Collector Walls: The Painter and the Composer

F rancis Bacon famously painted the same handful of faces for most of his career. George Dyer, Lucian Freud, Muriel Belcher, Henrietta Moraes, Isabel Rawsthorne: a rotating cast he returned to again and again, rarely admitting anyone new. So in 1969, when a small portrait of the composer Gerard Schurmann appeared, it stood apart. Unlike he had with the rest of his sitters, Bacon never explained in interviews what drew him to paint Schurmann, yet the portrait was, by every account, an act of real friendship.

In the early 1950s, Bacon, a boisterous, volatile painter on the rise, and Schurmann, a meticulous Dutch composer, were both living in the Oxfordshire town of Henley-on-Thames. They were part of a small circle that also included Bacon’s tormented lover at the time, Peter Lacy. Bacon and Schurmann made a surprising pairing: The painter knew little about composing, the composer little about painting, yet they bonded almost immediately over the shared difficulty of artistic creation. They would talk until the early hours of the morning. “Neither of us knew very much about the specific properties of the other’s art form,” Schurmann later recalled, “and yet, curiously, at first we discovered that our creative motivations, problems and challenges were almost identical. His articulate companionship certainly stimulated me more than overtly technical or fashion-conscious exchanges with musicians ever did.”

Schurmann began composing a song cycle based on the poetry of William Blake, the visionary Romantic era poet, painter and printmaker, who became an improbable third party to the friendship. Researching the piece, Schurmann made a pilgrimage to see Blake’s life mask at the National Portrait Gallery and brought Bacon along with him. Bacon, who had intended to create a single painting that his friend could use for the cover of his score, was so taken with the mask that he produced an entire series based on it, three of which he subsequently gifted to Schurmann. The works didn’t hang long in Schurmann’s home, however, as just a few weeks later Bacon came running back and asked to borrow them for a show at the Hanover Gallery, arranged by his dealer Erica Brausen, to whom he owed money. All three were swiftly sold to cover the debt.

Over a decade passed and the friendship between the two creatives continued to blossom: Schurmann was even one of the rare few admitted to Bacon’s studio spaces. (The artist was particularly selective about this.) The men had both relocated to London and they would spend evenings together having dinners at Wheeler’s, the Soho fish restaurant that was one of Bacon’s regular haunts, often with the painter Frank Auerbach and the composer Harrison Birtwistle at the table too.

Soon enough, Schurmann had the idea to create a musical series inspired directly by his close friend’s art: “Six Studies of Francis Bacon” it was to be called, an orchestral work for the 1969 Dublin Festival of 20th Century Music. Schurmann’s intention was “to make audible those things one may not see” in the work. Bacon, in response, painted a portrait of Schurmann, which appeared on the “Six Studies” album cover. It was Bacon’s gift to his friend. And unlike the previous gifts, this one was Schurmann’s to keep, a gesture some have proposed as Bacon’s way of making amends for having taken the earlier gift back. Schurmann treasured the portrait.

It hung in his home in London, and then it came with him and his wife, Carolyn, to Los Angeles, where the couple relocated around 1981, wanting to be closer to Hollywood in hopes of picking up more film work. Yet the reality of being a contemporary composer caught up with Schurmann. Work was slow, costs were mounting and he wanted to build a music studio of his own. Selling the portrait would cover it.

The painting was transferred to Sotheby’s, and in 1984 the private sales division set about finding a new owner. The couple received $49,000 for it, a considerable sum at the time, though a fraction of what it would fetch today.

By the early 1990s, the painting had found its way into the possession of Maureen and Marshall Cogan, New Yorkers then finishing a Fifth Avenue apartment with the decorator Jed Johnson (a onetime partner of Andy Warhol’s). Marshall, a Wall Street financier who had built and run companies from Foamex to Knoll International, and Maureen were already serious, long-standing collectors. Works by artists like Picasso, Giacometti, Miró, Klee and Léger hung on the walls throughout their home. “It was one of Jed’s favorite projects,” the designer’s twin brother, Jay, recounts. Beyond the architecture, Jed worked closely with Maureen, taking her furniture hunting in Paris and New York and steering the couple toward 20th-century and art deco furniture that could hold its own beside the paintings they already owned.

The Cogans and Johnson hung the Bacon in the entrance gallery, beneath an Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann sconce. It was the first sight any visitor saw on arrival, yet very few likely knew of the lifelong friendship, and the artistic exchange, that it represented.