Museum World Ranking

Francis Bacon has long been considered one of the most outstanding painters of the twentiethcentury. Best known as a figurative artist, his work transforms the appearance of his subjects through an extraordinary use of paint. Francis Bacon: Human Presence (10 October 2024 – 19 January 2025) is the National Portrait Gallery’s first exhibition to focus on the work of this important artist, and explores Bacon’s deep and complex engagement with portraiture – from his responses to portraits by earlier artists, to large-scale triptychs memorialising lost lovers.

Featuring more than 50 works from private and public collections around the world, in addition to photographs of the artist, Francis Bacon: Human Presence is organised thematically and chronologically, starting with works made in the late 1940s and closing with portraits painted at the end of his life, one of which remained unfinished on an easel in his studio. Through five key phases – Portraits Emerge, Beyond Appearance, Painting from the Masters, Self Portraits, and Friends and Lovers – the exhibition charts the evolution of Bacon’s practice, exploring how he both embraced and challenged the traditional definitions of portraiture.

Bacon’s early works feature disconcerting figures, screaming or pained, as the artist explored how to depict humanity in a post-war world. The exhibition begins by introducing viewers to a selection of these early paintings, including Head VI (1949) and Study of the Human Head (1953), works that depict anonymous male subjects. Both bear all of the visual conventions of formal portraiture. The sitters are presented in a traditional three-quarter-length format against dark backgrounds. In the case of Head VI, the figure is trapped within a transparent cage, while Study of the Human Head peers through striations and appears X-rayed, disconcertingly revealing the sitter’s skull and teeth. Bacon’s early work destabilised and the traditional understanding of portraits of powerful and successful men.

While he never saw Velázquez’s Pope Innocent X (1649−50) or Van Gogh’s The Painter on the Road to Tarascon (1888) in person, these paintings became great sources of inspiration to Bacon. From books and torn-out references that adorned his studio floor, he reimagined elements of each painting throughout his career, paying homage whilst challenging assumptions of what a portrait was and could be. Bacon’s interest in Van Gogh saw him move away from the creation of dark, monochromatic images, opting to introduce colour, which would characterise his future work.

By the mid 1950s, Bacon had moved away from painting screaming figures, but continued to paint ambiguous and unsettling images. Choosing – for the first time – to paint from life, he made portraits of his patrons, Robert and Lisa Sainsbury, and his friend and fellow artist, Lucian Freud, displayed in a section of the exhibition called Beyond Appearance. However, Bacon did not overly enjoy the process of painting from life, which he found to be inhibiting. While he valued qualities of immediacy in the application of paint, Bacon began to frequently distance himself from his subjects in the studio, choosing instead to paint from photographs and memory. This approach allowed him the freedom to ‘distort’ and protect his sitters from any perceived ‘injury’ that he knew he could inflict through his interpretation. Gifted a model of an 1823 life-mask of the poet and artist William Blake, bought from the National Portrait Gallery’s Shop, Bacon also painted a portrait based on this historic object, which fascinated him.

Another ‘Master’ revered by Bacon was Rembrandt, who he admired for his ‘anti-illustrational’ painting style. Bacon studied the brushstrokes that made Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait with Beret (1659) while staying in France, and coveted several printed reproductions of the portrait in his London-based studio. Displayed as part of the Painting from the Masters, the National Portrait Gallery exhibition provides an opportunity to see Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait with Beret alongside Bacon’s own work, presented as a key painting in his development as an artist.

Like Rembrandt, Bacon returned to self-portraiture throughout his career, painting himself over 50 times during the decades of his life, from small single heads to full-lengths and large triptychs. Other artists were also drawn to depict Bacon, particularly photographers, for whom he sat throughout his career. The exhibition includes photographic portraits and film of Bacon by some of the century’s leading photographers, including Cecil Beaton, Arnold Newman, Bill Brandt, Jorge Lewinski and Mayotte Magnus.

A visitor observes a photographic portrait of Francis Bacon (1967) by J.S. Lewinski, displayed as part of the exhibition Francis Bacon: Human Presence at the National Portrait Gallery © David Parry

Some of Bacon’s most poignant and introspective self-portraits were undertaken shortly after the deaths of the people closest to him. When his long-term partner Peter Lacy died in 1962, Bacon responded with a small triptych of portraits that memorialised their relationship. A decade later, Bacon lost his lover George Dyer, another potent presence in so many of his paintings. Dyer’s death seems to have compelled Bacon to make a remarkable group of self-portraits, including Self-Portrait, 1973 (1973), which – capturing his grief and isolation – became a way to reckon with his own mortality.

As Bacon’s work evolved in the 1960s, his portraits became more personal and focused on a select coterie of sitters. At the heart of Francis Bacon: Human Presence are the artist’s paintings of friends and lovers, who inspired him throughout his life. Transcending likeness, Bacon’s portraits represent some of his closest relationships – including his partner, Peter Lacy; his lover, George Dyer; his partner in later life, John Edwards; his friend, Henrietta Moraes; the founder of the Colony Club, Muriel Belcher; and his friends and fellow artists, Lucian Freud and Isabel Rawsthorne. These clusters of portraits allude to Bacon’s biography – his sociability and tumultuous relationships – but also speak to his acute sensitivity to despair, grief and pain. While Bacon chose not to paint his sitters from life, he acknowledged that he could not paint them unless he knew them very well. These paintings are perhaps his most intimate and personal, despite their distortion. He preferred to work from photographs, sometimes torn and crumpled, which he had commissioned from the former Vogue photographer, John Deakin, some of which
are included in this exhibition.

Visitors observe Three Studies for a Portrait of Isabel Rawsthorne (1965) by Francis Bacon, displayed as part of the exhibition Francis Bacon: Human Presence at the National Portrait Gallery © David Parry

“Francis Bacon was deeply engaged with portraiture, challenging long-established expectations of what a portrait should entail. For him, it was the pre-eminent painting genre, capable of expressing what it meant to be human. As one of the greatest British painters of the last century, I’m delighted to bringing so many of Bacon’s works to the National Portrait Gallery for the first time, as we stage London’s first ever exhibition dedicated to his many portraits, fusing image and paint in a truly unique way.”

Rosie Broadley
Joint-Head of Curatorial and Senior Curator of 20th Century Collections, National Portrait Gallery

The exhibition publication Francis Bacon: Human Presence, written by curator Rosie Broadley, is available from October 2024, with essays by art historian, Richard Calvocoressi; author and art historian, James Hall; art historian and Francis Bacon specialist, Martin Harrison; curator at Tate Britain, Carol Jacobi; archivist of The Estate of Francis Bacon, Sophie Pretorius; associate professor of art history at the University of Birmingham, Dr Gregory Salter; contemporary curator at the National Portrait Gallery, Tanya Bentley; assistant curator of photography at the National Portrait Gallery, Georgia Atienza; and filmmaker and director, John Maybury, whose Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon starred Sir Derek Jacobi, Daniel Craig, and Tilda Swinton.

The National Portrait Gallery would like to acknowledge the generous support of the Huo Family Foundation to the exhibition Francis Bacon: Human Presence

Exhibition Events

Behind the scenes of Bacon’s Life and Portraits: Michael Peppiatt and Rosie Broadley in conversation
Friday 6 December 2024
18.30-19.30
£15 (£12 concessions)
Join Rosie Broadley, exhibition curator of Francis Bacon: Human Presence, and Art Historian and Curator, Michael Peppiatt, for a special in conversation exploring the major new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.
Providing a rare insight into Francis Bacon’s life and career, Michael Peppiatt will take you on a journey, discussing many never-before-seen letters between Francis Bacon and his friends, several of which are letters from Bacon to Michael Peppiatt. Exhibition Curator, Rosie Broadley will provide insight into the exhibition and themes.
This event will be followed by a book signing of Francis Bacon: A Self Portrait in Words of with Michael Peppiatt in our main shop.

Lecture: Francis Bacon’s portraits and photography
Thursday 12 December 2024
13.00-14.00
£10 (£8 concessions)
Dr. Katharina Günther discusses the importance and prominence of photographic source materials throughout Francis Bacon’s work. Portraits and self-portraits formed an inherent part of Bacon’s practice. While it is well-known that Bacon often based them on photographic source material, this process has rarely been systematically analysed. This lecture will explore the role photography played in Bacon’s portrait painting.
Learn how the physical state of material and photography influenced the imagery on his canvas, and what patterns and recurring methods can be detected in Bacon’s working ethos and preparatory practice, along with how they can be interpreted. Günther will also discuss how photography acted as a tool to help Bacon express individual feelings and attitudes towards a sitter and facilitated Bacon’s challenging and blurring of conventional ideas of representation, portraiture, and identity.

Contemporary portrait painting workshop with Nathaniel Mary Quinn
Saturday 11 January 2025
11.00-17.00
£125 (100 concession)
Join this very special painting workshop led by major contemporary American artist, Nathaniel Mary Quinn. During this introductory painting workshop, hear how Francis Bacon has inspired Quinn’s practice, and learn how to apply the contemporary artist’s own special techniques to your own works to create unique composite portraits using a range of materials.
This event is held as part of the public programme linked to the Gallery’s upcoming Francis Bacon exhibition of portraits, Francis Bacon: Human Presence and will include time with the artist within the exhibition space, allowing an opportunity for the group to examine Francis Bacon’s work.

National Portrait Gallery
Founded in 1856, the National Portrait Gallery tells the story of Britain through portraits, using art to bring history to life and explore living today. From global icons, to unsung heroes, our Collection is filled with the stories that have shaped, and continue to shape a nation. We celebrate the power of portraiture and offer encounters with some of the world’s greatest and most exciting new artists, promoting engagement with portraiture in all media to a wide- ranging public by conserving, growing and sharing the world’s largest collection of portraits.
www.npg.org.uk

The Huo Family Foundation
The Huo Family Foundation's mission is to support education, communities and the pursuit of knowledge. Through its donations, the Foundation hopes to improve the prospects of individuals, and to support the work of organisations seeking to ensure a safe and successful future for all society. The Foundation aims to make art more accessible to all through its support for galleries, museums and centres for the performing arts.
www.huofamilyfoundation.org

National Portrait Gallery stages its first major exhibition of portraits by Francis Bacon. "Francis Bacon: Human Presence"