Getting to Know Francis Bacon Through His Portraits and Self-Portraits

In 2020, I journeyed to Paris to see the Francis Bacon show at the Centre Pompidou, which featured his monumental triptychs. Five years later, I found myself in London to see another superb exhibition on Bacon. This time, the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, entitled Francis Bacon: Human Presence, dwelled on his portraits of friends, fellow artists, and lovers, as well as his innumerable self-portraits. This is what I learned.

I think art is an obsession with life and, after all, as we are human beings our greatest obsession is with ourselves. Francis Bacon

Although Bacon never became an abstract painter, his portraits are far from conventional. Often disturbing and horrific, they feel more real than academic portraits, where we might see the likeness of the sitter but learn nothing of their inner turmoil and doubts. Bacon wanted to give us "all the pulsations of a person." He was fascinated by the scream, and in the 1940s, he produced a series of screaming men—figures in suits and clerical robes whose status did not protect them in the face of the unknown. These figures, set against dark backgrounds void of any frills or possessions, are placed within transparent cages. They are not free men, but prisoners of their own social status with all its trappings. It is with these works that we can trace the beginning of Bacon’s portraiture.

We nearly always live through screens . . . I sometimes think, when people say my work looks violent, that perhaps I have from time to time been able to clear away one or two of the veils or screens. Francis Bacon

In this painting, entitled Study for a Portrait (1949), the screaming figure, whose wrists are shackled to the armrests, is totally helpless. No one hears his cries. To me, this is a psychological study of a man in post-World War II Western society. Bacon titled many of his works as "studies." While a study traditionally implies that a finished painting will follow, in Bacon’s work, the term takes on a new meaning. Bacon’s understanding of his subject is always partial, reflecting reality exactly as he sees it at that moment. There is also the realization that a painting—or our understanding of a person—is never truly complete.

I became obsessed by this painting and I bought photograph after photograph of it. I think really that was my first subject. Francis Bacon on Diego Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X

Francis Bacon was obsessed with Diego Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X. Although Bacon briefly lived in Rome, where the painting is located, he never saw it in person, choosing instead to work from the many photographic reproductions he could get his hands on. He reinterpreted Velázquez’s portrait many times over—each time depicting the Pope as terrified, undignified, and powerless.

In this painting, entitled Head IV (1949), the screaming Pope is seated on a barely visible golden throne, but no gold can alleviate his terror. His face is half-hidden; the upper part is cast in shadow, but you can still make out his terrified eyes. To me, the hanging tassel above his nose feels like a window shade being pulled down.

In addition to Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X, Bacon was influenced by reproductions of Van Gogh’s The Painter on the Road to Tarascon, which he reinterpreted in a series of eight paintings.

In Study for Portrait of Van Gogh IV (1957), Bacon places Van Gogh on the canvas, depicting him as a "phantom on the road" struggling to establish himself as an artist. Self-portraiture would later become an increasingly important part of Bacon's artistic output. Other artists he held in high regard included Rembrandt, Degas, and his contemporaries, Picasso and Giacometti.

In Study for Portrait (with Two Owls) (1963), it is obvious that the work is based on Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X, but I also see the influence of Picasso in the distorted face. If you look carefully, you can see two faces: one more official, looking straight ahead, and a second face, withdrawn into its neck with unrestrained emotion. Here, we see the beginning of a scream.

I also see Picasso's influence on Bacon’s work in Portrait of Isabel Rawsthorne (1966), where her lower face is distorted. Upon closer inspection, we can identify a closed mouth, and underneath it, an open mouth. 

Bacon rarely invited subjects to pose for him in his studio, finding it too inhibiting. Instead, he preferred to work from photographs, reproductions of Old Masters (as with Velázquez), book illustrations, and film stills. In Study for a Portrait (1952), Bacon used a still from the film Battleship Potemkin. The scream, the broken glasses, and the damaged eye are all present in this work. A new element introduced in this screaming portrait is what looks like café curtains in the background; the familiar tassel is also present.

I couldn’t (paint) people I didn’t know very well . . . It wouldn’t interest me to try to . . . Unless I had seen a lot of them, watched their contours, watched the way they behaved. Francis Bacon

In the 1960s, Bacon’s portraits began to feature a small, intimate group of friends and lovers. Done mainly in a small-format triptych style, Bacon often had photographer John Deakin take photographs of his subjects, which he would then use as reference material.

Three Studies for Portrait of Lucian Freud (1964): Bacon and artist Lucian Freud met through a mutual acquaintance, the artist Graham Sutherland. Their careers progressed on equal footing and they remained close friends for decades, meeting in their respective studios, local restaurants, and bars. In the 1980s, however, their friendship came to an abrupt and unexplained end. The features in this triptych, dominated by red tones, become more obliterated as we move from right to left; yet, in some way, the panel on the far left, which is the most distorted, is also the most vivid.

Three Studies of Muriel Belcher (1966): Muriel Belcher was the owner of the Colony Room, a private members' club in Soho frequented by the figures who became known as part of the post-war British art scene. Not only was Bacon a regular, but because he was so outgoing and a natural social magnet, she paid him £10 a week and offered him free drinks to draw in a larger clientele. The center panel portrays Belcher, who was famously known for her sharp and vulgar language, in a remarkably regal pose.

Three Studies for Portrait of Henrietta Moraes (1963): Henrietta Moraes and Bacon met at a drinking establishment in Soho in the late 1940s. She went on to become his most frequent female subject.

Three Studies for Portrait of Isabel Rawsthorne (1965): Although the critic David Sylvester chose Isabel Rawsthorne for an exhibition of outstanding London artists in 1950, she is mainly known as a muse and friend to painters like Bacon. I previously encountered this triptych in Venice at Palazzo Loredan in February 2023 and wrote a post about it. You can find the link at the end of this article under Three Studies for the Portrait of Isabel Rawsthorne by Francis Bacon.

Three Studies for Portraits: Isabel Rawsthorne, Lucian Freud and J.H. (1966): Most of Bacon’s portraits in the triptych format represent a single figure, but in this work, each panel represents a different friend: Isabel Rawsthorne on the left, Lucian Freud in the center, and J.H. (likely his friend John Hewitt) on the right. In my opinion, this triptych does not work quite as well as the ones where all three panels depict the same person.

Another technique that Bacon used in his self-portraits was to merge his identity with that of his friends. For example, in Study for Self-Portrait (1963), Bacon’s body is taken from a photograph of Lucian Freud.

Again, in Study for Self-Portrait (1964), Freud’s body is merged with Bacon’s face. This artistic symbiosis reflects the deep respect, admiration, and close relationship shared between Bacon and Freud.

Bacon's lovers were also the subjects of many of his works. These ranged from Peter Lacy—Bacon’s partner for over a decade, who died of alcoholism—to John Edwards, a pub owner who was Bacon’s lover in later life and to whom Bacon left his entire estate. However, the lover who had the most profound impact on his work was George Dyer. Bacon continued to paint him long after Dyer’s tragic death from an overdose of drugs and alcohol. Portrait of a Man Walking Down Steps (1972) was painted in memory of George Dyer a year after his death at the Hôtel des Saints-Pères, where he had accompanied Bacon for the opening of his major 1971 retrospective at the Grand Palais in Paris. Burdened by a sense of guilt for not having been there to save him, Bacon became obsessed with making sure Dyer remained present in his work.

I’ve done a lot of self-portraits, really because people have been dying around me like flies and I’ve had nobody else to paint but myself. Francis Bacon

Despite the fact that Bacon did not like his own face, he produced a large number of self-portraits. Let’s look at the self-portraits done toward the later part of his life that are featured in this exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. In Study for Self-Portrait (1979) and Three Studies for a Self-Portrait (1980), you can trace the influence of Rembrandt on Bacon’s work. In these pieces, the figures seem to materialize from a dark background while simultaneously disintegrating back into the dark void. There is no better way to represent the fragility of life. Indeed, Bacon once remarked that he was "always surprised when I wake up in the morning."

In this diptych, Two Studies for Self-Portrait (1977), Bacon represents himself as introspective and melancholic. Notice also a trademark of many of his portraits—clear circles that highlight a specific part of the face, and dark circles that obliterate other parts of the image.

Self-Portrait (1972) shows an introspective and mournful Bacon. Having just lost his partner George Dyer to an overdose, Bacon captures a profound emptiness in a face reassembled as best as it can be after such a tragic loss. He went on to produce another nine self-portraits that same year. Notice that he is wearing a striped shirt, which he favored at the time.

In Self-Portrait (1973), Bacon takes center stage. The spotlight is on him; we stand ready to hear him explain his art to us, and we will listen with interest.