Search engine for discovering works of Art, research articles, and books related to Art and Culture
ShareThis
Javascript must be enabled to continue!

Study for the Portrait of Lucien Freud

View through Europeana Collections
The macabre, nightmarish bodily distortions in Bacon’s paintings are reflections of the violence and desolation he saw as endemic to the human condition. Although links with Surrealism and Expressionism can be found in the artist’s work, he viewed himself as a realist. Bacon focused on portraiture, believing that “the living quality is what you have to get. In painting a portrait the problem is to find a technique by which you can give over all the pulsations of a person . . . . The sitter is someone of flesh and blood and what has to be caught is their emanation” (quoted in David Sylvester, The Brutality of Fact: Interviews with Francis Bacon [London, 1988], pp. 172, 174). Bacon’s earliest named portrait, executed in 1951, depicts his friend and fellow artist Lucian Freud. Over the following decades, he painted Freud on many occasions, sometimes in triptych format and sometimes alone, as in this portrait, which is set in a stark, austere interior defined by flat, nearly abstract, bands of color. The central band represents a hard bench, on which the figure sits uneasily, leaning on one arm and groping at his face with the other. The space is illuminated by an exposed light bulb, creating an atmosphere of threatening isolation and emphasizing the signature smearing of the face and stumplike limbs. Indeed, the setting resembles an interrogation room, and the sitter plays the role of the contorted and semiobliterated suspect.
Title: Study for the Portrait of Lucien Freud
Description:
The macabre, nightmarish bodily distortions in Bacon’s paintings are reflections of the violence and desolation he saw as endemic to the human condition.
Although links with Surrealism and Expressionism can be found in the artist’s work, he viewed himself as a realist.
Bacon focused on portraiture, believing that “the living quality is what you have to get.
In painting a portrait the problem is to find a technique by which you can give over all the pulsations of a person .
.
.
.
The sitter is someone of flesh and blood and what has to be caught is their emanation” (quoted in David Sylvester, The Brutality of Fact: Interviews with Francis Bacon [London, 1988], pp.
172, 174).
Bacon’s earliest named portrait, executed in 1951, depicts his friend and fellow artist Lucian Freud.
Over the following decades, he painted Freud on many occasions, sometimes in triptych format and sometimes alone, as in this portrait, which is set in a stark, austere interior defined by flat, nearly abstract, bands of color.
The central band represents a hard bench, on which the figure sits uneasily, leaning on one arm and groping at his face with the other.
The space is illuminated by an exposed light bulb, creating an atmosphere of threatening isolation and emphasizing the signature smearing of the face and stumplike limbs.
Indeed, the setting resembles an interrogation room, and the sitter plays the role of the contorted and semiobliterated suspect.

Related Results

Sketchbook
Sketchbook
Sketchbook with blue-and-white marbled cardboard covers. Black fabric tape at spine. Sewn page block; sheets perforated for removal. Pages of off-white wove paper, each 36.7 x 2...
Sketchbook
Sketchbook
Sketchbook with black-leather-covered cardboard covers. Sewn page block. Pages of white wove paper, each 34.7 x 27.1 cm. Pages numbered at l.l. of verso in graphite. Drawings i...
Sketchbook
Sketchbook
Sketchbook with black-leather-covered cardboard covers. Sewn page block; pages of off-white wove paper, each 27.2 x 20.8 cm. Drawings made in graphite and in vertical orientation...

Back to Top