Francis Bacon

Private Collection (acquired from the artist in 1951)
Private Collection, London (by descent)
Sale: Sotheby's, London, Contemporary Art, 28 February 2008, Lot 152
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Martin Hammer, Francis Bacon and Nazi Propaganda, London 2012, p. 65, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although there are less magenta undertones in the original and the image fails to illustrate the edges of the canvas. Condition: This work is in very good and original condition. There is evidence of wear to all four edges and corners. Upon close inspection, there are small spots of craquelure towards the lower centre of the composition. Further close inspection reveals a few faint media accretions scattered in places, which are likely inherent to the artist's working process. Inspection under ultraviolet light reveals three spots of fluorescence, two on the left edge towards the upper corner, and a third one on the lower edge towards the left corner.
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Francis Bacon’s Untitled (Landscape) is an extremely rare example of the artist’s limited creative output during the Second World War. As one of the very few works that survived his rigorous selection process, it offers a unique insight not only into Bacon’s artistic development during these early years, but also into the preliminary explorations of themes that would develop into his iconic masterpieces over subsequent decades.

Equally imposing in its architectural grandeur as it is expressive of Bacon’s superb handling of paint, Untitled (Landscape) demonstrates the artist’s conscientious appropriation of Nazi imagery during the war. Whilst he was not conscripted to the army due to his asthma, the artist served as a warden in 1941/42 and witnessed the bombings of his neighbourhood in Kensington and Chelsea. The existential fear of mortality that held London in a grip during these dark years, as well as the artist’s own compulsion to react to the overwhelming events, acted as a catalyst for the three surviving paintings he made circa 1942. As one of this select group of works, Untitled (Landscape) is of momentous historical significance, since the three paintings constitute a direct precursor to Bacon’s famous Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion from 1944, now in the collection of Tate Britain. The imposing colonnade in the painting was an early architectural exploration for the triptych, in which outlines of the receding building are echoed in the background of all three canvasses.

The present work is also a very early example of Bacon’s interest in photography, which would profoundly influence the development of his unique visual language. The painting in fact relates to an image of Adolf Hitler in front of a neo-classical building designed by Alfred Speer, which the artist found in a magazine from 1940. Appropriating the visual rhetoric of the fascist architecture, Bacon exposes the inherent danger in such monumental designs at a moment at which many had not yet reflected on the implications of its seductive grandeur – a theme that would preoccupy some of the most important post-war artists over the following decades. Not only is Untitled (Landscape) therefore a monumental testimony to the artistic explorations that characterise Francis Bacon’s influential practice, the work is also of paramount academic and historical importance as a document of the fragility of life in one of history’s darkest moments.