Francis Bacon (painter)

Francis Bacon (October 28, 1909 - April 28, 1992) was an Anglo-Irish painter, atheist, gambler and bon vivant. He was a collateral descendant of the Elizabethan philosopher Francis Bacon.

After 7 Cromwell Place 1951 - 1952

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.

Related Topics:
Chelsea - King's Road - Royal College of Art

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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.

Related Topics:
Lucian Freud - 1952

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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).

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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.

Related Topics:
Lucian Freud - Kafka

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Pope II (1951) was actually painted first in the 1951 series of three popes (P. II, P. I, P. III).

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By 1952 Bacon had met Peter Lacey, a former RAF fighter pilot, at the Colony Room in Soho.

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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 proprietress. 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.

Related Topics:
Soho - Leicester Square

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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).

Related Topics:
David Sylvester - Institute of Contemporary Arts

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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."

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

Related Topics:
Hurst - Berkshire - Henley-on-Thames

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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.

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Dog (1952)(a.k.a. 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.

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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.

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