When and where was Francis Bacon the painter born?
Francis Bacon was born on the 28th of October 1909 at 63 Lower Baggot Street in Dublin. At that time, all of Ireland was part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
Questions about Francis Bacon (artist)
Short answers, pulled from the story.
What was Francis Bacon's artistic breakthrough painting?
Bacon's breakthrough was the 1944 triptych Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, which debuted in 1945 and established him as a leading post-war painter. Critic John Russell wrote in 1971 that it created an unmistakable divide between painting in England before the triptych and after it.
Why did Francis Bacon paint so many popes?
Bacon's pope series was largely based on Velázquez's 1650 Portrait of Pope Innocent X, held in Rome at the Galleria Doria Pamphilj, along with papal portraits by Raphael and Titian. He used the papal figure to strip hierarchical power and present isolated, claustrophobic images of human suffering and despair. His 1953 Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X is regarded by art historians as one of his masterpieces.
Who was George Dyer and what was his relationship to Francis Bacon?
George Dyer was a man from London's East End, around 30 years old when he met Bacon in 1963, who had previously drifted between theft and prison. He became Bacon's lover and the dominant subject of Bacon's portraits in the mid-to-late 1960s. Dyer died on the 24th of October 1971 of a barbiturate overdose in a Paris hotel during the opening of Bacon's retrospective at the Grand Palais, and Bacon memorialised him in the three Black Triptychs.
What happened to Francis Bacon's studio after his death?
Bacon's studio at 7 Reece Mews in South Kensington was donated to the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin in August 1998 by his heir John Edwards and estate executor Brian Clarke. Over 7,000 items were catalogued, mapped, and physically relocated to Dublin, where the studio was rebuilt with its original doors, floor, walls, and ceiling. The gallery opened the reconstructed studio to the public in 2001.
What are the highest prices Francis Bacon's paintings have sold for at auction?
In 2013, Three Studies of Lucian Freud sold at Christie's New York for 142.4 million dollars, at that moment the highest auction price ever paid for any work of art. An earlier record was set in 2008, when Triptych, 1976 sold at Sotheby's for 55.465 million euros (86.28 million dollars), then the record for a post-war work. By 1989 Bacon had already become the most expensive living artist after a triptych sold for over six million dollars.