Francis Bacon was born in Dublin on October 28th 1909 to English parents. His family frequently moved back and forth from Ireland to England during the teens and early twenties, leaving Bacon with a feeling of displacement. The only formal education Francis Bacon ever had were 18 months at a boarding school from 1924 to 1926.
In 1928, after spending some time in Berlin and Paris, he started work as an interior designer. Bacon’s first exhibition was at Queensberry Mews in 1929, showing his rugs and furniture. “Watercolour” (1929), his earliest surviving painting can be seen as evolving from of his rug designs.
Bacon’s second exhibition was a group exhibition in 1930 at Queensberry Mews. He showed 4 paintings and one print. The paintings were “Gouache” (1929), which is now probably known as “The Brick Wall” and “Painting” (1929-1930), which is assumed to be “Tree by the Sea”. The other two paintings, “Self-Portrait” and “Two Brothers”, as well as the print “Dark Child”, have been lost.
In 1934 Francis Bacon opened up his own gallery space. He had his first solo show titled Paintings by Francis Bacon at the new Transition Gallery. Most of the pieces in this exhibit were purchased by his cousin Diana Watson and later destroyed by Bacon.
Having had to deal with asthma and sinus problems all his life, Francis Bacon was heavily inspired by medical books depicting diseases of the mouth. His asthma exempted him from having to fight in World War II, however he did volunteer for the Civil Defense until he had to leave London due to the dust from the bombings.
In 1944 Bacon painted “Three Studies for Figures at the Base of the Crucifixion”. This triptych is the main precursor for his later themes. It was presented to the Tate Gallery in 1953. Throughout the forties and fifties several of his paintings were shown all over Europe as well as at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Horizon magazine published an article in 1950 written by Robert Melville titled Francis Bacon, in which Melville placed Bacon into context of European painting and film, as well as comparing and contrasting him to Picasso, Duchamp, Eisenstein and Salvador Dali.
In 1951 Bacon had a show at the Hanover Gallery titled Francis Bacon. This exhibition included “Head” (1951), “Figure with Monkey” (1951), “Study of Nude” (1951), “Portrait of Lucian Freud” (1951), and a series of three popes “Pope I” (1951), “Pope II” (1951) and “Pope III” (1951).
Francis Bacon’s first major retrospective was exhibited at the Paris Grand Palais in 1971. His lover George Dyer committed suicide the day of the opening. This tragic event was memorialized in the masterpiece “Triptych, May-June 1973”.
Bacon died of a heart attack on April 28th 1992 in Madrid Spain. His lover and best friend John Edwards inherited his entire estate.
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