%C2%A9 The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved. %2F DACS%2C London %2F ARS%2C NY 2014

Study for Portrait VI, 1953

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The human figure was Francis Bacon's principal object of study throughout his career. This picture belongs to a series of eight paintings, which began as a portrait of Bacon's friend and biographer David Sylvester but became, in the final project, studies of a seated pope. Inspired by Eadweard Muybridge's sequential photos of the human body in movement, Bacon made his figures more and more agititated until, in the final painting, the pope is convulsive. Here his ambiguous facial expression rests somewhere between the grimace of Portrait V and the horrific scream of Portrait VII.

This painting is one of the first Francis Bacon paintings acquired by an American museum.

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Francis Bacon, Study for Portrait VI (#853)
Details
Title
Study for Portrait VI
Artist Life
British (born Ireland), 1909 - 1992
Role
Artist
Accession Number
58.35
Curator Approved

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© The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved. / DACS, London / ARS, NY 2014

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