William Blake

Details

Francis Bacon (1909-1992)
William Blake
lithograph in colours, 1991, on BFK Rives watermarked paper, signed in pencil, from the edition of sixty, published by IRCAM for the Centre Pompidou, Paris, with full margins, otherwise in very good condition
Image 600 x 500 mm., Sheet 800 x 600 mm.

Special notice

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Lot Essay

Bacon completed a series of seven oil studies after the life mask of William Blake (two of which he later destroyed). Initially the idea came from Gerard Schürmann, a protégé of the composer Alan Rawsthorne (whose wife Isabel was a preffered Bacon model, see lot 55). Schürmann had asked Bacon to work on the subject to illustrate his score of Nine Poems of William Blake. Bacon was generally averse to painting portraits of people he didn't know, but in this case it was his interest in death and a fascination for the object of the mask which inspired him to take on the project. The legacy of Blake's visionary art was of little consequence to Bacon: "I do find that his poetry is better than his painting or drawing, which I really don't like at all..I loathe his mystical side..I don't like anything which comes too close to Religion".

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