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.

Return to London

17 Queensberry Mews West

Bacon returned to London in late 1928 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 to be his first collector. By 1929 Jessie Lightfoot had joined Bacon in London and lived together, at Queensberry Mews West, with Bacon and Eric Alden.

Related Topics:
1928 - South Kensington - 1929

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In 1929 Bacon met Roy de Maistre, a painter, who was to become a friend and mentor. De Maistre's circle included Patrick White, Douglas Cooper, Graham Sutherland and Henry Moore. In 1929 he also met Eric Hall, at the Bath Club, Dover Street, London, where Bacon was working on the telephone exchange. Hall (who was general manager of Peter Jones) was to be both patron and lover to Bacon.

Related Topics:
Patrick White - Graham Sutherland - Henry Moore - Peter Jones

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

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Bacon's studio at Queensberry Mews, was featured in the August 1930 issue of The Studio, a double page article "The 1930 Look in British Decoration" showing his work, including a large round mirror, rugs and tubular steel and glass furniture influenced by the International Style, Marcel Breuer, Le Corbusier and Eileen Gray.

Related Topics:
1930 - International Style - Marcel Breuer - Le Corbusier - Eileen Gray

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The second show, at 17 Queensberry Mews West was held 4 - 22 November 1930. Four paintings were shown by Bacon with works by de Maistre and Jean Sheppeard.Gouache (1929) may be the work in the handlist as A Brick Wall. Painting (1929 - 1930) (in the handlist as Tree by the Sea) was his first surviving oil painting. Both were bought by Alden. Two other paintings (Self-portrait and Two Brothers) and a print (Dark Child in an edition of three) shown are now lost.

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Fulham Road and 71 Royal Hospital Road

Bacon left the Queensberry Mews studio in 1932 and was not to have a settled space for some years. 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 after which he moved to 71 Royal Hospital Road, Chelsea.

Related Topics:
Diseased - Ibsen - Ghosts - Fulham - Chelsea

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Douglas Cooper, then part owner of the Mayor Gallery, arranged for Bacon's paintings to be included a group show in April 1933, and persuaded Herbert Read to include Bacon's Crucifixion (1933) in his book Art Now (opposite a 1929 Baigneuse by Picasso - plates 60/61), and which was accompanied by an exhibition of works in October at the Mayor Gallery.

Related Topics:
1933 - Herbert Read

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Crucifixion (1933) (oil on canvas) was subsequently purchased by Sir Michael Sadler, who 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 of it. Bacon duly incorporated it directly into The Crucifixion (1933).

Related Topics:
X-ray - Skull

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At the start of 1934 Bacon set up the Transition gallery in the basement of Sunderland House in Curzon Street, Mayfair. A friend, the decorator Arundell Clarke, had lately taken over the building, and this was to be a way for Bacon to circumvent the gallery system by dealing in his own work and organizing his own exhibitions. February of that year was to see the first solo show of seven of his oil paintings and five or six gouaches there.

Related Topics:
1934 - Mayfair - Gouache

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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.

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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.

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Three studio interiors survive from 1934. Interior of a Room survives from circa 1935.

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In the Summer of 1936 the International Surrealist Exhibition was held in London, but on visiting Bacon's 71 Royal Hospital Road studio, Roland Penrose and Read found his work 'insufficiently surreal to be included in the show'.

Related Topics:
1936 - Read - Surreal

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1 Glebe Place and Petersfield

In late 1936 Bacon moved to the top floor of 1 Glebe Place (kept from 1936 to 1943). January 1937 saw four works by Bacon in a group show at Thomas Agnew and Sons, London. Agnew's was then known for shows of Old Master paintings, Young British Painters, in which Bacon was shown with works by Graham Sutherland, John Piper, Victor Pasmore, Ivon Hitchens, Roy de Maistre, Ceri Richards, and Julian Trevelyan, was organized by Eric Hall, who was a friend of Jerry Agnew.

Related Topics:
1937 - Old Master - Graham Sutherland - John Piper

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Figures in a Garden (1936) was purchased by Diana Watson. Abstraction, and Abstraction from the Human Form are 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.

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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.

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A small self-portrait putatively dated to 1930 and identified with the self-portrait in the handlist to the Queensberry Mews show, was exhibited at the Fine Arts and Antiques Fair, Olympia, London in 1998, but it should be dated to 1937 or 1938 on both stylistic, and technical grounds (the canvas board on which it was painted was not available until then, pace Richard Shone). There is some question of the provenance (it was apparently 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).

Related Topics:
Self-portrait - 1938 - Provenance - Attribution - Analysis

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On June 1 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'.

Related Topics:
June 1 - 1940

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Bacon who was unfit for active service, had been working for some time in the ARP (Air Raid Precautions) but the fine dust of bombed London worsened his asthma, and at the height of The Blitz, Eric Hall rented a cottage for Bacon and himself, Bedales Lodge, in Steep, near Petersfield, Hampshire. Figure Getting Out of a Car (1939/1940) was painted there and is known only from a photograph by Peter Rose Pulham from 1946 (shortly before it was painted over by Bacon and retitled Landscape with Car). Man in a Cap and Seated Man (recto) / Man Standing (verso), both on composition board and from 1941 - 1942 are abandoned works.

Related Topics:
Dust - The Blitz - Petersfield, Hampshire

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