The 1970s was a time of change for Francis Bacon, beginning with the passing of his lover George Dyer in 1971, two nights before the artist’s retrospective at the Grand Palais, Paris. The event deeply influenced his work. Bacon began to paint self-portraits, perhaps to confront his own mortality.
In this article we explore one of the most compelling of his self-portraits; Self-Portrait, 1973, which bears the hallmarks of these themes; mortality, legacy and time.
As Martin Harrison writes in the Catalogue Raisonné, this is signified by the wristwatch that Bacon wears in the painting, which also features in two other self-portraits that year: 73-06 and 73-10:
This was probably the first of four related self-portraits that Bacon painted towards the end of 1973. They were triggered by a black and white photograph by Peter Stark, which shows Bacon seated, with his arm resting on the kitchen sink in 7 Reece Mews.
Excerpt: Martin Harrison, Francis Bacon: Catalogue Raisonné (London: The Estate of Francis Bacon Publishing, 2016 p. 1042).
When Bacon died, one hundred of Stark’s prints were found in his studio, which he had used to create three self-portraits.
Harrison goes on to write that:
Self-Portrait can be situated as one of his vanitas paintings [a still life artwork which includes symbolic objects designed to show the transience of life], in this instance redolent of illustrious predecessors such as Hans Holbein the Younger’s The Ambassadors (1533, National Gallery, London), with its concatenation of time-measuring devices, and of Dürer’s Melancholia 1.
Excerpt: Martin Harrison, Francis Bacon: Catalogue Raisonné (London: The Estate of Francis Bacon Publishing, 2016 p. 1042).
The figure reflected in the mirror is Bacon, who casts a shadow both on the floor and on the sink, perhaps another visual indicator of mortality; representing the shadow the artist cast in life. As demonstrated in Painting, 1950 (50-06), a figure with an associated (or dissociated) shadow – ‘death shadowing life’ – became an obsessive theme.
Francis Bacon: Catalogue Raisonné can be purchased through our distributor’s website
