Francis Bacon

Marlborough Fine Art, New York
Nohra Haime Gallery, New York
Acquired by the present owner in the 1980s

Milan Kundera, Bacon: Portraits and Self-Portraits, London 1996, p. 138, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate although the blue background is stronger in tone in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. No restoration is apparent under ultra-violet light.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Superbly combining both a dazzling display of painterly bravura and a multi-layered psychological intensity, Study for a Portrait exemplifies the salient features of Francis Bacon's tremendous output. The presence of Bacon's ubiquitous title prefix "Study" is laden with understatement and couldn't be more ironic: this painting is in fact an intensely charged minor masterpiece. It is a classic example from Bacon's seminal suite of small portrait heads in that it shows an intense, contained head flickering with the faintest movement, and is highly unusual in design as a slightly cast down profile. Below two sweeps of tightly brushed hair sits a face of striking calm and resolve, which almost certainly belonged to a singularly important figure in Bacon's existence.

 

Although the subject of this painting has not been explicitly identified, it is important to appreciate it from the perspective of two well known characteristics of Bacon's contemporaneous oeuvre. First is that in the period after the suicide of Bacon's lover George Dyer in 1971, the artist focused on self-portraiture and depicting a close coterie of friends with particular intensity. Second is Bacon's extraordinary capacity to invest his portraits with personal import, as noted by Sylvester: "Bacon had something of Picasso's genius for transforming his autobiography into images with a mythic allure and weight" (David Sylvester, Looking back at Francis Bacon, London 2000, p. 186).

 

Looking to Bacon's friends for the subject of this work, it becomes starkly clear that this physiognomy bears a striking resemblance to that of John Edwards (1949-2003), the darkly handsome East-Ender whom Bacon had met through Muriel Belcher at the Colony Room drinking establishment in Soho in 1976. In the present work, the hair's parting and short sideburn, the long jaw-line stemming from the ear, the cleft chin, and the shadows of the eye and at the corner of the mouth are all closely concomitant with those of Edwards. Furthermore, the white stripe of shirt visible next to the neck and even the rectangular blue backdrop are exactly akin to those features in photos Bacon took of Edwards. The first acknowledged depiction of Edwards was not to come until 1980, and that Study for a Portrait predates this by two years is extremely significant and would mark this as the inauguration of Bacon's sustained suite of works painted as tribute to his friend.

 

Until Bacon's death in 1992 the two shared a platonic relationship in which the artist took a more paternal role. As Edwards wrote in 1998, "it was a perfect relationship. I was never Francis' lover, but I loved him as the best friend a man could have. He was fond of me like a son" (John Edwards in: Exhibition Catalogue, New York, Tony Shafrazi Gallery, Francis Bacon, 1998, p. 7). Edwards provided, particularly in the earliest stages of their relationship, consolation from the intense self-accusatory demons that had beset Bacon since Dyer's death. In this light this work is the very intimate portrayal of the emotional constancy of Edwards that was so critical to Bacon's existence, and the calmness, assurance and dignity that were apparently so resonant in Edwards' personality are powerfully evoked here.

 

The beautiful composition is arranged around a schema of framing devices, immediately indicative of a window, which is intersected by the rhythmic arcs of the head and shoulders. Overlapping matrices of paint hatching, presumably imprinted via Bacon's habitual use of corduroy, describe the modulations of texture across the subject's face, while the smartly arranged short hair is presented as dragged streaks of dry pigment. The head's carefully organised containment within the frame prepares the viewer from the outset that this portrayal is pensive, focused and enduring. Bacon's extraordinary aptitude to shift through different modes of execution, from exactitude to expressivity, from the diagrammatic to the painterly, is here on full exhibition at its instinctive best.

 

The treatment of this visage reveals a confident familiarity that must have stemmed from a particularly warm estimation of the sitter by the artist. The gentle hollow of the cheek is palpably tender and the general softness of the reflective features describes a deeply considerate and thoughtful countenance. Indeed, with the inclination of the head and relaxed eyelids it becomes easy to recognize the deeply sensitive affection invested in this painting. Over one hundred and fifty photos of Edwards were found during the deconstruction of Bacon's Reece Mews studio in 1998, a far greater number than anyone else. According to Margarita Cappock "The existence of so many images of Edwards makes it plain that the artist derived some reassurance from their presence. Yet their plenitude may have had the unanticipated effect of freeing his grip from particular examples, leading to something closer to that memory-based process described in his interviews" (Margarita Cappock, Francis Bacon's Studio, London 2005, p. 55).

 

Similar to the way in which the shadow behind Bacon's own profile in his Self-Portrait of the same year (1978) denotes the idiosyncratic and immediately identifiable outline of George Dyer; the silhouette behind the subject in Study for a Portrait does not correlate with that of the main subject but is reminiscent rather of the artist himself. This is particularly evident in the shadow of a protruding wisp of hair, which is immediately reminiscent of Bacon's coiffure at that time, and the straighter bridge of the nose that was distinctive to the painter. In addition therefore to this being a portrait of Bacon's trusted companion, it is thus possible also to see it as an extraordinary double portrait featuring the spectre of the artist, and thereby a very early affirmation of the deep emotional affiliation between Bacon and Edwards.

 

John Russell claims that the single head portrait became "the scene of some of Bacon's most ferocious investigations. Just as a gunshot sometimes leaves an after-echo or parallel report, so these small concentrated heads carry their ghosts within them" (John Russell, Francis Bacon, London 1993, p. 99). At the end of a decade replete with monolithic canvases that broadcast Bacon's deafening self-exorcism and existential fallout after his lover's suicide, the artist created this beaming ray of reborn optimism that, almost certainly, lovingly renders the features of his new, trusted compatriot. That it may also intimate the echoing shadow of the artist as well makes it one of the most outstanding and intriguing small portrait heads in this most important canon, and further contributes to Bacon's reputation as the pre-eminent painter of the psychology of human emotion in the Twentieth Century.