This exhibition presented at The National Portrait Gallery in London, and closing on January 19, 2025, features more than 50 remarkable pieces spanning from the 1940s onwards, including works from private collections being displayed for the first time. It offers a profound exploration of Francis Bacon’s intimate relationship with portraiture, showcasing how he challenged conventional notions of the genre through his innovative use of colour and gesture.

The works delve into Bacon’s life and psyche, reflecting his responses to portraits by earlier artists and his creation of expansive paintings that honour his lovers. Alongside his striking self-portraits, the exhibition features portrayals of notable sitters, including his lovers Peter Lacy and George Dyer, as well as Lucian Freud and Isabel Rawsthorne. Inspired by Aeschylus’s Oresteia, Bacon’s Furies are depicted as unsettling hybrids of man and beast, with twisted necks, wide growling mouths, and expressions of torment – iconic works. While Isabel Rawsthorne and Henrietta Moraes are rendered with clarity, most of the male figures are shown in states of contorted tension and anguish.

A particularly poignant moment in the exhibition reflects Bacon’s grief after his lover, George Dyer, tragically took his own life two days before the opening of Bacon’s major Paris exhibition at Grand Palais. In his 1973 self-portrait, Bacon’s features dissolve into a disorienting loop, shaped by grief and solitude. A major highlight in the show!

Bacon’s work was deeply influenced by art history, particularly Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1649–50), Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait with Beret (1659), and Van Gogh’s The Painter on the Road to Tarascon (1888). His fascination with Van Gogh marked a turning point, moving him away from monochrome into a “bruised prism” of color—rich plums, sickly greens, and deep pinks. The room where the works are featured is brilliant. Later in the show a self-portrait by Rembrandt from the Musée Granet in Arles stands proudly.

This exhibition is both stunning and profoundly moving, offering a poignant reflection on Bacon’s life and his pioneering approach to portraiture through paintings, drawings, archival materials and photographs.