Three Studies for a Crucifixion

Francis Bacon, Three Studies for a Crucifixion, 1962, Guggenheim Museum in New York

Three Studies for a Crucifixion is a 1962 triptych oil painting by Francis Bacon. It was completed in March 1962 and comprises three separate canvases, each measuring 198.1 by 144.8 centimetres (6 ft 6.0 in × 4 ft 9.0 in). The work is held by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Background

Bacon produced a number of works inspired by the Crucifixion since his early paintings Crucifixion and Crucifixion with Skull (both 1933). His Wound for a Crucifixion (also 1933) was exhibited in Bacon's first solo exhibition in February 1934, but it was destroyed by Bacon after negative reviews. His artistic reputation was grounded on his first large triptych, the 1944 masterpiece Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, and he created his Fragment of a Crucifixion in 1950. He returned to the triptych format in 1962, with this painting, which is today seen as a marking point between his early and mature periods. He returned to the crucifixion two further times, with the Crucifixion in 1965, and the 1988 'Second Version of Triptych 1944, a reworking of Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion. In Bacon's art, the crucifixion does not just refer to the death of Christ, but also to any image of corporeal suffering, pain, and mortification.

This work was created over a period of about two weeks, in preparation for his first retrospective at the Tate Gallery in London in 1962. Bacon created each canvas separately and then working on them as a group, often while very drunk or hungover. He later commented: "it's one of the only pictures that I've been able to do under drink. I think perhaps the drink helped me to be a bit freer". The work was one of 91 shown at the Tate that year, about half of Bacon's output at that time. It arrived at the gallery with the paint still wet.

Description

The triptych is monumental in scale, some 6½ feet tall and nearly 15 feet long, twice the dimensions (four times the area) of the 1944 work, with its human figures depicted near life size. It deliberately associated animal slaughter with the crucifixion. In medieval triptychs, the panels were usually intended to be read in chronological sequence; with Christ carrying the cross in the left panel, the Crucifixion in the central panel, and the descent from the cross to the right; or as three parts of a scene from the same location; Christ on the cross flanked by two crucified criminals. However, Bacon often intends his triptych works to be read as three separate scenes, not linked by temporal or spatial continuity. In this work, the subjects of the three separate canvases do not seem to interact or interrelate, but they are shown with similar simple backgrounds: an orange floor joining a curved red wall which is pierced by black openings.

Here, the left panel appears to show two figures in a butcher's shop with joints of meat on the counter. The centre panel is occupied by a bloodied human body writhing on a bed, with a white dot on the foot possibly a nail scar. The crucifixion is moved from its traditional place in the centre panel to the third panel, where a figure reimagined as a gutted carcass that is sliding down a cross in the right panel; its contorted form is a reference (but inverted) to Christ's body in Cimabue's 13th-century Crucifix and is also influenced by Rembrandt's Side of Beef.

Bacon later commented, "one has got to remember as a painter that there is this great beauty of the colour of meat … we are meat, we are potential carcasses".

Michael Peppiatt's alternative interpretation is that Bacon's vehement denial of any auto-biographical story in this work as an indication of quite the opposite; Peppiatt suggests the three panels relate to Bacon leaving home, an unsatisfactory sexual experiences in Berlin, and the death of Bacon himself.

Notes

References

Francis Bacon, Three Studies for a Crucifixion, Guggenheim Museum, New York
"Francis Bacon: From Picasso to Velázquez", Guggenheim Bilbao, 30 September 2016 - 8 January 2017
The Grotesque in Art and Literature: Theological Reflections, Robert Penn Warren, p.182-187
Ecce Homo: The Male-Body-in-Pain as Redemptive Figure, Kent Brintnall, p.140-151
Francis Bacon in the 1950s, Michael Peppiatt, p.61

Francis Bacon (artist)
Figures	Figure Study I (1945–56) Figure in a landscape (1945) Painting 1946 (1946) Fragment of a Crucifixion (1950) Study from the Human Body (1949) Study for Crouching Nude (1952) Dog (1952) Two Figures (1953) Three Studies from the Human Head (1953) Study for the Nurse in the film Battleship Potemkin (1957) Lying Figure (1966) Version No. 2 of Lying Figure with Hypodermic Syringe (1968) Three Studies of the Male Back (1970) Three Figures and Portrait (1975) Two Seated Figures (1979) Carcase of Meat and Bird of Prey (1980) Diptych (1982–84) Blood on the Floor (Painting, 1986) (1986)
Head series	Head I (1949) Head II (1949) Head III (1949) Head IV (1949) Head V (1949) Head VI (1949)
Popes	Study after Velázquez, 1950 Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1953) Pope I (1953) Pope II (1953) Pope III (1953) Pope IV (1953) Pope V (1953) Pope VI (1953) Figure with Meat (1954) Untitled (Pope) (c. 1954) Study from Innocent X (1962)
Triptychs	Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944) Three Studies for a Crucifixion (1962) Three Figures in a Room (1964) Crucifixion (1965) Triptych inspired by T.S Elliot's 'Sweeney Agonistes' (1964) Three Studies for George Dyer (1967) Two Figures Lying on a bed with Attendants (1968) After Muybridge - Study of the Human Figure in Motion - Woman Emptying a Bowl of Water (1970) Triptych 1976 (1976) Second Version of Triptych 1944 (1988)
Black Triptychs	In Memory of George Dyer (1971) Triptych–August 1972 (1972) Triptych, May–June 1973 (1973)
Male portraits	Study for Three Heads (1962) Three Studies for a Portrait of George Dyer (1964) Double Portrait of Lucian Freud and Frank Auerbach (1964) Three Studies for a Portrait of Lucian Freud (1965) Portrait of Lucian Freud (on Orange Couch) (1965) Portrait of George Dyer Talking (1966) Study for Head of George Dyer (1966) Portrait of George Dyer and Lucian Freud (1967) Three Studies of Lucian Freud (1969) Three Studies for a Portrait of Peter Beard (1975) Portrait of Michel Leiris, 1976 (1976) Portrait of Michel Leiris, 1978 (1978) Three Studies for a Self Portrait (1980)
Female portraits	Three Studies for a Portrait of Henrietta Moraes (1963) Study for a Portrait (Isabel Rawsthorn) (1964) Three Studies for the Head of Isabel Rawsthorn (1965) Three Studies of Muriel Belcher (1966) Portrait of Isabel Rawsthorne Standing in a Street in Soho (1967) Three Studies of Henrietta Moraes laughing (1969) Female Nude Standing in a Doorway (1972) Sphinx: Portrait of Muriel Blecher (1979)
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	List of paintings by Francis Bacon List of large triptychs by Francis Bacon Triptychs by Francis Bacon The Black Triptychs Influences on Francis Bacon

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