Study of a Head, 1952

One of the great figurative painters of the twentieth century, the Irish-born Francis Bacon preferred to work from photographs or memories than from live models, often drawing together elements of several figures in one image. The multiple sources for this particular study include Diego Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X (an image to which Bacon returned frequently in the early 1950s), stills of a screaming woman from Sergei Eisenstein’s film Battleship Potemkin from 1925, and a book the artist owned on the diseases of the mouth. Bacon noted that he had "always been very moved by the movements of the mouth and the shape of the mouth and the teeth," speaking of his desire to "paint the mouth like Monet painted a sunset."

Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2020

Credit Line: Yale Center for British Art, Gift of Beekman C. and Margaret H. Cannon