JOHN DEAKIN; AND DANIEL FARSON

The double portrait is by John Deakin, the individual head shots by Daniel Farson.

Writer and photographer Daniel Farson was a central figure in the Soho bohemia of the 1950s and became a key witness to the lives of the talented but unpredictable characters that constituted this world. 'Deakin referred to me as the jeunesse dorée, though I had little idea what this meant,' he later recounted. And, recalling the subjects of the present portraits he noted that 'invariably smouldering and shouting along the bar were the two formidable Scottish painters, Robert Colquoun and Robert MacBryde, known as the Two Roberts.' (The Guilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon, Century, 1993, pp.69, 79)