuze, Gilles (2004) Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation London: Continuum International Publishing Group - Mansell ISBN 0-8264-7318-0
• Domino, Christophe (1997) Francis Bacon London: Thames and Hudson Ltd ISBN 0-500-30076-3
• Edwards, John (2001) 7 Reece Mews: Francis Bacon's Studio London: Thames & Hudson Ltd ISBN 0-500-51034-2
• Farson, Daniel (1994) The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon London: Vintage ISBN 0-09-930781-2
• Gale, Matthew; Sylvester David (1999) Francis Bacon: Working on Paper London: Tate Publishing Ltd ISBN 1-85437-280-7
• Hammer, Martin (2005) Bacon and Sutherland Boston: Yale University Press ISBN 0-300-10796-X
• Hammer, Martin (2005) Francis Bacon: Portraits and Heads Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland ISBN 1-903278-66-X
• Harrison, Martin (March 2005) In Camera, Francis Bacon: Photography, Film and the Practice of Painting London: Thames & Hudson Ltd ISBN 0-500-23820-0
• Hunter, Sam; Peppiatt, Michael; Sylvester, David (1998) Francis Bacon: Important Paintings from the Estate New York: Tony Shafrazi gallery ISBN 1-891475-16-9
• Kundera, Milan; Borel, France (1996) Bacon: Portraits and Self-portraits London: Thames & Hudson Ltd ISBN 0-500-09266-4
• Peppiatt, Michael (1996) Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson ISBN 0-297-81616-0
• Peppiatt, Michael (2006) Francis Bacon in the 1950's London: Yale University Press ISBN 0-300-12192-X
• Rothenstein, John (introduction); Alley, Ronald (Catalogue raisonnè and documentation) (1964) Francis Bacon London: Thames and Hudson Ltd
• Russell, John (1993) Francis Bacon London: Thames and Hudson Ltd ISBN 0-500-20271-0
• Schmied, Wieland (2006) Francis Bacon: Commitment and Conflict London: Prestel Verlag ISBN 3-7913-3472-7
• Steffen, Barbara; Bryson, Norman (2004) Francis Bacon and the Tradition of Art Zurich: Skira Editore ISBN 88-8491-721-2
• Sylvester, David (1975, 1980, 1987) Interviews with Francis Bacon (revised edition 1993) London: Thames & Hudson ISBN 0-500-27475-4
• Sylvester, David (2000) Looking Back at Francis Bacon London: Thames & Hudson Ltd ISBN 0-500-01994-0
• Sylvester, David (1998) Francis Bacon: The Human Body London: Hayward Gallery ISBN 1-85332-175-3
• Sylvester, David (1996, 1997, 2002) About Modern Art: Critical Essays 1948-2000 revised edition, London: Pimlico ISBN 0-7126-0563-0
• Todoli, Vincente (2003) Francis Bacon: Caged. Uncaged. Lisbon: Fundacao De Serralves ISBN 972-739-109-5
• Van Alphen, Ernst (1992) Francis Bacon and the Loss of Self London: Reaktion Books ISBN 0-948462-34-5
• Zweite, Armin (2006) Francis Bacon: The Violence of the Real London: Thames and Hudson Ltd ISBN 0-500-09335-0

External links

Select work

• Biomorphic Drawing (1930s)
• Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944)(Tate)
• Figure Study I (1945) (NG Scotland)
• Painting (1946)
• Head VI (1949)
• Study from the Human Body (1949) (NG Victoria)
• Man with Dog (1953)
• Study of a Baboon (1953) (MoMA)
• Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1953)(Des Moines)
• Study for Portrait VI (1953) (MIA)
• Two Figures in the Grass (1954)
• Figure with Meat (1954)
• Figures in a Landscape (1956-7)
• Study for Portrait of P.L., no. 2 (1957) (Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts)
• Three Studies for a Crucifixion (March 1962)(Guggenheim)
• Portrait of Man with Glasses III (1963)
• Portrait of George Dyer in a Mirror (1968)
• Self-Portrait (1971)
• Study for Portrait of Lucian Freud (sideways) (August 1971)
• Two Figures with a Monkey (1973) (Museo Rufino Tamayo)
• Study for Portrait (Michel Leiris) (1978)
• Sphinx - Portrait of Muriel Belcher (1979)
• Triptych (1991)

Sites

• Francis Bacon Image Gallery Extensive site with biography, images, and quotes
• The Francis Bacon Estate
• Tate Collection
• Hugh Lane Gallery
• Faggionato Fine Art - Francis Bacon - Studying form February 9 - April 15, 2005

Paintings from the Estate 1980 - 1991 June 25 - August 26, 1999

• Tribute and 35 great links! Biography, images, audio interviews, poetry & film.
• ArtQuotes.net Bacon Quotes Collection of art quotes and profile of the artist
• Francis Bacon at Richard Nagy Gallery
• Francis Bacon en Psikeba

News/Reviews

• £9.5m Bacon out of Tate's reach - The Guardian - May 28, 2004
• Friend who inherited Bacon's £11m fortune went on 11-year spending spree - The Guardian - August 31, 2004.
• Bacon triptych emerges from Tehran storeroom - The Guardian - June 18, 2005
• Reviews of the exhibition Francis Bacon: Portraits and Heads, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, August-September 2005:
  • A fresh side of Bacon - The Daily Telegraph - June 22, 2005 (with picture gallery)
  • Face to face with Bacon - The Observer - August 7, 2005
  • The Beast Within - The Guardian - August 9, 2005
• Bacon self-portrait on auction in 'Miss B's' collection - The Guardian, October 14, 2005

See also

• British art
• Irish art
• The Portrait Now
• Painting the Century 101 Portrait Masterpieces 1900-2000
• Deleuze, Gilles (2004); The Logic of Sensation, Continuum.
• Francis Bacon; el desgarro de la carne y la deriva del yo

Notes