(after) Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon Three Studies for Portrait of Lucian Freud (Bacon lithograph)

1966

Francis Bacon (1909 – 1992) was an Irish-born British figurative painter well known for his bold figurative paintings and portraiture. His style is distinctive for his use of thick paint, energetic wide brushstrokes with half unmixed colors, bulbous forms and contorted, abstracted and even cubist features, lending an emotionally and psychologically complex expression. Bacon took up painting in his late 30s, having drifted 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. Amongst his common subjects were close friends and drinking companions, as well as crucifixions and popes. After his first solo show at Hanover Gallery in 1949, prominent English writer, painter and critic Wyndham Lewis wrote: "The Hanover Show is of exceptional importance. Of the younger painters none actually paints so beautifully as Francis Bacon. Bacon is one of the most powerful artists in Europe today and he is perfectly in tune with his time".