Francis Bacon

11 September 2008 - 4 January 2009

Explore the exhibition

Room 7: Portrait

Henrietta Moraes 1966
Oil on canvas
1520 x 1470 mm
© The Estate of Francis Bacon/DACS 2008 Private collection, London enlarge

During the 1960s, the larger part of Bacon's work shifted focus to portraits and paintings of his close friends. These works centre on two broad concerns: the portrayal of the human condition and the struggle to reinvent portraiture. Bacon drew upon the lessons of van Gogh and Velázquez, but attempted to rework their projects for a post-photographic world.

His approach was to distort appearance in order to reach a deeper truth about his subjects. To this end, Bacon's models can be seen performing different roles. In the Lying Figures series, Henrietta Moraes is naked and exposed. This unprecedented raw sexuality reinforces Bacon's understanding of the human body simply as meat.

By contrast Isabel Rawsthorne, a fellow painter, always appears in control of how she is presented. With a mixture of contempt and affection, Bacon depicted George Dyer, his lover and most frequent model, as fragile and pathetic. This is especially evident in Dyer's first appearance in Bacon's work, Three Figures in a Room, in which he represents the absurdities, indignities and pathos of human existence. Everyday objects occasionally feature in these works, hollow props for lonely individuals which reinforce the sense of isolation that Bacon associated with the human condition.