Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1909 Dublin, Ireland

Died: 1992 Madrid, Spain

Year of Migration to the UK: 1926

Biography

Painter Francis Bacon was born on 28 October 1909 in Dublin, Ireland, the second of five children of English parents. During the First World War the family moved to London, where Bacon’s father served in the War Office, before returning to Ireland. Between 1924 and 1926 Bacon boarded at Dean Close School, Cheltenham. His emerging homosexuality severely strained relations with his parents and, by his own account, he was expelled from the household, moving to London in 1926. The following spring, he accompanied a family friend to Berlin - an overwhelming cultural experience. Equally important were the subsequent months Bacon spent in Paris, where, in summer 1927, at Galerie Pierre Rosenberg, he discovered Picasso's recent drawings. As a result, Bacon began making drawings and watercolours himself, apparently without formal guidance.

In 1928, he returned to London, working as an interior decorator and furniture designer at 17 Queensberry Mews West, South Kensington. Stylistically influenced by Le Corbusier and Eileen Gray, by August 1930, Bacon had caught the attention of The Studio magazine, which presented his designs as examples of the ‘1930 Look in British Decoration’. Later that year Bacon exhibited paintings and rugs at his studio. In 1933 he participated in a group show at the Mayor Gallery in Cork Street and his Crucifixion (1933) was reproduced in Herbert Read’s Art Now: An Introduction to the Theory of Modern painting and Sculpture (1933) and purchased by noted collector, Sir Michel Sadler. Bacon's one-man show of paintings, gouaches and drawings at the Transition Gallery in February 1934 sold poorly, however, and in 1936 his work was rejected by the International Surrealist Exhibition in London, deemed ‘insufficiently surreal’. Despite his inclusion in an exhibition of ten Young British Painters, organised by Eric Hall at Thos. Agnew's and Sons in January 1937, scarcely any work survives from this period. Bacon’s asthma meant that he was declared unfit for active service in the Second World War, though he volunteered in Air Raid Precautions (ARP). In 1943 he moved into the ground floor of 7 Cromwell Place, South Kensington, a house once owned by Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais. There he painted Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944), subsequently included in a group exhibition at the Lefevre Gallery in 1945 and bought by Eric Hall, who later presented it to the Tate Gallery. In 1949 Bacon held a solo show at the Hanover Gallery, which included full-length figures and a series of tormented heads, culminating in Head VI (1949). A half-length portrait, this was the first painting in Bacon's most celebrated series (from 1949), showing a boxed, screaming pope, which established his international reputation. A variation on Velazquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1650), Bacon was also inspired by a still of the screaming nurse from Eisenstein’s film, Battleship Potemkin (1925). In the early 1950s Bacon followed his lover, Peter Lacy to Morocco, dividing his time between Tangier and London, where his circle ranged from Soho luminaries, such as Muriel Belcher, John Deakin, and painters, John Minton, Michael Andrews, and Frank Auerbach, to the literary salons of Ann Fleming and Sonia Orwell.

Bacon's international reputation increased and, in 1953, he held his first New York exhibition at Durlacher Bros. In1954 he exhibited with Ben Nicholson and Lucian Freud in the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale and, in 1955, the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London (ICA) held his first retrospective. He signed a contract in October 1958 with Marlborough Fine Art after its directors agreed to take on his considerable debt of £1,242 owed to the Hanover Gallery. In 1961, he occupied 7 Reece Mews, a converted coach house in South Kensington, where he produced his first large-scale triptych, Three Studies for a Crucifixion (1962) which featured, along with 90 other works, in a major retrospective at the Tate Gallery in May 1962. The triptych format allowed Bacon to show his figures to be, simultaneously, time-related and separated. Mainly through the medium of John Deakin’s photographs, several of these figures were based on Bacon's partner, George Dyer, with whom he became involved in 1963. Photography itself became an indispensable means to Bacon’s expressive ends. Deakin’s photographs of other close friends, Isabel Rawsthorne, Lucian Freud and Muriel Belcher, allowed Bacon to capture the vitality of his subjects, while keeping a critical distance. In October 1971 the Grand Palais, Paris staged a major retrospective. However, the event was marred by tragedy: on the eve of the opening, Dyer, committed suicide in their Paris hotel room. The Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibition in 1975 was the first time showing works by a contemporary British artist. In the same year David Sylvester's immensely revealing interviews with Bacon were published, affording the artist an unusual degree of influence over the reception and discussion of his works. In 1985 the Tate Gallery held its second Bacon retrospective accompanied by the director’s statement that Bacon was the ‘greatest living painter’.

Francis Bacon died on 28 April 1992 in Madrid, Spain. The studio, where he worked for over 30 years, was donated by his heir, John Edwards, to the Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin in 1998, where it was reconstructed and opened to the public in 2001. Bacon’s work is held in numerous UK public collections, including the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Art and Tate.

Related books

Martin Harrison, Francesca Pipe, Christopher Bucklow, Inside Francis Bacon (2020)
Martin Harrison, Francis Bacon: Catalogue Raisonné (London: The Estate of Francis Bacon Publishing, 2016)
Richard Cork, Face to Face Interviews with Artists, (London: Tate Publishing, 2015)
Michael Peppiatt, Francis Bacon In Your Blood: A Memoir (London: Bloomsbury, 2015)
Martin Hammer, Francis Bacon and Nazi Propaganda (London: Tate Publishing, 2012)
David Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon, (London: Thames & Hudson, 2012)
Michel Archimbaud, Francis Bacon In Conversation with Michel Archimbaud, (London/New York: Phaidon Press, 2010)
Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sensation (London: Continuum, 2003)
David Sylvester, Looking Back at Francis Bacon (London: Thames & Hudson, 2000)
Michael Peppiatt, Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1996)
The BBC Southbank Show: The Life and Career of Francis Bacon, hosted by Melvyn Bragg, dir. David Hinton, 1985
Michel Leiris, Francis Bacon: full face and in profile (Oxford: Phaidon, 1983)
John Russell, Francis Bacon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979)
David Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon (London: Thames & Hudson, 1975)
Ronald Alley and John Rothenstein, Francis Bacon, Catalogue Raisonné (London: Thames & Hudson, 1964)
Francis Bacon, Francis Bacon: Matthew Smith - A Painter's Tribute, Matthew Smith: Paintings from 1909 to 1952, exhibition catalogue, (London: Tate Gallery, 1953)
David Sylvester, The Paintings of Francis Bacon, The Listener, 47, (3 Jan 1952), pp. 28–9
Sam Hunter, Francis Bacon: The Anatomy of Horror, Magazine of Art, 45 (1952), pp. 11–15
Robert Melville, Horizon (1949)
Herbert Read, Art Now (London: Faber & Faber, 1933)

Public collections

Related organisations

Air Raid Precautions (volunteer)
British Pavilion, Venice Biennale (exhibitor)
Dean Close School (student)
Hanover Gallery (exhibiting artist)
Marlborough Gallery (exhibiting artist)

Selected exhibitions

Francis Bacon: Man and Beast, Royal Academy (2022)
Francis Bacon: Invisible Rooms, Tate Liverpool (2016)
Francis Bacon / Henry Moore: Flesh and Bone, Ashmolean Museum (2014)
Francis Bacon and the Masters, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts (2014)
Francis Bacon: A Terrible Beauty, Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane (2009)
Francis Bacon, Tate Britain (2008)
Francis Bacon in St Ives: Experiment and Transition 1957-62, Tate St Ives (2007)
Francis Bacon: Paintings from the 1950s, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Art (2006)
Francis Bacon: Portraits and Heads, National Galleries of Scotland (2005)
Francis Bacon’s Studio, Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane (2001)
Francis Bacon 1909-1992 , Millennium Galleries (2001)
Francis Bacon: A Retrospective, Yale Centre for British Art (1999)
Francis Bacon: Working on Paper, Tate (1999)
Francis Bacon: The Human Body, Hayward Gallery (1998)
Trapping Appearance: Portraits by Francis Bacon and Alberto Giacometti from the Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Collection, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Art (1996)
Francis Bacon: Paintings since 1944, Tate Liverpool (1990)
Francis Bacon: Loan Exhibition in Celebration of his 80th Birthday, Marlborough Fine Art (1989)
Francis Bacon Retrospective, Tate (1985)
Francis Bacon: Recent Paintings, Malborough Gallery (1967)
Francis Bacon Retrospective, Tate (1962)
Francis Bacon, Nottingham University (1961)
Paintings by Francis Bacon, ICA (1955)
Venice Biennale (1954)
Francis Bacon: Recent Paintings, Hanover Gallery (1950)
Recent Paintings by Francis Bacon, Frances Hodgkins, Henry Moore, Matthew Smith, Graham Sutherland, Lefevre Gallery (1945)
Young British Painters, Thos. Agnew & Sons (1937)
Francis Bacon, Transition Gallery (1934)
Mayor Gallery (1933)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Francis Bacon]