Art: Private View
Francis Bacon Tate Gallery, London SW1
Your support helps us to tell the story
This election is still a dead heat, according to most polls. In a fight with such wafer-thin margins, we need reporters on the ground talking to the people Trump and Harris are courting. Your support allows us to keep sending journalists to the story.
The Independent is trusted by 27 million Americans from across the entire political spectrum every month. Unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock you out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. But quality journalism must still be paid for.
Help us keep bring these critical stories to light. Your support makes all the difference.
Francis Bacon may have been the leading light of the so-called School of London, but he always stood out from his fellow figurative painters thanks to his disdain for drawing. Whereas Auerbach, Freud, Kitaj and Kossoff had an almost religious devotion to pencil and paper, Bacon, who was self-taught, gave the impression that he always charged up to a bare canvas and chucked paint on with alcohol-fuelled abandon.
But in 1996, four years after Bacon's death, it was discovered that he had been economical with the truth. The enfant terrible had, in fact, made preparatory drawings throughout his career, and some had been given to the writer Stephen Spender, and to another friend of the artist. More than 40 of these sketches - made in pencil, ballpoint pen, gouache and oil paint - have now been acquired by the Tate, and will be shown alongside their collection of paintings by the artist. It will be a revelatory show all right, but disappointing, too: it surely can't be long before we're told he was teetotal, celibate and a fan of the Queen Mum, too.
Francis Bacon, Tate Gallery, Millbank, London SW1 (0171-887 8000) to 2 May
James Hall
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments