Francis Bacon Bristish, 1909-1992

Francis Bacon (1909 - 1992) is widely regarded as one of the most significant painters of the 20th Century. 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. Bacon remained steadfastly committed to figuration and portraiture throughout his career. His work is defined by a striking convergence of modernity and tradition. Ectoplasmic figures and contorted faces strain like raw forces of nature against shallow fields of searing color and the skeletal frameworks that tether them to the picture plane. In his visceral, serialized exploration of the human body and its frailties, Bacon revealed himself as an unflinching observer of both the corporeal condition and the primal fear embedded within those who inhabit it.

Despite the violent deformations that characterize his portraits—often read as expressions of existential alienation—Bacon's relationship to his sitters was frequently intimate. Among them were his lover George Dyer; Henrietta Moraes, owner of the Colony Club, one of Bacon's favored haunts; and Isabel Rawsthorne, the artist's muse and confidante. While he often worked from photographs, creating portraits that reject objectivity or idealization, Bacon also made rare attempts to paint directly from life. Lisa Sainsbury, a close friend and patron, sat for him weekly over two years.