Francis Bacon (1909-1992), Painter

Sitter associated with 32 portraits
One of the twentieth-century's greatest painters. Born in Dublin, Bacon left Ireland at the age of sixteen and first came to notice as an interior designer. The painting Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944, Tate) established him as an artist of international importance. Bacon used imagery from sources as diverse as Velasquez, Van Gogh, the cinema, crumpled snapshots and illustrations of disease. He described his images of tortured and anguished bodies as 'a direct assault on the nervous system.'