Francis Bacon, David Sylvester

A first edition, first printing of this valuable resource on Bacon, inscribed by the artist to the pioneering director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Thomas Hoving.

• David Sylvester (British).
• Francis Bacon (Irish).
• London: Thames and Hudson, 1975.
• 128 pages.
• 94 illustrations in black & white.
• Inscribed by Bacon on the half-title.
• Presented in the original stiff color pictorial wrappers.

Hoving was director of the Met for only a decade, but his impact was enormous. Widely credited with modernizing the institution, he created the Met's contemporary art department, introduced the gift shop to the museum and mounted blockbuster exhibitions such as King Tut as well as a major 1975 Francis Bacon exhibition—at the time, his first major museum show in more than a decade and one in which Bacon arranged the exhibition per his own wishes. Hoving would later say of this exhibition: "[It was] stunning to watch what an artist does with his own works—totally different from what an exhibitor or a curator would've done." Hoving was an enormous champion of Bacon's work, once deaccessioning more than a dozen "routine Monets" in order to acquire one major work by the British painter. A tremendous association between these two hugely important art world figures who each exercised a significant influence on the other.