Francis Bacon
was an Irish-born British figurative painter known for his raw, unsettling imagery. Focusing on the human form, his subjects included crucifixions, portraits of popes, self-portraits, and portraits of close friends, with abstracted figures sometimes isolated in geometrical structures. Rejecting various classifications of his work, Bacon said he strove to render "the brutality of fact." He built up a reputation as one of the giants of contemporary art with his unique style.
Bacon did not begin to paint until his late twenties, having drifted in the late 1920s and early 1930s as an interior decorator, bon vivant and gambler. He said that his artistic career was delayed because he spent too long looking for subject matter that could sustain his interest. His breakthrough came with the 1944 triptych Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, which sealed his reputation as a uniquely bleak chronicler of the human condition. Following the suicide of his lover George Dyer in 1971 (memorialised in his Black Triptychs, and a number of posthumous portraits) his art became more sombre, inward-looking and preoccupied with the passage of time and death. The climax of his later period is marked the masterpieces Study for Self-Portrait (1982) and Study for a Self-Portrait-Triptych, 1985-86.
Despite his existentialist and black outlook, Bacon was charismatic, articulate and well-read. A bon vivant, he spent his middle age eating, drinking and gambling in London's Soho with like-minded friends including Lucian Freud (although they fell out in the mid-1970s, for reasons neither ever explained), John Deakin, Muriel Belcher, Henrietta Moraes, and so on. After Dyer's suicide he largely distanced himself from this circle, and while still socially active and his passion for gambling and drinking continued, he settled into a platonic and somewhat fatherly relationship with his eventual heir, John Edwards.
Since his death, Bacon's reputation has grown steadily, and his work is among the most acclaimed, expensive and sought-after on the art market. In the late 1990s a number of major works, previously assumed destroyed, including early 1950s pope paintings and 1960s portraits, re-emerged to set record prices at auction.
London, Berlin and Paris
Bacon spent the latter half of 1926 in London, on an allowance of 3 pounds a week from his mother's trust fund, reading Nietzsche. Although poor (5 pounds was then the average weekly wage), Bacon found that by avoiding rent and engaging in petty theft, he could survive. To supplement his income, he briefly tried his hands at domestic service, but although he enjoyed cooking he 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. Bacon found himself drifting through London's homosexual underworld, aware that he was able to attract a certain type of rich man, something he was quick to take advantage of, having developed a taste for good food and wine.
In 1927 Bacon moved to Berlin, where he first saw Fritz Lang's Metropolis and Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, both later to be influences on his work. He spent two months in Berlin, though Harcourt-Smith left after 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." 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 French, Bacon lived for three months with Madame Bocquentin and her family at their house near Chantilly. He travelled into Paris to visit the city's art galleries. At the Château de Chantilly (Musée Condé) he saw Nicolas Poussin's Massacre of the Innocents, a painting which he often referred to in his own later work. From Chantilly, he went to an exhibition that inspired him to take up painting.
Return to London
Bacon moved to London in the winter of 1928/29, to work as an interior designer. He took a studio at 17 Queensberry Mews West, South Kensington, sharing the upper floor with Eric Alden - his first collector - and his childhood nanny, Jessie Lightfoot. In 1929, he met Eric Hall, his patron and lover in an often torturous and abusive relationship. Bacon left the Queensberry Mews West studio in 1931 and had no settled space for some years. He probably shared a studio with Roy De Maistre, circa 1931/32 in Chelsea. Portrait (1932) and Portrait (c. 1931-32) both show a round-faced youth with diseased skin.
Early Success
By 1944 Bacon had gained confidence. His Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion had summarised themes explored in his earlier paintings, including his examination of Picasso's biomorphs, his interpretations of the Crucifixion, and the Greek Furies. It is generally considered his first mature piece; he regarded his works before the triptych as irrelevant. The painting caused a sensation when exhibited in 1945 and established him as a foremost post-war painter. Remarking on the cultural significance of Three Studies, John Russell observed in 1971 that "there was painting in England before the Three Studies, and painting after them, and no one ... can confuse the two. "
Late 1940s
Bacon returned to London and Cromwell Place late in 1948. The following year Bacon exhibited his "Heads" series, most notable for Head VI, Bacon's first surviving engagement with Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X (three 'popes' were painted in Monte Carlo in 1946 but were destroyed). He kept an extensive inventory of images for source material, but preferred not to confront the major works in person; he viewed Portrait of Innocent X only once, much later in his life.
1950s
Bacon's main haunt was The Colony Room, a private drinking club at 41 Dean Street in Soho, known as "Muriel's" after Muriel Belcher, its proprietor. Belcher had run the Music-box club in Leicester Square during the war, and secured a 3 - 11pm drinking licence for the Colony Room bar as a private-members club; public houses had to, by law, close at 2:30 pm. Bacon was a founding member, joining the day after its opening in 1948. He was 'adopted' by Belcher as a 'daughter', and allowed free drinks and 10 pounds a week to bring in friends and rich patrons.
Bacon was impressed by Goya, 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 travel via Alexandria to Marseilles. The visit confirmed his belief in the supremacy of Egyptian art, embodied by the Sphinx. He returned in early 1951.
The Crucifixion
The imagery of the crucifixion weighs heavily in the work of Francis Bacon. Critic John Russell wrote that the crucifixion in Bacon's work is a "generic name for an environment in which bodily harm is done to one or more persons and one or more other persons gather to watch". Bacon admitted that he saw the scene as "a magnificent armature on which you can hang all types of feeling and sensation". He believed the imagery of the crucifixion allowed him to examine "certain areas of human behaviour" in a unique way, as the armature of the theme had been accumulated by so many old masters.
Though he came to painting relatively late in life - he did not begin to paint seriously until his late 30s - crucifixion scenes can be found in his earliest works. In 1933, his patron Eric Hall commissioned a series of three paintings based on the subject. The early paintings were influenced by such old masters as Matthias Grünewald, Diego Velázquez and Rembrandt, but also by Picasso's late 1920s/early 1930s biomorphs and the early work of the Surrealists.
The Screaming Mouth
The inspiration for the recurring motif of screaming mouths in many Bacons of the late 1940s and early 1950s was drawn from a number of sources, including medical text books, the works of Matthias Grünewald and photographic stills of the nurse in the Odessa Steps scene in Eisenstein's 1925 silent film Battleship Potemkin. Bacon saw the film in 1935, and viewed it frequently thereafter. He kept in his studio a photographic still of the scene, showing a close-up of the nurse's head screaming in panic and terror and with broken pince-nez spectacles hanging from her blood-stained face. He referred to the image throughout his career, using it as a source of inspiration.
Bacon described the screaming mouth as a catalyst for his work, and incorporated its shape when painting the chimera. His use of the motif can be seen in one of his first surviving works, Abstraction from the Human Form. By the early 1950s it became an obsessive concern, to the point, according to art critic and Bacon biographer Michael Peppiatt, "it would be no exaggeration to say that, if one could really explain the origins and implications of this scream, one would be far closer to understanding the whole art of Francis Bacon.
In an interview to BBC News, when the decision to move Bacon's London Studio to Ireland was announced, Clarke commented the following about all controversies over the donation of the studio: "Bacon once said that he'd never come back to Dublin until he was dead, (...) I think frankly if he were here today to see what happened, I think he'd be touched but I think he'd probably roar with laughter as well". To The Irish Times he also commented about the Bacon's Studio removal to Ireland: "And it's very appropriate. I'm convinced Francis would have loved it. After all, he was born here, and he said once that he couldn't come back until he was dead - the fuss would be too much. "
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