Francis Bacon

Marlborough Fine Art, Ltd., London
Acquired by the present owner from the above in 1967

London, Marlborough Fine Art Ltd., Francis Bacon: Recent Paintings, March - April 1967, p. 22, illustrated (detail, center panel) and cat. no. 15, p. 23, illustrated in color
Paris, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais; Düsseldorf, Städtische Kunsthalle, Francis Bacon: Rétrospective, October 1971 - May 1972, cat. no. 70, p. 84, illustrated in color
Edinburgh, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art; Hamburg, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Francis Bacon: Portraits and Heads, June 2005 - January 2006, cat. no. 34, p. 67, illustrated in color
London, Gagosian Gallery, Francis Bacon: Triptychs, June - August 2006, n.p., illustrated in color

John Russell, Francis Bacon, Greenwich, 1971, pl. no. 93, illustrated in color
Lorenza Trucchi, Francis Bacon, New York, 1975, pl. no. 114, illustrated in color
Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon: Logique de la Sensation, Paris, 1981, vol. II, pl. no. 71, illustrated
Exh. Cat., London, Marlborough Fine Art Ltd., Francis Bacon, 1909 - 1992: Small Portrait Studies, 1993, n.p., illustrated
Milan Kundera and France Borel, Bacon: Portraits and Self-Portraits, London, 1996, pp. 46-48, illustrated in color

This work is in excellent condition. Please contact the Contemporary Art Department at 212-606-7254 for a condition report prepared by Terrence Mahon. The triptych is framed in a gold gilt frame under Plexiglas with dark grey linen matte and interior gilt rabbets around each canvas.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Three Studies for a Self-Portrait, 1967 was exhibited for the first time by the Marlborough Gallery in London shortly after it was painted.  The exhibition, entitled Francis Bacon–Recent Paintings, took place from March to April 1967 and this triptych was purchased by the present owner later that same year. On the occasion of the exhibition of this artist, who was already a leading light of the art gallery and considered to be the most important living English painter, a sumptuous catalogue was published with an introduction by Michel Leiris, together with a new transcript of an interview with David Sylvester, recorded and filmed for BBC Television in May 1966.  This marked the first publication of an interview between the artist and Sylvester.  The catalogue included a series of five "studies of portraits" including Three Studies for a Self-Portrait which is the only one from this series in which the figure of Bacon appears, and it is probably the first small triptych that is a self-portrait.

Significantly, the catalogue contained an insert at the front of the catalogue, possibly slightly larger than the original, of a photo-booth picture of the artist, composed of three shots arranged vertically. By comparing these images to Three Studies for a Self-Portrait one sees that two of these shots were used as the basis for the three portraits in the triptych: the first photo for the head on the left and the second for the one in the center; the last photo, however, was not used.  Instead, the third panel with a compressed jaw turned towards the left comes from the third photo of another photo-booth strip, shot on the same day and during the same session, which was found later glued to a torn book cover, next to a strip of photo-booth portraits of George Dyer and another of David Plante.   All these photos were taken in booths in Aix-en-Provence in 1966 when the three friends were visiting the writer Stephen Spender. (Martin Harrison, In Camera: Francis Bacon, London, 2005, p. 169 and pl. 188, p. 172, illustrated).

In the catalogue published by Marlborough, the reproduction of the triptych is accompanied by a photograph of the back of the first canvas in which one can read in the underlined and sloping handwriting of Bacon Three Studies for a Self-Portrait.  Why did the editors of the catalogue take the trouble to reproduce this "canvas verso"?  Perhaps it was to draw attention to the rare subject, for Bacon had painted few self-portraits before this date and never in this format, and also to emphasize the sententious tone of this title, the importance of the "Self-Portrait" with its capital letter.  They are, of course, "studies", like all the small portraits he painted during that period.  The two lines of writing prove not so much the undeniable fact that Bacon painted them but that he chose himself as the subject – a very rare approach at that time – and there can therefore be no confusion as to the identity of the model.

It should be remembered that initially the portraits of Bacon, which now seem to be of such a high quality and which enhance the image of their model, were not considered to be very appealing.  Most people felt these portraits were aggressive and expressed an almost unbearable violence towards the model.  The painting gestures, the blotches and marks were perceived as slaps in the face or blows, and in any event, attempts to destroy the physical and moral identity of the model.  Francis Bacon was seen as a painter who wavered between classical portrayal and Abstract Expressionism, but it was not known how he worked.  What is more, nobody had yet suspected that photography would play such an important role in his work. (Martin Harrison, Francis Bacon, la chamber noire, la photographie, le film et le travail du peintre, Paris, 2006).  This notion was inconceivable because photography was considered to be a lifelike art whereas the paintings of Bacon were seen as works that went against resemblance, or at least to a degree that was, to a certain extent, metaphysical.

This is why Bacon only chose models from his close circle of friends: the Colony group, including Muriel Belcher, Lucian Freud, Isabel Rawsthorne who modelled for Giacometti, and George Dyer his friend.  He even asked one of the members of the group, John Deakin, to photograph them.  After the death of Bacon, these photos were discovered in large numbers among the papers piled on the floor of his studio, and judging by the traces of paint and their proximity to the paintings, they proved that Bacon used them prolifically and directly while he was actually working.  Thanks to his use of photography, he was not obliged to wait for his models or disturb them while painting.  Bacon was perfectly aware of the fact that his painting had a disturbing aspect as revealed in his interview with David Sylvester.

"David Sylvester: When somebody you've already painted many times from memory does actually sit for you, what happens?"

Francis Bacon: They inhibit me.  They inhibit me because if I like them, I don't want to practise the injury that I do them in my work before them.  I would rather practise the injury in private by which I think I can record the facts of them more clearly.

DS: In what sense do you conceive it as an injury?

FB: Because people believe – simple people at least – that the distortions of them are an injury to them no matter how much they feel for or like you ". (Exh. Cat., London, Marlborough Gallery, Francis Bacon: Recent Paintings, 1967, p. 37).

By painting himself, he did not have to disturb anyone.  As he admitted later, "I hate my face.  I only made self-portraits because I had no one else to paint."  (David Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon, London, 1975, pp. 129 and 249). The numerous photographs of Bacon show a person who is rather ill at ease with a camera except when in the company of friends, or when his jovial mood made him forget the camera lens. More intense, entirely focused on the face and devoid of the broad naked surfaces of large-scale compositions, Three Studies for a Self-Portrait 1967 was a new exercise with far-reaching influence in his oeuvre.  Like all the small triptychs in this series, "they participate in a life that is different from that of big compositions precisely because they escape from the concerns of compositions.  They are there, handed over for their own sake, revealed in their evidence and in the evidence of their work." (Yves Peyré, L'espace de l'immediat, Caen, 1991, p. 19).

The staging of his face in a photo-booth is of particular interest.  Bacon parodies the sequential order of the mug shots of criminals taken by the police; right profile, front view, left profile; he shies away while at the same time presenting himself, as he also did in real life.  He is fully aware that the photo-booth is, to a certain extent, a democratized legal machine, a kind of self-documenting instrument within the reach of everyone and installed in public areas.  During his visit to Aix, the use Bacon made of it was a way of diverting away from the rigid frontal shots of the machine.  The Surrealists and Queneau did this before Bacon, and like him, amused themselves by parodying the use of photography as an instrument to impose social order.  But Bacon also understood the benefit he could derive from it as a perfect tool for preparing his paintings.

In 1967 he even made a self-portrait, repeating the series of four superimposed images,  but by widening the frame towards the sides, as if he were reproducing the filmstrip of a movie or a chronophotography by Muybridge, in which the interval between each image is very short (Harrison, In Camera, p. 173).  The photo-booth portrait implies a longer duration, one that is sufficient to allow the model to change poses, or to add a gesture to transform the composition of the image and the angle of the face.  Bacon even had an intuition that he could in this way revert to the principle of a triptych arrangement as long as he treated the subject more densely.  He could also allow himself to abandon the "glass cage", so widely used in his large-scale compositions.  With the photo-booth, the body of the subject is constrained not only by the frame enclosing the head and shoulders but also by the narrow space of the photo-booth, which places the subject mechanically in a situation of oppression.  Bacon realized this enabled him to continue to use the glass cage without painting it, leaving it off camera in such a way that people viewing his paintings could guess that something was having an effect on the subjects, but without being able to understand the origin, and this is what intensified the power of his painting.

Bacon's pictorial technique and his way of putting paint on certain areas of the canvas are what create his signature.  Three Studies for a Self-Portrait belongs to the "classical" period of the artist, between the late fifties and the middle of the seventies.  This is the period of "blurs" that "exude from the heads" (Ibid., p. 205), to borrow the words of Martin Harrison, in which the faces seem to be pressed against a glass pane.  This characteristic can, in fact, be found in most of the works by Bacon as he liked them to be covered by glass, and it is particularly visible in the middle picture of this triptych, in which the face of the model, Bacon in this case, seems to melt into himself, like a movie film that is blocked in a projector.

It is not inappropriate to detect in it a clue to the self-destructive tendencies of the artist.  "He used to say that his reputation was built on a lot of nervous chic and that his real passion was gambling – he had once won four dollars in Monte-Carlo.  It was a dangerous mental joust in which he placed himself in the perilous situation of revealing a secret that would destroy him." (Ted Morgan as quoted in Daniel Farson, Francis Bacon, Aspects d'une Vie, Paris, 1994, p. 171). Painting offered him another kind of arena where he could put himself physically and mentally in danger.  Bacon claimed he wanted his paintings to be "heartrending" so that they would catch viewers by their throat and wrench their heart.  In 1949, he announced his wish to transcribe "the itinerary of his own nervous system on the canvas." (Harrison, 2005, p. 231).  The three panels of Three Studies for a Self-Portrait are like three phases in this intense experiment with his own appearance.  The face on the left seems to be scratched and puffed up to the point of bleeding.  The eyes and mouth are closed and swollen, as if the figure was beaten up.  The hair forms a crest standing out against an emerald green background. The middle panel is even more astonishing.  Although it evokes a melting filmstrip, one can also see it as an anamorphosis.  Bacon, who lived in London, knew by heart the Ambassadors by Holbein with its ghost-skull in the National Gallery.  He knew how fascinating it could be and how this change in perspective could modify the emotions viewers felt when looking at the painting.  Portraying himself with a face deformed to such a degree, thus giving an impression that the visage would be visible from another point of view, was like painting himself from a parallel world beyond, the crossing point being the center of the triptych.  Bacon has clearly done everything possible to ensure there would be nothing logical about this "deformation", especially since the background seems to be of a perfect passiveness, invariably green and neutral, without any special dynamism, and providing no visual distraction to this human metamorphosis.

This green colour is intriguing.  Bacon only used it during those years, and it adds a special density to the paintings.  When I visited the Francis Bacon retrospective at the Centre Pompidou at the end of June 1996 with Anselm Kiefer, I was surprised to see how intensely the German artist scrutinized each painting, never distancing himself more than a few dozen centimetres away from the surface of the canvases.  From the way he turned his head, looking above, below or sideways, he was obviously seeking to discern, through the reflections and underneath the glass, how it was painted, how Bacon worked.  At the end of the visit, Kiefer came towards me, and just as I was expecting some comments about the exhibition, said instead, "it is amazing, to obtain his plain backgrounds, such homogenous backgrounds, Bacon dipped his canvas directly in liquid paint."  And in fact, at the back of the central panel of Three Studies for a Self-Portrait, the green color clearly runs over the edge, indicating that it had not been painted with a brush but spread directly and without a tool.  The background thus achieves an intensity and neutrality of treatment that contributes to giving the painted forms an even more striking presence, making them stand out against a space where the hand of the artist did not intervene; it is constructed pictorially according to a different logic than the kind of touches usually revealed by the use of brushes.  This plain green background is all the more striking in that in the photo-booths that served as models, a curtain can be seen, the kind that is either held open or drawn closed when one is ready to be photographed, and that Bacon used at the end of the forties, in particular for his portraits of Popes.

This radical treatment is just as evident in the last panel, the one on the right.  The face is no longer swollen, and is even deprived, as if a large section on the left had been torn off.  The strident green background occupies half of the surface of the painting and accentuates the void.  Is this a distortion, flow or collapse of the face onto itself, with the nose and mouth twisted in the corner of the jaw?  The whole is obviously reminiscent of the photos of the severe First World War casualties, especially the one of a soldier whose left profile shows a gaping hole, one of the most startling images of a "broken face" that has been preserved. Bacon must have seen it, marked as he was by the shadow of the two world wars. (Francis Bacon, Interviews with Michel Archimbault, Paris, 1996, pp. 123-124).

Three Studies for a Self-Portrait is consequently one of the most radical works of Francis Bacon, those that reflect how his pictorial style was applied with an incredible rigour and efficiency, the one in which for the first time he portrayed himself three times in a row, even though he always found it distressing to see his image.  This is the outcome of the happy memories of his experience in a photo-booth in Aix, the certainty of having made great progress through his new series of triptychs, in achieving perfect control over his work, and developing a capacity to incorporate his obsessions while increasing their effectiveness in his art. Three Studies for a Self-Portrait is a particularly accomplished example of his painting, a work that is rarely exhibited but which Bacon made sure to include in the selection for his retrospective at the Grand Palais in October 1971, the most important exhibition of his life.

Fabrice Hergott
Co-curator of the Francis Bacon Retrospective at the Pompidou Center in 1996
Head of the Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris