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Lot Essay
A rare and historic work within Francis Bacon’s oeuvre, Study for a Figure (circa 1945) is an extraordinary response to his seminal masterpiece Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944, Tate, London). This haunting, visceral triptych caused a sensation when it was unveiled shortly before the end of the Second World War, announcing Bacon’s arrival as an artist and taking its place among art history’s most powerful images of the human condition. Study for a Figure reworks the left-hand panel of the triptych, offering not only a dazzling display of Bacon’s newfound painterly prowess, but also indicating some of the ways in which his language would evolve over the coming years. Exquisite modulations of colour combine with rich Old Masterly chiaroscuro; the shimmering curtain-like background, meanwhile, represents what Martin Harrison describes as the ‘earliest extant’ example of his celebrated ‘shuttering’ technique (‘Latent Images’, in Francis Bacon: A Terrible Beauty, exh. cat., Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane, 2009, p. 74). Capturing a master in the making, the work has been prominently exhibited, most recently as part of Bacon’s major survey at the Royal Academy of Arts, London in 2022.
Rendered on a larger scale than its predecessor, and on canvas rather than board, Study for a Figure evinces a new degree of painterly expressiveness and compositional sophistication. A vase of flowers is added to the scene in luminous pink. The sweeping swathe of drapery is translated to jet black, while the pedestal on which the figure sits is extended through black and white perspectival lines to resemble a glass table. Though telling glimpses of the triptych’s cadmium orange hue are visible below the work’s surface, Bacon’s pigment ultimately morphs into a shimmering, rippling veil of blue, green, umber and ochre. Harrison describes the work as ‘an advance on Three Studies’, noting that ‘the figure’s body, hair and the roses are all virtuoso performances in colour and texture’ (Francis Bacon: Catalogue Raisonné. Volume II 1929-57, London, 2016, p. 162). Bacon’s biographers Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan, meanwhile, write, ‘the lustrous blackness of the figure’s cape, the carefully painted shock of reddish-brown hair, the striated paint strokes in the background that evoke curtains: all attested to Bacon’s tactile interest in paint’ (Francis Bacon: Revelations, New York, 2021, p. 246).
The story of the triptych itself is well-rehearsed in Bacon scholarship. The artist had long been fascinated by the imagery of the Crucifixion. It had inspired some of his earliest major paintings during the 1930s, including the ethereal Crucifixion (1933), which made an indelible mark on the pages of Herbert Read’s landmark publication Art Now that year. A devout atheist, Bacon saw the subject as a vehicle for examining human nature in its broadest sense, describing it simply as ‘an act of man’s behaviour, a way of behaviour to another.’ It was a universal image of the body in a state of transition and suffering: ‘a magnificent armature,’ he explained, ‘on which you can hang all types of feeling and sensation’ (in conversation with D. Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon, London, 2009, pp. 25, 49). The triptych would be Bacon’s most ambitious thesis on the subject: a watershed painting that propelled him to the attention of the art world. Shown at the Lefevre Gallery in April 1945, with the horrors of the Second World War still very much alive, the three writhing figures seemed to speak directly to the tortured state of modern humanity. ‘There was painting in England before the Three Studies,’ writes John Russell, ‘and painting after them, and no one ... can confuse the two’ (Francis Bacon, London, 1993, p. 24).
The triptych’s influences were multifaceted, with Picasso providing one of Bacon’s primary conduits to the subject matter. Inspired early on by the artist’s Dinard beach scenes, he was particularly drawn to his 1930 depiction of the Crucifixion. He later admired his drawings based on Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece—which he saw in the Surrealist journal Minotaure—and was deeply affected by his 1937 masterpiece Guernica. Elsewhere, the triptych drew upon Bacon’s interest in Greek mythology and the writings of Aeschylus. 1939 saw the first performance of T. S. Eliot’s play The Family Reunion, based on the story of the Oresteia. Bacon would later describe the triptych’s three figures as ‘Eumenides’ or ‘Furies’: the ancient goddesses of vengeance, who haunt Orestes after he kills his mother. These influences, along with Cimabue’s immortal Crucifix at Santa Croce, would continue to inform Bacon’s engagement with the subject throughout his oeuvre. Later responses would include Fragment of a Crucifixion (1950, Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven), Three Studies for a Crucifixion (1962, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York), Crucifixion (1965, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich) and a second version of the 1944 triptych, painted in 1988 (Tate, London).
Painted in Bacon’s studio at 7 Cromwell Place, Study for a Figure is one of a number of paintings created in the immediate aftermath of the triptych, including ‘Fury’ (circa 1944), Figure Study I (1945-1946, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh) and Figure Study II (1945-1946, Huddersfield Art Gallery). These paintings saw Bacon wrestle with the revelations of his magnum opus, each expanding upon its imagery like scenes from a recurring dream. In his 1964 catalogue raisonné, Ronald Alley originally suggested that the present work predated the triptych’s left panel (Francis Bacon, London, 1964, p. 259). Harrison, however, explains that it almost certainly came after the triptych, citing Bacon’s use of canvas rather than fibreboard, as well as the dialogue between the figure and the flowers (op. cit.). David Boxer, meanwhile, spoke to the artist in August 1974 as part of his doctoral research, and noted that ‘Bacon himself insists that this was an attempt to re-paint the left-hand panel of Three Studies, and was not a first idea for the Tate triptych’ (‘The Early Work of Francis Bacon’, unpublished PhD thesis, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 1975, p. 91).
Certainly, the two works share much in common. The figure, aside from slight variations in posture and more detailed rendering of the hair and face, remains largely the same, its form evocative of Picasso’s long-necked biomorphs and the works of Max Beckmann. It was originally inspired by an image contained in Albert von Schrenck-Notzing’s 1920 book Phenomena of Materialisation, depicting the celebrated medium Eva Carrière at a séance in Paris in 1912. The inclusion of flowers, meanwhile, also relates to the triptych’s original composition. Inspection of the central panel under infra-red light has revealed that it initially contained magenta blooms, which were subsequently painted over. The flowers, indeed, proliferate with increasing intensity in the works produced immediately after the triptych: Martin Hammer notes that the motif conjures Giotto’s representation of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem (Francis Bacon and Nazi Propaganda, London, 2012, p. 104). The ghostly strains of cadmium orange that shimmer through the curtain-like striations offer another point of contact between the two works, suggesting that Bacon had originally considered them in even closer dialogue.
Ultimately, however, Study for a Figure advances into a league of its own. The glare of the original triptych subsides, replaced by undulating passages of light and shade that lend depth and volume to the figure. Harrison suggests that ‘in concentrating on the substance and expressive qualities of paint, Bacon is turning his attention away from Picasso and towards Rembrandt and Velázquez’ (op. cit.). The latter’s Portrait of Innocent X (circa 1650), indeed, would shortly become something of an obsession. Beginning in 1946, Bacon’s Papal portraits extended his engagement with the Crucifixion, transforming Velázquez’s pontiff into a spectre of existential anxiety. Study for a Figure forms a bridge to this body of work, which was increasingly defined by Bacon’s ‘shuttering’ technique. These rippling parallel lines were inspired by Degas’ late pastels, in which vertical striations seemed to cut through his depictions of bare, translucent flesh. Here, charged with enigmatic painterly friction, they also conjure the flash of a camera lens, or the theatrical draped curtains depicted in von Schrenck-Notzing’s séance photographs.
Throughout his life, Bacon claimed that images fell into his mind ‘like slides’. Everything he saw, he explained—from paintings and sculptures to scraps of source material—was ‘ground up very fine’ in the depths of his psyche. Time and again across his oeuvre, this approach extended to his own works. The recycling of imagery and motifs would ultimately span decades, with forms and compositions transmuting and recurring across the years. The Crucifixion, in particular—explained Bacon—was an image that ‘breed[s] other images for me’ (in conversation with D. Sylvester, op. cit., p. 14). In Study for a Figure, this metamorphic process begins to take shape. It is the continuation of an image that changed art history, and the start of a new chapter that emerged in its wake.
Rendered on a larger scale than its predecessor, and on canvas rather than board, Study for a Figure evinces a new degree of painterly expressiveness and compositional sophistication. A vase of flowers is added to the scene in luminous pink. The sweeping swathe of drapery is translated to jet black, while the pedestal on which the figure sits is extended through black and white perspectival lines to resemble a glass table. Though telling glimpses of the triptych’s cadmium orange hue are visible below the work’s surface, Bacon’s pigment ultimately morphs into a shimmering, rippling veil of blue, green, umber and ochre. Harrison describes the work as ‘an advance on Three Studies’, noting that ‘the figure’s body, hair and the roses are all virtuoso performances in colour and texture’ (Francis Bacon: Catalogue Raisonné. Volume II 1929-57, London, 2016, p. 162). Bacon’s biographers Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan, meanwhile, write, ‘the lustrous blackness of the figure’s cape, the carefully painted shock of reddish-brown hair, the striated paint strokes in the background that evoke curtains: all attested to Bacon’s tactile interest in paint’ (Francis Bacon: Revelations, New York, 2021, p. 246).
The story of the triptych itself is well-rehearsed in Bacon scholarship. The artist had long been fascinated by the imagery of the Crucifixion. It had inspired some of his earliest major paintings during the 1930s, including the ethereal Crucifixion (1933), which made an indelible mark on the pages of Herbert Read’s landmark publication Art Now that year. A devout atheist, Bacon saw the subject as a vehicle for examining human nature in its broadest sense, describing it simply as ‘an act of man’s behaviour, a way of behaviour to another.’ It was a universal image of the body in a state of transition and suffering: ‘a magnificent armature,’ he explained, ‘on which you can hang all types of feeling and sensation’ (in conversation with D. Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon, London, 2009, pp. 25, 49). The triptych would be Bacon’s most ambitious thesis on the subject: a watershed painting that propelled him to the attention of the art world. Shown at the Lefevre Gallery in April 1945, with the horrors of the Second World War still very much alive, the three writhing figures seemed to speak directly to the tortured state of modern humanity. ‘There was painting in England before the Three Studies,’ writes John Russell, ‘and painting after them, and no one ... can confuse the two’ (Francis Bacon, London, 1993, p. 24).
The triptych’s influences were multifaceted, with Picasso providing one of Bacon’s primary conduits to the subject matter. Inspired early on by the artist’s Dinard beach scenes, he was particularly drawn to his 1930 depiction of the Crucifixion. He later admired his drawings based on Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece—which he saw in the Surrealist journal Minotaure—and was deeply affected by his 1937 masterpiece Guernica. Elsewhere, the triptych drew upon Bacon’s interest in Greek mythology and the writings of Aeschylus. 1939 saw the first performance of T. S. Eliot’s play The Family Reunion, based on the story of the Oresteia. Bacon would later describe the triptych’s three figures as ‘Eumenides’ or ‘Furies’: the ancient goddesses of vengeance, who haunt Orestes after he kills his mother. These influences, along with Cimabue’s immortal Crucifix at Santa Croce, would continue to inform Bacon’s engagement with the subject throughout his oeuvre. Later responses would include Fragment of a Crucifixion (1950, Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven), Three Studies for a Crucifixion (1962, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York), Crucifixion (1965, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich) and a second version of the 1944 triptych, painted in 1988 (Tate, London).
Painted in Bacon’s studio at 7 Cromwell Place, Study for a Figure is one of a number of paintings created in the immediate aftermath of the triptych, including ‘Fury’ (circa 1944), Figure Study I (1945-1946, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh) and Figure Study II (1945-1946, Huddersfield Art Gallery). These paintings saw Bacon wrestle with the revelations of his magnum opus, each expanding upon its imagery like scenes from a recurring dream. In his 1964 catalogue raisonné, Ronald Alley originally suggested that the present work predated the triptych’s left panel (Francis Bacon, London, 1964, p. 259). Harrison, however, explains that it almost certainly came after the triptych, citing Bacon’s use of canvas rather than fibreboard, as well as the dialogue between the figure and the flowers (op. cit.). David Boxer, meanwhile, spoke to the artist in August 1974 as part of his doctoral research, and noted that ‘Bacon himself insists that this was an attempt to re-paint the left-hand panel of Three Studies, and was not a first idea for the Tate triptych’ (‘The Early Work of Francis Bacon’, unpublished PhD thesis, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 1975, p. 91).
Certainly, the two works share much in common. The figure, aside from slight variations in posture and more detailed rendering of the hair and face, remains largely the same, its form evocative of Picasso’s long-necked biomorphs and the works of Max Beckmann. It was originally inspired by an image contained in Albert von Schrenck-Notzing’s 1920 book Phenomena of Materialisation, depicting the celebrated medium Eva Carrière at a séance in Paris in 1912. The inclusion of flowers, meanwhile, also relates to the triptych’s original composition. Inspection of the central panel under infra-red light has revealed that it initially contained magenta blooms, which were subsequently painted over. The flowers, indeed, proliferate with increasing intensity in the works produced immediately after the triptych: Martin Hammer notes that the motif conjures Giotto’s representation of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem (Francis Bacon and Nazi Propaganda, London, 2012, p. 104). The ghostly strains of cadmium orange that shimmer through the curtain-like striations offer another point of contact between the two works, suggesting that Bacon had originally considered them in even closer dialogue.
Ultimately, however, Study for a Figure advances into a league of its own. The glare of the original triptych subsides, replaced by undulating passages of light and shade that lend depth and volume to the figure. Harrison suggests that ‘in concentrating on the substance and expressive qualities of paint, Bacon is turning his attention away from Picasso and towards Rembrandt and Velázquez’ (op. cit.). The latter’s Portrait of Innocent X (circa 1650), indeed, would shortly become something of an obsession. Beginning in 1946, Bacon’s Papal portraits extended his engagement with the Crucifixion, transforming Velázquez’s pontiff into a spectre of existential anxiety. Study for a Figure forms a bridge to this body of work, which was increasingly defined by Bacon’s ‘shuttering’ technique. These rippling parallel lines were inspired by Degas’ late pastels, in which vertical striations seemed to cut through his depictions of bare, translucent flesh. Here, charged with enigmatic painterly friction, they also conjure the flash of a camera lens, or the theatrical draped curtains depicted in von Schrenck-Notzing’s séance photographs.
Throughout his life, Bacon claimed that images fell into his mind ‘like slides’. Everything he saw, he explained—from paintings and sculptures to scraps of source material—was ‘ground up very fine’ in the depths of his psyche. Time and again across his oeuvre, this approach extended to his own works. The recycling of imagery and motifs would ultimately span decades, with forms and compositions transmuting and recurring across the years. The Crucifixion, in particular—explained Bacon—was an image that ‘breed[s] other images for me’ (in conversation with D. Sylvester, op. cit., p. 14). In Study for a Figure, this metamorphic process begins to take shape. It is the continuation of an image that changed art history, and the start of a new chapter that emerged in its wake.