Portrait of George Dyer Talking | |
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Artist | Francis Bacon |
Year | 1966 |
Medium | Oil on canvas |
Dimensions | 200 cm× 150 cm(78 in× 58 in) |
Location | Private Collection |
Portrait of George Dyer Talking is an oil painting on canvas executed in 1966 by the British painter Francis Bacon. It is a portrait of his lover George Dyer made at the height of Bacon's creative power. It depicts Dyer sitting on a revolving office stool in a luridly coloured room. His body and face are contorted, and his legs are tightly crossed. His head appears to be framed within a window or door. Above him is a naked hanging lightbulb, a favourite motif of Bacon's. The work contains a number of spatial ambiguities, not least that Dyer's body seems to be positioned both in the fore- and background. [1]
The painting was sold at Christie's, London, on 13 February 2014, realizing £42,194,500. [2] [3] The seller was reported by Bloomberg to be Mexican financier David Martínez Guzmán, said to have purchased the painting in a private sale for $12,000,000 some five years before.
The painting is formed by sweeping curves, which characterise both the description of his body and the space he occupies. He is painted in a very compact and tense manner; his hands are tightly clasped, rendered in whites and pinks, his broad and muscular neck is painted in wide brush strokes. The formation of his legs, tightly wrapped around each other, is barely distinct. [4] Discarded documents are scattered around his feet. The painting closely resembles the 1966 Portrait of George Dyer Staring at a Blind Cord , in that both feature a hanging cord, and both works are almost Cubist in their rendering of his face. [5]
George Dyer died by suicide on 24 October 1971, [6] two days before the opening of Bacon's triumphant and career-making retrospective at the Grand Palais. Dyer, then 37, alcoholic, deeply insecure and suffering severe and long-term depression, took an overdose of drink and barbiturates in a room at the Paris hotel shared with Bacon during a brief period of reconciliation following years of bitter recrimination. [7]
Bacon, a near-alcoholic himself, felt an acute sense of mortality and awareness of the fragility of life after his lover's death. This awareness was heightened by the death of many other close friends during the following decade. The commemorative portraits of Dyer completed in the following years are considered amongst Bacon's strongest and most affecting. [8] In most, especially in the triptychs, Dyer is followed by black horizontal fleshy winged creatures, raw and red/pink blobs of dying flesh, or painterly arrows. These devices act both as pointers to the depravity and tragedy of the scene and as manifestations of Bacon's guilt at the death of an emotionally dependent friend.
Francis Bacon was an Irish-born British figurative painter known for his raw, unsettling imagery. Focusing on the human form, his subjects included crucifixions, portraits of popes, self-portraits, and portraits of close friends, with abstracted figures sometimes isolated in geometrical structures. Rejecting various classifications of his work, Bacon said he strove to render "the brutality of fact." He built up a reputation as one of the giants of contemporary art with his unique style.
Triptych, May–June 1973 is a triptych completed in 1973 by the Irish-born artist Francis Bacon (1909–1992). The oil-on-canvas was painted in memory of Bacon's lover George Dyer, who committed suicide on the eve of the artist's retrospective at Paris's Grand Palais on 24 October 1971. The triptych is a portrait of the moments before Dyer's death from an overdose of pills in their hotel room. Bacon was haunted and preoccupied by Dyer's loss for the remaining years of his life and painted many works based on both the actual suicide and the events of its aftermath. He admitted to friends that he never fully recovered, describing the 1973 triptych as an exorcism of his feelings of loss and guilt.
Aimé Maeght was a French art dealer, collector, lithographer, and publisher. He founded the Galerie Maeght in Paris and Barcelona, and the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul-de-Vence near Nice. Though the original Flemish pronunciation is pronounced "," the French pronunciation of surname Maeght sounds more similar to.
Study for a Self-Portrait—Triptych, 1985–86 is a triptych painted between 1985 and 1986 by the Irish-born English artist Francis Bacon. It is a brutally honest examination of the effect of age and time on the human body and spirit and was painted in the aftermath of the deaths of many of his close friends. It is Bacon's only full-length self-portrait, and was described by art critic David Sylvester as "grand, stark, ascetic".
The Irish-born artist Francis Bacon (1909–1992) painted 28 known triptychs between 1944 and 1986. He began to work in the format in the mid-1940s with a number of smaller formats before graduating in 1962 to large examples. He followed the larger style for 30 years, although he painted a number of smaller triptychs of friend's heads, and after the death of his former lover George Dyer in 1971, the three Black Triptychs.
The Black Triptychs are a series of three triptychs painted by the British artist Francis Bacon between 1972 and 1974. Bacon admitted that they were created as an exorcism of his sense of loss following the suicide of his former lover and principal model, George Dyer. On the evening of 24 October 1971, two days before the opening of Bacon's career-making retrospective at the Grand Palais, Dyer, then 37, alcoholic, deeply insecure and suffering severe and long-term depression, committed suicide through an overdose of drink and barbiturates in a room at the Paris hotel Bacon had allowed him to share during a brief period of reconciliation following years of bitter recrimination.
Three Studies of Lucian Freud is a 1969 oil-on-canvas triptych by the Irish-born British painter Francis Bacon, depicting artist Lucian Freud. It was sold in November 2013 for US$142.4 million, which at the time was the highest price attained at auction for a work of art when not factoring in inflation. That record was surpassed in May 2015 by Version O of Picasso's Les Femmes d'Alger series.
Three Studies of the Male Back is a 1970 oil-on-canvas triptych by the British painter Francis Bacon. Typical of Bacon's figurative but abstract and distorted style, it depicts male figures isolated within flat nondescript interior spaces. Each figure is a portrait of Bacon's lover George Dyer.
Portrait of Isabel Rawsthorne Standing in a Street in Soho is a 1967 oil-on-canvas painting by the Irish-born English figurative artist Francis Bacon, housed in the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin. Described by art critic John Russell as one of Bacon's finest works, it depicts Isabel Rawsthorne, the painter, designer and occasional model for artists such as André Derain, Alberto Giacometti and Picasso.
Triptych–August 1972 is a large oil-on-canvas triptych by the British artist Francis Bacon (1909–1992). It was painted in memory of Bacon's lover George Dyer who committed suicide on 24 October 1971, the eve of the artist's retrospective at Paris's Grand Palais, then the highest honour Bacon had received.
Portrait of George Dyer and Lucian Freud was a 1967 oil-on-canvas painting by the Irish-born artist Francis Bacon, which he destroyed before it left his studio, though it was photographed and is highly regarded by art critics. Bacon was a ruthless self critic, and often abandoned paintings mid-work, or slashed finished canvases; something he often later regretted.
Three Studies for George Dyer is a small-format triptych painted by the Irish-born British artist Francis Bacon in 1964. It comprises three portraits of Bacon's lover George Dyer: from left to right, a three-quarter view, a right profile, and a face-on view. It was painted in the first half of 1964, within a year of Bacon first meeting Dyer in late 1963, and was based on photographs of Dyer taken by John Deakin. Bacon painted about 40 triptychs in this small format, with each portrait measuring 35.5 by 30 centimetres. This is one of five of Dyer in the small format, the others completed in 1963, 1964, 1966 and 1969.
Three Figures in a Room is a 1964 oil-on-canvas triptych painting by British artist Francis Bacon. Each panel measures 198 × 147 centimetres (78 × 58 in) and shows a separate view of his lover George Dyer, whom Bacon first met in 1963. It is the first of Bacon's works to feature Dyer, a model to whom he returned repeatedly in his paintings. The work has been described as Bacon's first secular triptych.
Three Studies for a Portrait of Henrietta Moraes is an oil-on-canvas 1963 triptych by the Irish-born British figurative painter Francis Bacon. It is one of a series of portraits he painted of his friends, at a time when his art was becoming more personal. Henrietta Moraes (1933–1999) was a close friend and drinking companion of Bacon's from the early 1960s, and became one of his favourite models. She never posed in person for him; instead he worked either from memory, or more often from photographs commissioned from his friend John Deakin.
Study of Red Pope 1962. 2nd version 1971 is a 1971 painting by the Irish-born English artist Francis Bacon. It failed to sell at auction in October 2017 with an estimate of £60-80 million. It had not been on public display for 45 years until viewings for its 2017 auction. It is a reinterpretation of his 1962 painting Study from Innocent X. Bacon's lover George Dyer is portrayed in the right side of the painting. The work was shown at the 1971 retrospective of Bacon's work at the Grand Palais.
Three Studies for a portrait of Muriel Belcher is an oil-on-canvas triptych painting by the Irish born English artist Francis Bacon, completed in 1966. It portrays Muriel Belcher, described by musician George Melly as a "benevolent witch", and the charismatic founder and proprietress of The Colony Room Club, a private drinking house at 41 Dean Street, Soho, London, where Bacon was a regular throughout the late 1940s to late 1960s. The two became friends soon after she opened the club in 1948, and Bacon helped her cultivate its reputation as a seedy but convivial meeting place for artists, writers, musicians, homosexuals and bohemians. At its height, regular patrons included Lucian Freud, Jeffrey Bernard, John Deakin and Henrietta Moraes.
Three Studies for a Self-Portrait is an oil-on-canvas triptych painting by the Irish-born English artist Francis Bacon. Two of paintings are signed and dated 1979, and the third signed and dated 1979–1980. The work can be viewed as a penetrating self-examinations undertaken in the aftermath of the suicide of his lover George Dyer, and as one of a series of inward looking self-portraits completed during the 1970s. Bacon was seventy at the time, but appears as ageless.