Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, C 1944. 94 cm x 74 cm (ea), Tate Britain, London. This work was the first painting Bacon was happy with and was an instant critical success. The themes it explores reoccur and are re-examined in many of his later panels and triptychs.
The Irish-born British artist Francis Bacon (1909–1992) painted 28 known large triptychs between 1944 and 1985–86.[1] He began working in the format in the mid-1940s with a number of smaller scale works before graduating to large examples in 1962. He followed the larger style for 30 years, although he painted a number of smaller scale triptychs of friend's heads, and after the death of his former lover George Dyer in 1971, the three acclaimed "Black Triptychs".
Bacon was a highly mannered artist and often became preoccupied with forms, themes, images and modes of expression that he would rework for sustained periods, often for six or seven-year periods. When asked about his tendency for sequential or repetitive paintings, he explained how, in his mind, images revealed themselves "in series. And I suppose I could go long beyond the triptych and do five or six together, but I find the triptych is a more balanced unit."[2]
He told critics that his usual practice with triptychs was to begin with the left panel and work across. Typically he completed each frame before beginning the next. As the work as a whole progressed, he would sometimes return to an earlier panel to make revisions, though this practice was generally carried out late in the overall work's completion.
Purchased 1973, central panel features figures inspired by Eadweard Muybridge's photograph of wrestlers. Left and right panels feature Bacon's lover, George Dyer.[5]
One of the three "Black triptychs" (with Triptych – August 1972 and In Memory of George Dyer). Painted in memory of Dyer who committed suicide on the eve of Bacon's retrospective at Paris's Grand Palais, on 24 October 1971, the triptych is a portrait of the moments before Dyer's death from an overdose of pills in their hotel room.[6]
Triptych, May–June 1973 was purchased at auction in 1989 by Swiss businesswoman Esther Grether for $6.3 million ($15.5 million as of 2023), then a record for a Bacon painting.[7][8][9] Grether is believed to own three other Bacon triptychs from the 1970s.
Sold in May 2008 for $86.3 million ($122 million as of 2023), to Russian businessman Roman Abramovich, holds the record for the highest price paid for a post-war work of art at auction.[7][8]
Features Bacon's lover George Dyer "writhing and struggling on a near-deserted beach watched by two disconcerting figures".[10] Sold in February 2008 to currency trader and businessman Joe Lewis for £26.3 million (£44.3 million as of 2023), then a record for postwar artwork bought in Europe.[7][8]
Central panel marks final appearance of figures inspired by wrestlers from the photographs of Muybridge. Sold by Stanley J. Seeger for $8.6m in 2001 ($14.8 million as of 2023), then a record price for a Bacon painting.[11][8]
