Second Version of Triptych 1944 is a 1988 triptych painted by the Irish-born artist Francis Bacon. It is a reworking of Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, 1944, Bacon's most widely known triptych, and the one which established his reputation as one of England's foremost post-war painters.
Bacon often painted second versions of his major paintings, including Painting (1946), which he reworked in 1971 when the original became too fragile to transport to exhibitions.[1] In 1988, Bacon completed this near copy of the Three Studies. At 78 × 58inches, this second version is over twice the size of the original, while the orange background has been replaced by a blood-red hue. His reason for creating this rework remains unclear, although Bacon told Richard Cook that he "always wanted to make a larger version of the first [Three Studies...]. I thought it could come off, but I think the first is better. I would have had to use the orange again so as to give a shock, that which red dissolves. But the tedium of doing it perhaps dissuaded me, because mixing that orange with pastel and then crushing it was an enormous job."[2]
The figures occupy a proportionally smaller space on the canvas than in the 1944 version, a presentation that, according to the Tate Gallery's catalogue, "plung[es] them into a deep void".[3] Critical opinion was mixed, and the triptych drew criticism from those who felt that its more refined painting technique robbed the image of much of its power.[4] Denis Farr suggested that while the second version's larger scale gave it "a majestic quality which is highly effective", its svelte presentation lessened its shock value.[1] Critic Jonathan Meades felt that though the 1988 triptych was a more polished and painterly work, it lacked the rawness of the original.[5]
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.
Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion is a 1944 triptych painted by the Irish-born British artist Francis Bacon. The canvasses are based on the Eumenides—or Furies—of Aeschylus's Oresteia, and depict three writhing anthropomorphic creatures set against a flat burnt orange background. It was executed in oil paint and pastel on Sundeala fibre board and completed within two weeks. The triptych summarises themes explored in Bacon's previous work, including his examination of Picasso's biomorphs and his interpretations of the Crucifixion and the Greek Furies. Bacon did not realise his original intention to paint a large crucifixion scene and place the figures at the foot of the cross.
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.
Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X is a 1953 painting by the artist Francis Bacon. The work shows a distorted version of the Portrait of Innocent X painted by Spanish artist Diego Velázquez in 1650. The work is one of the first in a series of around 50 variants of the Velázquez painting which Bacon executed throughout the 1950s and early 1960s. The paintings are widely regarded as highly successful modern re-interpretations of a classic of the Western canon of visual art.
Fragment of a Crucifixion is an unfinished 1950 painting by the Irish-born figurative painter Francis Bacon. It shows two animals engaged in an existential struggle; the upper figure, which may be a dog or a cat, crouches over a chimera and is at the point of kill. It stoops on the horizontal beam of a T-shaped structure, which may signify Christ's cross. The painting contains thinly sketched passer-by figures, who appear as if oblivious to the central drama.
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.
Head VI is an oil-on-canvas painting by Irish-born figurative artist Francis Bacon, the last of six panels making up his "1949 Head" series. It shows a bust view of a single figure, modeled on Diego Velázquez's Portrait of Innocent X. Bacon applies forceful, expressive brush strokes, and places the figure within a glass cage structure, behind curtain-like drapery. This gives the effect of a man trapped and suffocated by his surroundings, screaming into an airless void. But with an inverted pathos is derived from the ambiguity of the pope's horrifying expression—whose distorted face either screams of untethered hatred towards the viewer or pleads for help from the glass cage—the question of what he is screaming about is left to the audience.
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.
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.
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.
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. The work is held by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.
Blood on the Floor is a 1986 oil-on-canvas panel painting by the British artist Francis Bacon. The panel shows a violent splash of blood, formed from drips of paint, on a bare canvas coloured floor, which may be a wooden plank, or diving board, against a harsh, flat, orange background. The foreground contains two suspended light bulbs, one white, one molten yellow, and a light switch.
Version No. 2 of Lying Figure with Hypodermic Syringe is a 1968 oil-on-canvas painting by the Irish-born, English artist Francis Bacon. It is the second of two similarly titled paintings based on nude photographs of his close friend Henrietta Moraes, who is shown in a reclining position on a bed, themselves part of a wider series of collapsed figures on beds that began with the 1963 triptych Lying Figure. This later version is widely considered the more successful of the two panels.
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.
Study for Portrait II is a small 1955 oil-on-canvas painting by the Irish-born British figurative artist Francis Bacon, one of a series of six portraits completed after viewing that year the English poet, painter and printmaker William Blake's life mask at the National Portrait Gallery in London.
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