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Francis Bacon (28 October 1909 – 28 April 1992) was an Irish-born British figurative painter known for his bold, grotesque, emotionally charged and raw imagery.〔Harrison (2006), 7〕 His painterly abstracted figures are typically isolated in glass or steel geometrical cages, set against flat, nondescript backgrounds. Bacon took up painting in his early 20s but worked sporadically and uncertainly until his mid-30s. Unsure of his ability, he drifted as a highly complex ''bon vivant'', homosexual, gambler and interior decorator and designer of furniture, rugs and bathroom tiles. He later admitted that his artistic career was delayed because he spent too long looking for subject matter that could sustain his interest.〔Schmied (1996), 121〕 His breakthrough came with the 1944 triptych ''Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion'', which in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, sealed his reputation as a uniquely bleak chronicler of the human condition. Remarking on the cultural significance of ''Three Studies'', John Russell observed that "there was painting in England before the Three Studies, and painting after them, and no one...can confuse the two."〔Russell (1971), 22〕 Bacon said that he saw images "in series", and his artistic output typically focused on a single subject or format for sustained periods, often in triptych or diptych formats.〔Although his decisions might have been driven by the fact that in the 50s he tended to produce group works for specific showings, usually left things to the last minute, and worked better under pressure〕 His output can be crudely described as sequences or variations on a single motif; beginning with the 1930s Picasso-informed Furies, moving on to the 1940s male heads isolated in rooms or geometric structures, the 1950s screaming popes, and the mid-to-late 1950s animals and lone figures. These were followed by his early 1960s variations on crucifixion scenes. From the mid-1960s he mainly produced portraits of friends and drinking companions, either as single or triptych panels. Following the 1971 suicide of his lover George Dyer, his art became more somber, inward-looking and preoccupied with the passage of time and death.〔Ticking wristwatches (a further indicator of rough trade in 1960 England) and dissolving faces are common in his work after 1972.〕 The climax of this later period is marked by masterpieces, including his 1982's "Study for Self-Portrait" and ''Study for a Self Portrait -Triptych, 1985-86''. Despite his bleak existentialist outlook, solidified in the public mind through his articulate and vivid series of interviews with David Sylvester, Bacon in person was highly engaging and charismatic, articulate, well-read and unapologetically gay. He was a prolific artist, but nonetheless spent many of the evenings of his middle age eating, drinking and gambling in London's Soho with like-minded friends such as Lucian Freud (though the two fell out in the 1950s, for reasons neither ever explained), John Deakin, Muriel Belcher, Henrietta Moraes, Daniel Farson and Jeffrey Bernard. After Dyer's suicide he largely distanced himself from this circle, and while his social life was still active and his passion for gambling and drinking continued, he settled into a platonic and somewhat fatherly relationship with his eventual heir, John Edwards. Bacon was equally reviled and acclaimed during his lifetime. Art critic Robert Hughes described him as "the most implacable, lyric artist in late 20th-century England, perhaps in all the world"〔 Horrible!, The Guardian, Saturday August 30 2008.〕 and along with Willem de Kooning as "the most important painter of the disquieting human figure in the 50's of the 20th century."〔Robert Hughes, The Shock of the New - Episode 6 - The View from the Edge - 21 September 1980 - BBC.〕 Francis Bacon was the subject of two Tate retrospectives and a major showing in 1971 at the Grand Palais. Since his death his reputation and market value have grown steadily, and his work is amongst the most acclaimed, expensive and sought-after. In the late 1990s a number of major works, previously assumed destroyed,〔Some had appeared in black-and-white photographs in the late 1950s Catalogue Raisonné〕 including early 1950s popes and 1960s portraits, reemerged to set record prices at auction. On 12 November 2013 his ''Three Studies of Lucian Freud'' set the world record as the most expensive piece of art sold at auction, selling for $142,405,000, until exceeded by the sale of a Picasso in May 2015. ==Early life== Francis Bacon was born in a nursing home in the heart of old Georgian Dublin at 63 Lower Baggot Street,〔(Francis Bacon biography, Tate galleries website ) by Hugh Lane Gallery〕 to parents of English descent.〔Peppiatt (1996), 4〕 His father, Captain Anthony Edward Mortimer ("Eddy") Bacon was born in Adelaide, South Australia to an English father and an Australian mother.〔(francis-bacon.com ); Retrieved 11 August 2013〕 Eddy was a veteran of the Boer War, and a racehorse trainer and his mother, Christina Winifred "Winnie" Firth was heiress to a Sheffield steel business and coal mine. It is believed his father was a direct descendant of Sir Nicholas Bacon, elder half-brother of Sir Francis Bacon, the Elizabethan statesman, philosopher and essayist.〔 His great-great-grandmother, Lady Charlotte Harley, was intimately acquainted with Lord Byron, who called her "Ianthe", and dedicated his poem, ''Childe Harold's Pilgrimage'', to her.〔Peppiatt (1996), 5〕 When Bacon's paternal grandfather was given the chance to revive the title of Lord Oxford by Queen Victoria, he refused for financial reasons.〔 He had an older brother, Harley,〔 two younger sisters, Ianthe and Winifred, and a younger brother, Edward. He was raised by the family nanny, Jessie Lightfoot, from Cornwall, known as 'Nanny Lightfoot', and who remained close to him until her death. Lightfoot was a mother figure for Bacon. In the 1940s, she aided him in keeping gambling houses in London. The family changed houses often, moving back and forth between Ireland and England several times, leading to a feeling of displacement remained with the artist throughout his life. In 1911 the family lived in Cannycourt House near Kilcullen, County Kildare, but later moved to Westbourne Terrace in London, close to where Bacon's father worked at the Territorial Force Records Office. They returned to Ireland after World War I. Bacon lived with his maternal grandmother and step-grandfather, Winifred and Kerry Supple, at Farmleigh, Abbeyleix, County Laois, though the family again moved to Straffan Lodge near Naas, County Kildare; his mother's place of birth. Bacon as a child was shy, and enjoyed dressing up. This, coupled with his effeminate manner, upset his father. A story emerged in 1992〔"I was told by a homosexual friend of Francis' that he'd once admitted that his father, the dreaded and failed horse trainer, had arranged that his small son spend his childhood being systematically and viciously horsewhipped by his Irish grooms.", Caroline Blackwood, ''Francis Bacon (1909–1992)'', ''The New York Review of Books'' Volume 39, No. 15, 24 September 1992〕 of his father having had Francis horsewhipped by their groom. In 1924 his parents moved to Gloucestershire, first to Prescott House in Gotherington, then Linton Hall near the border with Herefordshire. At a fancy-dress party at the Firth family home, Cavendish Hall in Suffolk, Francis dressed as a flapper with an Eton crop, beaded dress, lipstick, high heels, and a long cigarette holder. In 1926, the family moved back to Straffan Lodge. His sister, Ianthe, twelve years his junior, recalled that Bacon made drawings of ladies with cloche hats and long cigarette holders.〔"I'm not sure Francis had a lot in common with my mother because, she didn't take much notice of his art or anything. I remember sometimes he brought home things that he'd drawn and, I don't know what my mother did with them she wasn't wildly interested in it. They were always, what we used to call 1920s ladies you know, with the cloche hat and, cigarette holder (long holder'' ). That sort of thing. They were always drawings like that. They were very nice. What happened to them I don't know. – And, funnily enough I actually remember them." – Ianthe Knott (née Bacon) interviewed for ''Bacon's Arena'' dir. Adam Low (BBC Arena), broadcast 19 March 2005, at 9 pm on BBC2.〕 Later that year, Francis was thrown out of Straffan Lodge following an incident in which his father found him admiring himself in front of a large mirror draped in his mother's underwear. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Francis Bacon (artist)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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