The Dictionary of Art

John Bacon (i): George III and the River Thames, bronze, 1780-86(London, Somerset House)

Observatory, Oxford (now the Nuffield Institute forMedical Research).

Bacon was criticized by his fellow-sculptors for hisfailure to visit Rome or appreciate the ideals of the Antique,coupled with the paucity of his allegorical inventiveness;his memorials were considered banal. However, he woncommissions through the Royal Academy and its firstPresident, Joshua Reynolds, owing to his highly profes-sional practice, to Joseph Nollekens's preference forportrait busts, and to Thomas Banks's known radicalism.In 1784 the Academy selected Bacon to execute theJamaican monument to Admiral Rodney (Portland stone,1784-6; Spanish Town, Govt Sq.), which led to ten furthercommissions for monuments in Jamaica. In 1788 Reynoldsheaded a committee of gentlemen who selected Bacon toexecute the marble statue of DrJohnson (1788-96; Lon-don, St Paul's Cathedral). However, in its capacity asadviser on the first monuments in St Paul's, the Academyalso insisted on the reduction to a single figure of Bacon'sprojected marble monument to the prison reformer JohnHoward. Both statues were unveiled in 1796. Besides suchmajor commissions, Bacon's large workshop of between15 and 20 men produced busts, chimney-pieces and wallmemorials, assisted by Bacon's pointing machine, whichsimplified copying (the designs for which Jean-AntoineHoudon was said to have claimed as his own).

(2) Thomas Bacon (b London, 1773; Rafter 1800).Son of (l)John Bacon (i). He worked in his father's studio

and exhibited independently at the Royal Academy in1793-5. After his father's death, he assisted his youngerbrother (3) John Bacon (ii) in the completion of unfinishedworks, including the marble monument to Samuel Whit-bread (1796-9; Cardington, Beds, St Mary). Nothing isknown of him after 1800.

(3) John Bacon (ii) (b London, 1777; d London,1859). Son of (1) John Bacon (i). He was his father's trueheir: he had won both silver and gold medals at theAcademy by the age of twenty. However, he was neverelected ARA, probably because of his unusual businesspractices. In 1808 he went into partnership with CharlesManning (1776-1812) to whom he entrusted the designand execution of the majority of commissions whileretaining the family name on the work. Manning's brotherSamuel (1788-1842) succeeded him, the business contin-uing its extensive production of monuments with Baconas 'sleeping partner' until 1843.

Gunrns BIBLIOGRAPHY

R. Cecil: Memoirs of John Bacon, Esq, RA (London, 1801)A. Cunningham: The Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters, Sculptors

and Architects (London, 1830), iii, pp. 200-246A. Cox-Johnson:'Gendemen'sAgreement',-g»r/. Afeg.,ci(1959),pp. 236-

42-.John Bacon RA, St Marylebone Soc. Publication, 4 (London, 1961): 'Patrons to a Sculptor: The Society and John Bacon, RA',/. Royal

Soc. A., ex (1962), pp. 705-9T.Clifford: 'John Bacon and the Manufacturers', Apollo, cxxii (1985)

pp. 288-304JULIUS BRYANT

^Bacon, Francisjft Dublin, 28 Oct 1909; a'Madrid, 28Api'll 1992). English painter. One of the most individual,powerful and disturbing artists of the period followingWorld War II, he took the human figure as his subject ata time when art was dominated by abstract styles, and hewas also one of the first to depict overtly homosexualthemes. Though largely self-taught, he was widely readand of great independence of mind. His subject-matterand procedures of painting are too personal to be imitatedwith any real success by other artists, but in Britain andfurther afield he remains a towering example to thosededicated to the depiction of the human figure.

1. Life and work. 2. Working methods and technique.

LIFE AND WORK.)(i) Childhood and early work, to 1942. (ii) 1943-53. (iii) 1954-61 (iv)After 1961.

(i) Childhood and early work, to 1942. Bacon was probablya collateral descendant of the famous Elizabethan essayistand statesman Sir Francis Bacon. Born of English parents,he was brought up in Ireland and England and had almostno formal education partly because of the severe asthmafrom which he suffered as a child. He left home in 1927at the age of 17, spending eight weeks in Berlin during itswildest and most licentious period, when homosexualitvwas openly expressed, before moving to Paris. He livedthere for the next year and a half, visiting galleries andtaking an interest in painting, though without attendingany art school.

Bacon returned to London in 1929, took a studio andtried for the next two or three years to establish himself

The Dictionary of Art

2. Francis Bacon: Three Figures and a Portrait, oil and pastel oncanvas, 1.98x1.47 m, 1975 (London, Tate Gallery)

viewer the shock of recognition of the human formreassembled as if being invented for the first time.

RONALD ALLEY

^ 2 . WORKING METHODS AND^TECHNiQUE^rom themoment that he became a full-tame painter, bacon devotedhimself exclusively to that medium, producing no drawingsor other preparatory or related studies. Apart from ThreeStudies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, which hepainted on a light and absorbent wood-fibre board, hemade all his paintings on stretched canvas. From 1948 hefavoured the reverse (unprimed) side of pre-primed canvasas a more absorbent surface that suited his methods ofhandling the brush and the matt effect of paint sinkinginto the weave of the canvas; as with many of hisprocedures, this was a chance discovery, occasioned inthis case by the fact that he had run out of materials andwas forced to use the back of an already painted canvas.

As a self-taught painter Bacon had little hesitation indevising his own often idiosyncratic techniques. In ThreeStudies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion he juxtaposedoil and pastel, a combination to which he was to return inthe 1970s and 1980s in works such as Study of the HumanBody (1982; Paris, Pompidou), while in Painting 1946heused both oil and tempera. The central image was generallypainted in oil, while the flat coloured areas surrounding itwere usually painted in quick-drying emulsion house paintsor acrylic paints and altered as work on the figureprogressed. Bacon never used varnish either betweenlayers or as a final sealer, preferring in later years to protectthe painting with glass and accepting the reflections and

Bacon, Francis, 1st Baron Verulam and Viscount St Albans 29

the partial obscuring of the image thus caused as part ofthe effect.

Although Bacon generally painted with conventionalbrushes, he also applied the paint directly with his fingersor modified thesurface~by dabbing it with sponges orrags, sometimes pressing a piece of cloth against the wetpaint to leave the impression of its weave. In works suchas Triptych August 1972 (London, Tate) headded sand tothe paint while it was still wet in order to obtain a moretextured surface, and as early as 1973, in paintings such asSphinx—Portrait of Muriel Belcher (1979; Tokyo, N. Mus.Mod. A.), he used ready-made self-adhesive letteringknown as Letraset in a random and scrambled manner asanother unpredictable way with which to vary the surface.He often referred to photographs while painting, alwayschoosing images taken by others or found in books ratherthan taking his own pictures, not simply as a source ofmotifs but as a means of spurring his imagination to findnew and surprising methods of creating painted marksendowed with a vitality and physical presence independentof the objects they describs,.

^""BIBLIOGRAPHYFrancis Bacon (exh. cat./ed. R. Allty, iimu.J. Ruthenstein; London, Tate,

1962)R. Alley andj. Rothenstein: Francis Bacon (London, 1964) [inc. cat. rais.

of early works]J. Russell: Francis Bacon (London, 1971, rev. 1979)Francis Bacon (exh. cat., intro. M. Leiris; Paris, Grand Palais; Diisseldorf,

Stadt. Ksthalle;1971)D. Sylvester: Interviews with Francis Bacon (London, 1975); rev. as

Interviews with Francis Bacon, 1962-1979 (London, 1982)L. Trucchi: Francis Bacon (Milan, 1975; Eng. trans., New York, 1975 and

London, 1976)H. M. Davies: Francis Bacon: The Early and Middle Years, 1928-1958

(London, 1978)M. Leiris: Francis Bacon: Full Face and in Profile (Oxford, 1983)Francis Bacon (exh. cat., essays by D. Ades and A. Forge; London, Tate,

1985) [with note on Bacon's techniques by A. Durham and selectbibliog. by K. Cieszkowski]

Francis Bacon (exh. cat., essays by L. Gowing and S. Hunter; Washington,DC, Hirshhorn, 1989)

J. A. Sinclair: Francis Bacon: His Life and Violent Times (London, 1993)D

Bacon, Francis, 1st Baron Verulam and Viscount StAlbans (£London, 22 Jan 1561; ^London, 9 April 1626).English courtier, statesman, lawyer, philosopher andwriter. He was the younger son of Sir Nicholas Bacon,Lord Keeper under Elizabeth I; he was educated atCambridge and trained as a lawyer at Gray's Inn, London.He became a member of parliament in 1584; in his politicalcareer he enjoyed the patronage of the Queen's favourite,Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, but after the latter'sfall from favour acted as prosecutor at his trial. Bacon'spolitical career prospered under James I, and in 1618 hewas ennobled and became Lord Chancellor. However, in1621 he was charged with corruption and, being disgraced,retired into private life.

Bacon was a polymath, who in 1592 wrote: 'I havetaken all knowledge to be my province.' He wrote onphilosophy, politics, history and law and is now mosthighly regarded for his contribution to the philosophy ofscience and the development of scientific method. How-ever, his best-known book is the Essayes, or Counsels,CiviliandMoral!, first published in 1597. In the augmented