Study for a Self-Portrait—Triptych, 1985–86

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Study for a Self-Portrait—Triptych, 1985–86. Oil on canvas, each panel 198cm x 147.5cm. Marlborough Fine Art, London

Study for a Self-Portrait—Triptych, 1985–86 is a triptych painted between 1985 and 1986 by the Irish born artist Francis Bacon. The work is an acknowledgment and examination of the effect of age and time on the human body and spirit, and was painted after a period when many close friends of the artist died.

Although widely considered a masterpiece and one of Bacon's most personal works, the triptych is at the same time one of his least experimental and most conventional paintings. Bacon believed that the fatigue of old age and the complications of fame lead him to appreciate simplicity as a virtue of its own, a sentiment which he attempted to transfer into his work.[1] Bacon's only full-length self-portrait, the triptych has been described by the art critic David Sylvester as "grand, stark, ascetic."[2]

Description

The painting is built up from very even and smooth brush strokes, using mostly brown, cream, white and black colours, except around the faces. Bacon is ill-at-ease in each panel, seated cross legged with his hands around his knees, though in the center panel one arm rest on the chair arm. The descriptions are based on passport photographs; he never used a mirror for these works, claiming he hated the sight of his own face, espically at close up, and espically as he got older. This is reflect in the current work; in the left wing and center panel large parts of his head have disintegrated or are missing. He had told David Sylvester that he goes on "painting it [his face] because I haven't any other people to do...One of the nicest things Jean Cocteau said was 'each day in the mirror I watch death at work.' That is what one does to oneself".[3]

Themes

A number of his closest friends died in the years before he began the triptych, and their loss weighed heavily on the artist.[4] In 1979 Muriel Belcher, proprietor of Soho's Colony Room, passed, while in 1981 Bacon's youngest sister Winifred died. During the 1970s, he lost many of his friends, including his long term lover George Dyer. In an interview with David Sylvester in the early 1980s, he said that his friends had been "dying around me like flies and I've had nobody else to paint but myself...I loathe my own face, and I’ve done self-portraits because I’ve had nothing else to do".[4]

The style of the work departs from Bacon's usual format. It is more symmetrical and places the figures more centrally; previous triptychs typically positioned the figures in the outer panels slightly towards the edge. The three panels share a cool, light-brown surface, while its figures are unusually diminished in size.[5]

Study for a Self-Portrait continues a painterly motif that Bacon began early in his career: a spatially uniform and simple background (although the back line is curved in the center panel, a device generally only seen in much later work). Here, the figures are held together by pairs of vertical blinds in the background of each frame. In contrast to most of Bacon's works, the background in this work references contemporary art, drawing on the stillness of Barnett Newman's Voice (1950), while the elegance of the figures echoes Henri Matisse's Music.[2]

References

Notes

  1. ↑ Peppiatt, 305
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Sylvester (2000), 168
  3. ↑ Quoted in Farr et all, 200
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Sylvester (1987), 129
  5. ↑ Schmied, 30

Sources

  • Farr, Dennis; Peppiatt, Michael; Yard, Sally. Francis Bacon: A Retrospective, 1999. Harry N Abrams. ISBN 0-8109-2925-2
  • Peppiatt, Michael. Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1996. ISBN 0-297-81616-0
  • Schmied, Wieland. Francis Bacon: Commitment and Conflict. Munich: Prestel, 1996. ISBN 3-7913-1664-8
  • Sylvester, David. The Brutality of Fact: Interviews With Francis Bacon. London: Thames and Hudson, 1987. ISBN 0-500-27475-4
  • Sylvester, David. Looking back at Francis Bacon. London: Thames and Hudson, 2000. ISBN 0-500-01994-0

External links

Works by Francis Bacon
1949 Heads
Popes
Figures
Triptychs
Portraits
  • Study for Three heads (1962)
  • Three Studies for a Portrait of George Dyer (1964)
  • Double Portrait of Lucian Freud and Frank Auerbach (1964)
  • Study for a Portrait (Isabel Rawsthorn) (1964)
  • Three Studies for the Head of Isabel Rawsthorn (1965)
  • Three Studies for a Portrait of Lucian Freud (1965)
  • Portrait of Lucian Freud (on Orange Couch) (1965)
  • Portrait of George Dyer Talking (1966)
  • Three Studies of Muriel Belcher (1966)
  • Study for Head of George Dyer (1966)
  • Portrait of Isabel Rawsthorne Standing in a Street in Soho (1967)
  • Portrait of George Dyer and Lucian Freud (1967)
  • Three Studies of Lucian Freud (1969)
  • Three Studies of Henrietta Moraes laughing (1969)
  • Female Nude Standing in a Doorway (1972)
  • Three Studies for a Portrait of Peter Beard (1975)
  • Portrait of Michel Leris, 1976 (1976)
  • Portrait of Michel Leris, 1978 (1978)
  • Sphinx: Portrait of Muriel Blecher (1979)
  • Three Studies for a Self Portrait (1980)
Black Triptychs
Self-portraits
  • Self-portrait (1973)
  • Three Studies for a Self Portrait (1973)
  • Self-portrait (1973)
  • Seated Figure (1974)
  • Sleeping Figure (1974)
  • Three Studies for a Self Portrait (1974)
  • Three Studies for a Self Portrait (1976)
  • Three Studies for a Self Portrait (1979)
  • Study for a Self-Portrait—Triptych, 1985–86 (1985)
Summary articles
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