The Figurative Art of Francis Bacon
Background
Born on October 28, 1909 in Dublin to Captain Anthony Edward Mortimer Bacon, a veteran of the Boer War and descendent of the famous Sir Francis Bacon, and Christina Winifred Firth, an heiress to a Sheffield steel business as well as a coal mine. His early life was characterized by his family’s moving back and forth several times between Ireland and England, which contributed in some degree to a sense of displacement throughout the artist’s life.
As a child, Bacon was characterized as being a shy boy, but one who enjoyed dressing up. Unfortunately, this combined with an effeminate manner for the time period, lead to information coming to light in 1992 that his father supposedly had Bacon horsewhipped by grooms from their stables. In 1926, following an incident where his father caught him in Straffan Lodge dressed in his mother’s underwear in front of a mirror, he was thrown out of the household.
For the rest of 1926 he lived in London. Destitute, with little money to his name, he would often attempt to avoid paying rent and resort to petty theft in order to survive. Bacon drifted between a number of jobs in this time period, before finally moving to Berlin in 1927. It would prove to be a short stay, moving on to Paris after only a few months, where he would attempt to learn French and spent time seeing the city’s…
