Francis Bacon

Painting 1946- FB.

It wasn't at all usual for Bacon to paint after a night's drinking. He claimed that the chance effects thus produced often led him down unexpected creative avenues.

I'm sure that the characteristically smudged facial features of his subjects...:


Self-Portrait- Francis Bacon.

...must be an indication of the state of his make-up after a night on the fizz.

Here's the Daniel Farson phographic material I referenced early in this thread which gives some impression of artistic life in 1960's London:


Angry young playwright John Osborne- DF.

"Oh, What a Lovely War!" theatre director Joan Littlewood- DF.

Back On Topic:


Front cover of Farson's biography "The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon".

Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon study, 1951
Freud and Bacon were close friends at the time of this drawing, and the very minimal line shows the narcissistic side of this complex painter who suggested opening the trouser fly to reveal his hips. Freud said the artist should make real 'to others his innermost feelings about all that he cares for'. Photograph: Private Collection, London/Lucian Freud Archive

Peter Duggan's Artoons.

Francis Bacon nude could fetch £18m

Portrait of Henrietta Moraes is the highlight of an auction of postwar and contemporary art at Christie's in London next month

Press Association

guardian.co.uk, Friday 20 January 2012 10.58 GMT


A Portrait of Henrietta Moraes (1963), has been owned by a private collector for almost 30 years. Photograph: Handout/Reuters

A "seductive and sexually charged" Francis Bacon portrait is expected to fetch about £18m when it goes on sale next month.

The Portrait Of Henrietta Moraes is the highlight of an auction of postwar and contemporary art at Christie's in central London on 14 February.

The painting, which dates from 1963, has been owned by a private collector for almost 30 years.

Francis Outred, Christie's head of postwar and contemporary art, Europe, said: "Searing with raw colour and texture, Portrait Of Henrietta Moraes is one of the most seductive and sexually charged paintings I have ever encountered by Francis Bacon.

"The carefully constructed mood through colour is forcefully invaded by the extraordinary swipes of the loaded brush, which create the woman's voluptuous figure. This juxtaposition of the sheer beauty of colour with the brutal physicality of paint is what makes Bacon's art so remarkable."

The portrait of Bacon's friend and model was painted a year after the artist's breakthrough exhibition at the Tate Gallery in London.

Outred said: "The work has only had two owners since the day it was made, one of which was the important collector and postwar industrialist Willy Schniewind and the other being the present owner, a distinguished New Yorker who acquired the work in 1983.

"Portrait Of Henrietta Moraes has not been seen in the public eye for 15 years and I am very excited to be presenting this important piece of British art in London."

The John Deakin photo on which the portrait of Henrietta Moreas was almost certainly based:



From The Independent obituary:

Henrietta Moraes was a voluptuous icon of the Soho subculture of the Fifties, sprawling across an unmade bed posing for photographs taken by John Deakin for Bacon's painting. "He was a horrible little man," she told Michael Peppiatt in 1990.

He came round and told me to lie on the bed with my legs open. And he began taking photos from the wrong end. I said, "Deakin, I don't think that's what Francis wants. I don't think that would interest him." "Oh no," said Deakin, "this is the way Francis wants it." But of course he didn't, so we had to start all over again. Later on I found Deakin selling copies of the first lot of photos to some sailors in Soho for 10 shillings a time.

Clearly John Deakin knew exactly what he was doing.

I wonder if Michael Peppiatt is related to Richard Peppiatt, who is now semi-famous for denouncing the British tabloids after having worked for them for years.

Stephen Collins