Notes

THE DARK CENTURY

“Nietzsche forecast”: Bacon, quoted in “Francis Bacon: Remarks from an Interview with Peter Beard,” Francis Bacon’s Recent Paintings 1968–1974 (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1975), 20.

The painter must be: John Russell, interview for Adam Low, director, Francis Bacon, Arena documentary, BBC Four archive, March 19, 2005.

The show was attracting: Martin Hammer, “Francis Bacon and the Lefevre Gallery,” Burlington Magazine, May 2010, 307–12.

They flinched: John Russell, Francis Bacon (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1985), 10.

So “shocked” was the writer: “Perspex” [Herbert Furst], “Current Shows and Comments on the Significance of a Word,” Apollo, May, 1945, 107–8.

He had perfect manners: John Moynihan, Restless Lives: The Bohemian World of Rodrigo and Elinor Moynihan (Bristol: Sansom & Company, 2002), 117.

Four years after: Caroline Blackwood, “Francis Bacon, 1909–1992,” New York Review of Books, September 24, 1992.

As late as 1941: Diana Keast, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

The painter Lucian Freud: William Feaver, The Lives of Lucian Freud: The Restless Years, 1922–1968 (New York: Knopf, 2019), 199.

Bacon would have agreed with Winston Churchill: Michael Richards, “Alcohol Abuser,” International Churchill Society, winstonchurchill.org.

In the 1950s: Richard Buckle, ed., “Sitting for Two Portraits, 1960,” in Self Portrait with Friends: The Selected Diaries of Cecil Beaton 1926–1974 (New York: The New York Times Book Company, 1982), 321–22.

“It was like looking into a light”: James Moores, in conversation with Mark Stevens, October, 2014.

One friend found him: Grey Gowrie, interview with Mark Stevens, November 2011.

He moved on the balls: Chesterton’s poem “The Aristocrat” begins “The devil is a gentleman.”

About late Matisse: Christopher Gibbs, interview with the authors, October 12, 2013.

Bacon and Auden: Once, at a dinner party given for Auden by Stephen Spender and his wife, Bacon and Auden fell into an argument that neither would abandon. Spender later wrote that it “was really one of those strangely unsatisfactory controversies between the prigs and the anti-prigs, in which both sides are both in the right and in the wrong, one through being very moralistic, the other amoralistic—and both being so on principle.” Stephen Spender, ed., Journals 1939–1983, ed. by John Goldsmith (London: Faber and Faber, 1985), 153.

Bacon put off more serious efforts: Daniel Farson published The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993) the year after the artist’s death in 1992. Michael Peppiatt’s Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1996), appeared four years after Bacon’s death.

As early as 1932: Martin Harrison, “Diana Watson’s Diaries,” in Inside Francis Bacon, Francis Bacon Studio III (London: The Estate of Francis Bacon publishing, in association with Thames & Hudson, 2020), 69.

In fact, Lacy: Lacy’s nephews Fr. David Lacy and Gerald Towell kindly provided the authors with documentation and details about not only Peter Lacy but also the family tree going back to the time of the Norman Conquest. Lacy and Towell, interview with the authors, February 16, 2009, and subsequent emails.

When his friend Roald: Roald Dahl collected Bacon paintings. He owned a portrait of Isabel Rawsthorne and a small triptych of George Dyer. Later, he and his wife Felicity Dahl collaborated on a cookbook that was partly a reminiscence, partly a collection of recipes, entitled Roald Dahl’s Cookbook (London: Penguin Cookery Library, 1996). Dahl solicited recipes from friends for a chapter called “Hangman’s Supper.” Bacon wrote to Roald on December 19, 1989: “For my last supper—I would like 2 lightly salted boiled very fresh eggs and some bread and butter. Yours very sincerely, Francis Bacon.” Felicity Dahl, interview with Annalyn Swan, April 2, 2008.

Bacon possessed: David Plante, “Bacon’s Instinct,” New Yorker, November 1, 1993.

After his death: David Sylvester, “A Farewell to Bacon,” short note in Paula Weideger, “Preaching Art,” The Independent, May 11, 1992.

His friends sensed: The anecdote about Kitaj was told to Mark Stevens by Kitaj’s son, Lem Dobbs.

1 BOY AT THE WINDOW

The house smelled of Potter’s Asthma Cure: Ianthe Knott, interviews with Mark Stevens, March 5 and 6, 2008. Stramonium, a hallucinogenic ingredient in Potter’s Asthma Cure, was often burned to help asthmatics breathe. Both Francis and Ianthe typically called their mother “Mummie,” and Ianthe worried that her brother would die.

In early twentieth-century Ireland: Ireland continues to have one of the highest rates of asthma in the world. See www.asthma.ie.

Francis Bacon was Anglo-Irish: Elizabeth Bowen, quoted in Lara Feigel, The Love-charm of Bombs: Restless Lives in the Second World War (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013), 104.

To know Francis Bacon: Caroline Blackwood, “Francis Bacon (1909–1992),” New York Review of Books, September 24, 1992.

“The Irish believe”: Anne Dunn, interview with the authors, October 13, 2010.

His parents were proud: They were in residence in Ireland by late 1904, when Francis’s older brother, Harley, was born in Dublin.

The Bacons were an old: Bacon’s great-grandfather, Anthony Bacon, was the most illustrious military member of the family. See Alnod J. Boger, The Story of General Bacon (London: Methuen & Co., 1903). Anthony Bacon’s son joined the 18th Hussars. Bacon’s father was a career military man as well.

During the eighteenth century: For more on the history of the Anglo-Irish, see J. C. Beckett, The Anglo-Irish Tradition (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University, 1976).

It remained in Bacon’s day: Brendan Lehan, The Companion Guide to Ireland (Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer Ltd., 2001), 16.

The Kildare Street Club: See R. B. McDowell, Land and Learning: Two Irish Clubs (Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 1993).

The Harley men: The original Earl of Oxford title—held by the de Vere family for centuries and the second-oldest title in England—became extinct in 1703 when there were no direct male heirs. The Harley family’s title—Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer—was created in 1711 for the statesman Robert Harley.

The Major was born: Australia, Birth Index 1788–1922, ancestry.co.uk.

The General and Lady Charlotte: Boger, The Story of General Bacon. The following information on Brigadier General and Lady Charlotte Bacon’s family comes primarily from this book.

In 1829 the General: For a corrective version of General Bacon’s debts and schemes, see “Anthony Bacon (1796–1864),” Australian Dictionary of Biography (National Center of Biography, Australian National University, 1966).

A family history: a first-hand account written by a soldier named Tolmer, quoted in Boger, The Story of General Bacon.

She kept up appearances: George E. Loyau, Notable South Australians; or, Colonists—Past and Present (Adelaide: Carey, Page and Co., 1885), 216.

Eddy, as he grew up: Information on Sir Nicholas Bacon, the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal to Queen Elizabeth I, and his celebrated son Francis Bacon, the philosopher and statesman, is available in all thorough encyclopedias and reference works. The Harley family was also illustrious. It dated back to the Norman conquest and had married into the de Vere family—the original Earls of Oxford.

An earlier Anthony Bacon (1718–1786): Watkin William Price, “Bacon Family, Iron-Masters and Colliery Proprietors,” Dictionary of Welsh Biography, biography. Wales.

Merthyr Tydfil, Wales became: Ibid.

His eldest son and main heir: David Nash Ford. “Anthony Bushby Bacon.” Royal Berkshire History, www.berkshirehistory.com.

The Bacon lineage even included: See www.tate.org.uk.

“I know Francis liked”: Christopher Gibbs, interview with the authors, October 12, 2013.

Lady Charlotte’s older sister: For background on Lady Charlotte’s father’s will and subsequent lawsuits, see The Law Journal Reports XXVI, no. 8 (May 31, 1873), 467–70. Also books.google.com.

But the Queen refused on the grounds: “Lady Charlotte Bacon: The Earldom of Oxford.” The Advertiser of Adelaide, March 19, 1925, trove.nla.gov.au. The family lost the title but protested, some years later, when Prime Minister H. H. Asquith asked the Queen to grant him the title of the Earl of Oxford. The Bacon family claimed that too many relatives were still living who were connected to the title to bestow it elsewhere. Asquith was eventually given the title 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith. The title of Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer is extinct.

Eddy nonetheless: Nicholas Kingsley, “Eywood,” www.lostheritage.org.uk.

The family also possessed: London, England City Directories, 1736–1943, ancestry.co.uk.

His parents sent Eddy: The authors are indebted to James Norton for his research on Edward Bacon’s school and military career.

His family purchased: Ibid.

There he rode: The authors are indebted to Harry McDowell, local genealogist and historian, Celbridge, County Kildare, Ireland, for much of their information on Edward Bacon’s military career in Ireland.

In November 1902: Military records compiled by James Norton.

Born in 1883: England and Wales, Civil Registration Birth Index, 1883, Q3 Jul-Aug-Sept. ancestry.co.uk.

He appeared reserved: Knott, interviews with Stevens.

On July 8, 1903: England and Wales, Civil Registration Marriage Index, ancestry.co.uk.

Thomas Firth and Sons: For a history of the Firth family business, see “Thos. Firth & Sons, Norfolk Works—Sheffield, UK. Historical Review,” www.wkfinetools.com.

Mark Firth, the family’s most notable: Ibid.

Their fortune came: Obituary notice of Henry William Watson, Bacon’s maternal grandfather, www.findagrave.com. He had inherited a stake in the St. Lawrence Colliery from his father, John Watson.

Born in 1859: “England: Selection Births and Christenings, 1538–1975,” ancestry.co.uk.

Her first husband: John Loxley Firth’s asthma was so bad that he had to spend winters in Italy, Bacon later said. Michael Peppiatt, Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma (London: Constable & Robinson, 2008), 20. There are several editions of Peppiatt’s biography, which was first published in 1996. The authors make use of this updated edition.

She soon married: Walter Loraine Bell’s birth was recorded in the “England and Wales, Civil Registration Birth Index, 1837–1915. in the Jul-Aug-Sept. quarter of 1877,” ancestry.co.uk.

Walter Bell lived: For more on the Bell estate and extensive grounds, see “Woolsington Hall,” historicengland.org.uk. Bell also lived, with the elder Winifred and the young Winnie, in Hertfordshire prior to moving to Ireland. Genealogy records, ancestry.co.uk.

Eliza Highat Watson: Extensive documentation exists about the immense shipbuilding company. See “Armstrong, Mitchell and Co,” Grace’s Guide to British Industrial History, www.gracesguide.co.uk.

Yet another sister: Cecil Harcourt-Smith was a fixture at the Victoria and Albert Museum for forty-five years, fifteen of them as head of the museum.

In the future, Francis Bacon would often: A number of interviews quote Bacon as saying that his father was a failure at his chosen profession. “He was a racehorse trainer, a failed trainer,” said Bacon in one of the last interviews of his life. Francis Giacobetti, “Francis Bacon: The Last Interview,” The Independent Magazine, June 14, 2003.

An early photograph: The photo is in the collection of the Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin.

Winnie enjoyed country life: Crabtree Meadow House and other details about the life of Winnie’s family is mentioned in the obituary of John Loxley Firth, her father, that ran in the Sheffield Morning Telegraph, December 27, 1897.

She rode sidesaddle: Knott, interview with Stevens.

Granny and Walter Bell leased: Harry McDowell, local genealogist and historian.

The region’s well-tended: “I was brought up for much of my childhood on the edge of very flat marshlands full of snipe and plover. That’s the kind of country I find exciting,” Bacon told John Russell. Russell, Francis Bacon (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1985), 74.

The huge headquarters: For the racecourse, see “The Curragh,” www.irelandsancienteast.com. For the military headquarters, see “The Curragh Army Camp,” www.historyireland.com.

The newly married couple’s house: Most details of the house come from a personal visit by Annalyn Swan and interview with the present owner, Eugene McDermott, May 2008. Further details come from the Irish census of 1911.

The census of 1911: Ibid.

The hospital stood: John Russell, Francis Bacon (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1985), 12.

The Dickensian name: Deakin teased Bacon for inverted snobbery: “You don’t fool me. I bet it was Upper Baggott Street.” Daniel Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993), 15.

Three months after his birth: Details of Bacon’s baptism and of St. Patrick’s Church come from St. Patrick’s baptismal records, courtesy of Harry McDowell. The authors visited the church with McDowell.

It was the church: See Jim Brennan and Aileen Short, “The La Touche Legacy,” September 1996, latouchelegacy.com.

St. Patrick’s then became: Renagh Holohan, “An Irishwoman’s Diary,” Irish Times, October 6, 2009. The authors are also indebted to Harry McDowell for details of the church’s architectural history.

“We were taught”: Knott, interview with Stevens.

In one, Winnie: The photograph is reproduced in Martin Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. I (London: Estate of Francis Bacon, 2016), 75.

She was born: Hugh Lane Museum archive, Dublin, RM98F8:108 (Nanny Lightfoot identity card for her stay in France with Bacon). The first page reads: Nom: Lightfoot Prenoms: Jessie Né le 28 Juin 1871 à Burlawn (Angleterre) de John ne a et de Jamy Chaltrouse ne á Professions: sans Nationalité: Anglaise Mode d’acquisition de cette nationalité: filiation. Situation de famille: célibataire. The Irish census of 1911 falsely listed her age as thirty-four. It would have been thirty-nine or forty. ancestry.co.uk.

“She was very kind to us”: Knott, interview with Stevens.

There was even an internal doorway: Annalyn Swan, visit to Cannycourt/Kennycourt. Swan is grateful to Eugene McDermott, the owner of Cannycourt, for providing a tour of the house. September 10, 2010.

The Major kept Irish Setters: Knott, interview with Stevens.

Not surprisingly: For the military manoeuvres, see Hugh Davies, interview with Francis Bacon, April 3, 1973, for his book Francis Bacon: The Early and Middle Years, 1928–1958 (New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1978), 3. For the line of cavalry men, see Andrew Sinclair, Francis Bacon: His Life and Violent Times (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1993), 6.

It was believed: See Tori Rodriguez, “The Asthma, Mental Health Connection: Expert Clinicians Weigh In,” Pulmonary Advisor, www.pulmonologyadvisor.com.

There is a photograph: See Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. I, 77.

There was one house maid: Anthony Cronin, in Francis Bacon in Dublin (London: Thames & Hudson, published in association with the Hugh Lane Gallery, 2000), 25.

He also recalled: Bacon, interview with Richard Cork, presenter, Kaleidescope (BBC Radio), August 17, 1991.

“When I think”: Francis Giacobetti, “Francis Bacon: The Last Interview,” The Independent Magazine, June 14, 2003.

In a few years: Bacon later recalled posting his father’s bets for him. David Sylvester, Looking Back at Francis Bacon (London: Thames & Hudson, 2000), 231.

“It was a candle”: Phyllis Prior-Wandesforde, interviews with the authors, November 8–11, 2010.

“It was certainly marvellous”: Bacon, quoted in Sophie Pretorius, “A Pathological Painter: Francis Bacon and the Control of Suffering,” in Inside Francis Bacon: Francis Bacon Studies III (London: The Estate of Francis Bacon Publishing, in association with Thames & Hudson, 2020), 163–215.

2 WEAKLING

She gave birth: Edward Bacon was born in Naas, County Kildare, Ireland, on August 25, 1914. Martin Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. I (London: Estate of Francis Bacon, 2016), 74.

“His wife’s brother Leslie”: “British Army WW1 Medal Rolls Index Cards 1914–1920,” ancestry.co.uk.

No jobs were forthcoming: Sinclair, Francis Bacon: His Violent Life and Times (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1993), 16.

Originally conceived: See “The Territorial Force,” www.longlongtrail.co.uk.

“The Major’s father”: Alice Bacon is listed in the census of 1911 as living at 6 Westbourne Crescent in Paddington. She was still there in 1915. See also Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. I, 74.

“I read almost nothing”: Francis Bacon, quoted in John Rothenstein, introduction to the Tate Gallery catalogue of Bacon’s first retrospective, 1962.

During the war: Bacon later remembered these visits to the Norfolk area, even if some of the details do not match the facts. For example, his great-aunt Mitchell no longer lived at Jesmond Towers during the First World War, as he mistakenly told John Russell. See Russell, Francis Bacon (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1993), 13. The property was sold in 1912 to the Filles de la Sagasse order of nuns for a school, La Sagasse School.

As a young man: The authors are indebted to James Norton for his research on the art of Charles Mitchell. Mitchell’s accomplished painting Hypatia, in the high Pre-Raphaelite style, was his greatest public success. It was shown in 1885 at the Grosvenor Gallery, an art gallery in London devoted to the work of the Pre-Raphaelite movement in particular. In The Times, an unsigned review of June 1, 1886, noted that Mitchell had “astonished the world by his large and much-discussed picture of ‘Hypatia’” when it was shown. And the critic of the Pall Mall Gazette praised Mitchell, in a review of April 9, 1885, as exemplifying “all the good and none of the bad qualities” of French painting. Hypatia is now in the collection of Newcastle’s Laing Art Gallery. See also Marshall Hall, The Artists of Northumbria: An Illustrated Dictionary (Newcastle upon Tyne: Marshall Hall Associated, 2007), 122–3.

He then assembled: Ibid.

The young Francis: See “Jesmond Towers,” newcastlephotos.blogspot.com. Family ties to both Jesmond Towers and the nuns remained, however. Both Eliza Highat Mitchell and Bacon’s step-grandfather, Kerry Supple, the second husband of Bacon’s maternal grandmother, Winifred, returned to Jesmond Towers to be cared for by the nuns before they died.

Pallinsburn, whose great house: See “From the manor reborn,” www.scotsman.com.

But they also stayed: Francis Bacon, interview with Hugh Davies, March 17, 1973, London, for Davies, Francis Bacon: The Early and Middle Years, 1928–1958 (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1978). Also John Russell, Francis Bacon, 13. For more on Bamburgh Castle, see www.bamburghcastle.com. Eliza Mitchell was both rich and eccentric: Bacon recalled how she redecorated her house in Mayfair using great quantities of black marble everywhere. Michael Peppiatt, Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma (London: Constable & Robinson, 2008), 15.

Before his death: See “Bamburgh Castle,” williamarmstrong.info.

Diana’s family lived: See “Bishopthorpe Garth,” historicengland.org.uk.

He would watch: Bacon, interview with Richard Cork, presenter, Kaleidescope (BBC Radio), August 17, 1991.

The first Zeppelin raid: Information on the Zeppelin raids comes mainly from Dan Vergano, “Fear of Floating,” Smithsonian Air & Space Magazine, July 2009. www.airspacemag.com.

In the end, the Zeppelins proved: Jordan Golson, “WWI Zeppelins: Not Too Deadly, but Scary as Hell,” Wired, October 3, 2014. www.wired.com.

During the war years: Information on Bacon’s grandmother’s divorce comes primarily from Harry McDowell, genealogist and historian, Celbridge, County Kildare, Ireland.

Francis, as a boy: Bacon, quoted in Peppiatt, Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma, 19.

At the outbreak: British Army WWI Pension Records 1914–1920, www.ancestry.com.

The separation proved: Harry McDowell, genealogist and historian.

Supple was a thin: Ibid.

She married Supple: Ibid.

Instead, she bought: Ibid. The authors visited Straffan Lodge with McDowell in November 2010.

“Farmleigh was a beautiful”: Bacon in David Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1987),184.

The first of Francis’s two: Ianthe Knott, interviews with Mark Stevens, South Africa, March 5 and 6, 2008.

At the age of fifty: Ibid.

Pamela Firth: Firth, quoted in Sinclair, 23.

There was no escaping: References to his flamboyant grandmother exist in multiple interviews throughout Bacon’s life. See Peppiatt, Francis Bacon, 10. Also Ianthe Knott to Mark Stevens.

Ianthe described her: Knott, interviews with Stevens.

“She was a very clever”: Ibid.

“I was quite a good cook”: Bacon, in Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon, 188.

He kept a copy: All of the books in Bacon’s studio and bedsit were catalogued by the Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin, when Bacon’s 7 Reece Mews was transferred there.

“I can’t remember him”: Knott, interview with Stevens.

Without much else to do: Eddy Bacon was master of the local hunt in Abbeyleix. Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, vol. I, 75. Walter Bell had been master before him.

Although the major’s first-born: Information on Harley Bacon comes primarily from Harry McDowell, genealogist and historian. Other neighbours also recalled Harley living in the small gatehouse and training horses. For his departure, see Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, vol. I, 75.

He later joined: Peppiatt, Francis Bacon, 12–13.

Local gossip had it: Harry McDowell, genealogist and local historian.

“I felt like I wasn’t”: Francis Giacobetti, “Francis Bacon: The Last Interview,” The Independent Magazine, June 14, 2003.

One childhood friend: Quoted in Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon, Catalogue Raisonné, vol. I, 75.

Caroline Blackwood recalled a time: Blackwood, “A Big House in Ireland,” review of David Thomson’s Woodbrook, The Listener, December 12, 1974.

“Eighteenth-century Ireland”: J. C. Beckett, The Anglo-Irish Tradition (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University, 1976), 81.

As the Roman Catholic majority: Ibid., 51.

Bacon’s mother believed: Knott, interview with Stevens.

According to Marcus Beresford: Marcus Beresford, 7th Baron Decies, interview with the authors, November 10, 2010.

Partisans killed: Ianthe Knott, interview for Adam Low, director, Francis Bacon, Arena documentary, BBC Four archive, March 19, 2005.

In her novel: Elizabeth Bowen, quoted in Lara Feigel, The Love-charm of Bombs: Restless Lives in the Second World War (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013), 105.

He told his children: Bacon, quoted in an interview with Shusha Guppy, Telegraph Sunday Magazine, November 4, 1984. See also Hugh Davies, Francis Bacon, 5.

Watchers would appear: See Triptych (1976), among others.

Known as the Black and Tans: Hubert Butler, The Independent Spirit (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000), 40.

To protect the Supples: All the information about Straffan Lodge and the IRA comes from Harry McDowell.

Granny had removed: Ibid.

For the rest of her life: Ianthe Knott, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

And once: Harry McDowell.

One night, as Inspector Supple: Francis Bacon, in Peppiatt, Francis Bacon, 18.

He felt he could also hear: Roy Miles, quoted in Daniel Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994), 17.

Inspector Supple retired: All of the information about Kerry Supple’s retirement, illness and death comes from Harry McDowell.

In December 1920: House deeds, Marcus Decies, email to Annalyn Swan, July 2011.

“We vacillated very much”: Francis Bacon in Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon, 184.

The moves: Pamela Watson, quoted in Sinclair, Francis Bacon, 23.

At least 139 “big houses”: Butler, The Independent Spirit, 78.

At one point the IRA: All information on Carnalway Lodge comes from Harry McDowell.

However, Winnie’s brother and family fled: They rented Cavendish Hall, a stately home in Suffolk, where Bacon’s family often visited over the next decade. Years later, Bacon would also visit his cousin Pamela Firth Matthews there; her second husband, the American editor and writer Tom Matthews, bought the house for her in 1969. Ibid.

In October 1921: Marcus Decies, house deeds.

They initially settled: Bacon to Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon, 186. Linton Hall is also listed in the school records of Edward Bacon, who attended Cheltenham College. The authors are indebted to Christine Leighton, archivist at Cheltenham College, for providing this information. Emails of February 14 and 23, 2011.

Francis recalled: Bacon to Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon. The memory was deleted in the later published interviews. See Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, vol. I, 75.

3 AROUSAL

The thirteen-year-old: Local genealogist and historian Harry McDowell, Celbridge, County Kildaire, Ireland, is the source of this information. See also Andrew Sinclair, Francis Bacon: His Life and Violent Times (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1993), 27. Further details come from an interview by the authors with the then-owners of Straffan Lodge, Marcus and Edel Beresford, 7th Baron and Baroness Decies, November 10, 2010. The authors also visited Straffan Lodge and the surrounding countryside.

The rector, Lionel Fletcher, was appointed: Harry McDowell.

“I didn’t know him”: Grey Gowrie, interview with Mark Stevens, November 2011.

His sister noticed: Ianthe Knott, interviews with Mark Stevens, March 5 and 6, 2008.

“People like my father”: Martin Harrison, “Diana Watson’s Diary,” in Inside Francis Bacon: Francis Bacon Studies III (London: The Estate of Francis Bacon Publishing, in association with Thames & Hudson, 2020), 76.

“When I was young”: Michel Archimbaud, Francis Bacon: In Conversation with Michel Archimbaud (New York: Phaidon Press, 2004), 119–20.

“I suspect”: Gowrie, interview with Stevens.

Bacon later said: Bacon, in David Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1987), 133. Bacon said that he remembered the moment “very, very clearly. I remember looking at a dog-shit on the pavement and I suddenly realized, there it is—this is what life is like.” The fact that his loss of faith tormented him comes from the same interview.

Although Granny also spent: When Granny Supple died in 1929, she still lived, nominally, at Prescott House. National Probate Calendar, 1929. It was part of a grand estate in the small town of Gotherington, just outside Cheltenham. Built in Gothic Revival style, it has forty-two rooms and a fine stable block. But Bacon’s parents also listed the house as their address in 1924, when Bacon enrolled at Dean Close School. David Jones, the owner of Prescott House (as of January 2012), confirmed, in a telephone conversation with Annalyn Swan, that both Winifred Supple and Eddy Bacon were still remembered as being associated with the house (and in Eddy’s case, with the stables).

He admired her “marvellous ease”: Bacon to Michael Peppiatt, Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma (London: Constable & Robinson, 2008), 10.

His sister Ianthe described her: Knott, interview with Stevens.

One of her canvases: Ianthe Knott, interview for Adam Low, director, Francis Bacon, Arena documentary, BBC Four archive, March 19, 2005.

She liked “having lots”: Ibid.

She once invited: Peppiatt, Francis Bacon, 10.

Bacon later described: Ibid.

One friend remembered him: Bacon–Sylvester Correspondence, Tate Archive 200816. The Irish art critic Dorothy Walker sent Sylvester a piece she wrote on Bacon in 1977 for the Department of Foreign Affairs that included this reminiscence.

One tennis partner: Doreen Mills Moloney, Letter to Francis Bacon, The Estate of Francis Bacon archive.

Another close friend: Information on Billie Kennedy and her family comes from Harry McDowell.

The family seat, Bishopscourt: For a photograph and description of the house, see lordbelmontinnorthernireland.blogspot.com.

They “adored dressing up”: Andrew Sinclair, Francis Bacon: His Life and Violent Times (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1993), 13.

During a visit: Ibid., 39–40.

One of the elder: Ibid.

At the outbreak: Tony Kearney, “Special Status for War Memorial to Arthur “Patch” Watson Who Lost His Life at Battle of Passchendaele,” Durham Times, July 28, 2017.

He was killed: Ibid.

Visits from her bright cousin: Harrison, “Watson’s Diary,” 76.

“Its great fun”: Letter dated September 5, 1924. Quoted in Martin Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, vol. I (London: The Estate of Francis Bacon, 2016), 76.

After their move to England: School records for Edward Bacon, Cheltenham College. All subsequent information about Edward’s school days comes from these records. The authors are indebted to Christine Leighton, archivist of Cheltenham College, for providing the information on Bacon’s younger brother.

They later proposed: Ibid.

“There is no chance”: Bacon, in Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, vol. I, 76.

Dean Close was smaller: The authors are indebted to Charles Whitney, the school archivist of Dean Close, for the information about Dean Close School and Bacon’s time there. See also Whitney’s history of the school, At Close Quarters: Dean Close School, 1884–2009 (Little Logaston: Logaston Press, 2009), which also proved particularly helpful.

Bacon later dismissed: Bacon in Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon, 186.

The school hoped: Whitney, At Close Quarters, 5.

It offered “a particular discipline”: Charles Whitney, interview with Annalyn Swan, June 17, 2010. The following information comes from this interview as well.

Students came mainly: Ibid.

Bacon remained remarkably touchy: In 1965, Bacon was once on a train with John Rothenstein, the long-time director of the Tate, heading west from London—the general direction of Cheltenham. Bacon looked out of the window and told Rothenstein that “every one of those scenes was a nail in my cross.” John Rothenstein, Rothenstein diary, July 22, 1965, in unpublished diaries, 1939–1990, Tate Archive, 8726/1.

“Of course what’s called all conversation”: Peppiatt, Francis Bacon, 23.

School records indicate: Charles Whitney, Dean Close School archivist.

Francis was placed: A. L. Jayne’s reminiscence appeared in the annual Old Decanian House journal, The Decanian News, in 1993, a year after Bacon’s death.

“He took little”: Ibid.

Bacon was also not sporty: School records provided by Charles Whitney, archivist.

Perhaps most surprisingly: Instead of art, Bacon opted to study music. Dean Close School Archives Department.

(In 1934, for example): Records of the Mayor Gallery, London.

He later called Daintry: Rothenstein private diary, entry of July 22, 1965, Tate Gallery archive.

One of them described: Letter from fellow classmate E. S. Hoare, quoted in Peppiatt, Francis Bacon, 24.

A. L. Jayne: A. L. Jayne, The Decanian News, 1993.

Bacon himself acknowledged: Peppiatt, Francis Bacon, 23.

Bacon recalled one Persian: Ibid.

One time he got as far: Eric Hall, unpublished diaries, 1929. The researcher James Norton discovered the diaries while helping the authors research Bacon’s early life. The diaries are now part of The Estate of Francis Bacon archive.

In 1926, compulsory education: The Fisher Education Act of 1918 made compulsory education mandatory up to the age of fourteen. Later the leaving age was changed to fifteen, and then sixteen.

His father was “aggressive”: Bacon to Francis Giacobetti, “Francis Bacon: The Last Interview,” The Independent Magazine, June 14, 2003.

But he was never precise: Bacon in later years spoke of being raped by the grooms. Elsewhere he used different language, saying that he had been “seduced” by the grooms. Hugh Davies, Francis Bacon: The Early and Middle Years, 1928–1958 (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1978), 6. But he also said that his first sexual experience had come in Berlin. David Plante, “Bacon’s Instinct,” The New Yorker, November 1, 1993.

“I don’t like the smell”: Giacobetti, “Last Interview.”

“That’s definitely why”: Ibid.

Doreen Mills Moloney: Letter to Bacon. The Estate of Francis Bacon archive.

George V (1865–1936) captured: Ronald Blythe, The Age of Illusion: England in the Twenties and Thirties (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1964), 37–8.

Until 1861, the official penalty: “Gay Rights movement,” www.britannica.com.

Lord Alfred Douglas: Sinclair, Francis Bacon, 37.

“Most upper-class Englishmen”: Gowrie, interview with Stevens.

“I don’t think”: Knott, interview with Stevens.

Even Ianthe, who would move: Ibid.

Perhaps he should have told her: Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil Servant (New York: Penguin Books, 1997), 18.

During the summer of 1926: The photograph was shown to the authors by Phyllis Prior-Wandseforde, Doreen Prior-Wandseforde’s niece, in visit to Ireland, November 8–11, 2010.

According to Phyllis Prior-Wandseforde: Ibid.

He “loathed” it: Bacon, quoted by Caroline Blackwood in Nancy Schoenberger, Dangerous Muse: A Life of Caroline Blackwood (London: Wiedenfeld & Nicolson, 2001), 90–1.

“Those hunting people are so cruel”: Ibid.

He began to steal: Bacon, interview with Miriam Gross, “Bringing Home Bacon,” Observer Review, November 30, 1980, 29, 31.

Although Ianthe agreed: Knott, interview with Stevens.

“I think Francis”: Ibid.

Bacon’s own letters: Letters from Bacon to his mother. The Estate of Francis Bacon archive. Also Ianthe Knott collection.

“I think artists”: Bacon, quoted in Peppiatt, Francis Bacon, 3.

“He often used to say”: Knott, interview with Stevens.

His mother provided him: Bacon in Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon, 186.

4 THE QUEERNESS OF CITIES

Christopher Isherwood described: Andrew Sinclair, Francis Bacon: His Life and Violent Times (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1993), 45.

His great-aunt: Alice Harcourt-Smith, née Watson, had been living in London since her marriage to Cecil Harcourt-Smith in 1892. Bacon’s grandmother remained close to her family. So did his own mother, who had taken her children to Newcastle during the war on a number of occasions, further cementing the family connections. For Diana Watson and her mother, see Martin Harrison, “Diana Watson’s Diary,” in Inside Francis Bacon: Francis Bacon Studies III (London: The Estate of Francis Bacon Publishing, in association with Thames & Hudson, 2020), 64.

He later told: David Plante, “Bacon’s Instinct,” The New Yorker, November 1, 1993.

An early photograph: The photograph was taken by Francis Julian Gutmann in London and dated c. 1935.

His goal: Bacon, quoted in Michael Peppiatt, Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma (London: Constable and Robinson, 2008), 31.

Ronald Blythe wrote: Ronald Blythe, The Age of Illusion: England in the Twenties and Thirties (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1964), 155.

He became for a time: David Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1987), 188.

“I had to arrive”: Ibid.

“I can’t say”: Ibid.

When he gave his employer notice: Ibid.

“I knew nothing”: Daniel Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993), 23.

He soon took a dislike: Ibid. Bacon told Farson that he was also sacked by a second “gentleman” whose house he looked after when said gentleman saw the young Bacon dining at the Ritz not far from him on his night off.

Soho then teemed: Keith Waterhouse, “My Soho,” Evening Standard, April 12, 2001.

Gentlemen from Mayfair: John Richardson, interview with the authors, June 28, 2012.

“We were children”: Dennis Myers, personal reminiscence of the 1920s, Tate Archive, 968.6.2. The following quotations come from this reminiscence as well.

The Charleston arrived: Michael Luke, David Tennant and the Gargoyle Years (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1991), 1.

That was also the year: Ibid., 2.

Tennant himself was: Ibid.

A Police Commission: Ibid., 19.

The Gargoyle was: Christopher Gibbs, interview with the authors, October 12, 2013.

By the mid-1920s, wrote Ronald Blythe: Blythe, Age of Illusion, 19.

“Here they were”: Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil Servant (New York: Penguin Books, 1997), 20–1.

In World Within World: Stephen Spender, World Within World: The Autobiography of Stephen Spender (New York: The Modern Library, 2001), 370–9.

“Sex was a beastly invention”: Blythe, Age of Illusion, 33–5.

On February 21, 1927: The date is carved on Edward’s tombstone at the local Straffan Parish church near the family’s home of the time, Straffan Lodge, in Straffan, County Kildare, Ireland. Visit by the authors to the church, November 8–11, 2010.

During the previous autumn: All of the information on Edward’s school attendance and illness comes from school records, Cheltenham College, courtesy of archivist Christine Leighton. Email correspondence with Annalyn Swan, February 23, 2011.

Upon hearing the news: Ianthe Knott, interview for Adam Low, director, Francis Bacon, Arena documentary, BBC Four archive, March 19, 2005.

Bacon attended the funeral: David Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon, 188.

“I remember the only time I ever saw my father”: Ibid.

Tuberculosis, he told Michael Peppiatt: Peppiatt, Francis Bacon, 12.

But Cheltenham College records contained: Records, Cheltenham College, courtesy of Christine Leighton, archivist.

His doting grandmother: England and Wales, National Probate Calendar, 1850–1995. She was buried in Onondaga Valley Cemetery, New York. Ancestry.co.uk.

She ventured: Harry McDowell, genealogist and historian, Celbridge, County Kildare, Ireland.

Family stories had it: Ianthe Knott, interviews with Stevens, March 5 and 6, 2008. The rumours had also reached Ireland. Harry McDowell, genealogist and historian, Celbridge, County Kildare, Ireland. Another interesting fact is that her son “Peter” was originally named Edward, which suggests that he assumed a new identity when he reached the U.S.

And then, the year of Granny Supple’s: Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, vol. I, 77.

He had served: The authors are indebted to James Norton for his research at the National Archive into Harcourt Smith’s family and military background.

Bacon would later identify: Bacon interview, in Pierre Koralnik, director, Francis Bacon: Peintre Anglais, Radio Television Suisse Romande, Geneva, July 2, 1964.

On January 31, 1921: England and Wales, Civil Registration Marriage Index. For her family, see ancestry.co.uk.

The newly married couple: Rate books, research conducted by James Norton.

Only one year later: National Archives, research of James Norton.

In 1924, she petitioned: Ibid.

“The two sons”: John Richardson, interview with Mark Stevens, March 3, 2008.

As for his big brother: Ibid.

Bacon enjoyed observing: Multiple sources, including Alice Weldon, a longtime friend of Lucian Freud. Alice Weldon, interviews with Annalyn Swan, March 7 and 12, 2012, and February 15, 2020.

“You know, my father and my mother”: Bacon, in Francis Bacon: Peintre Anglais.

He left England: Harrison, “Diana Watson’s diary,” 69.

The Weimar period: Peter Gay, Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001), v.

What visitors saw: Ibid.

“The Germany of the late 1920s”: Stephen Spender, World Within World: The Autobiography of Stephen Spender (New York: The Modern Library, 2001), 370–9.

Or as John Russell: John Russell, Francis Bacon (London: Thames & Hudson, 1971), 15.

“By way of education”: Francis Bacon, in Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life, 23.

The Hotel Adlon: All of the information on the hotel comes from Hedda Adlon, Hotel Adlon: The Life and Death of a Great Hotel (London: Barrie Books, 1958).

“I was too young”: Bacon, in interview transcripts from Michael Blackwood, director, David Sylvester, interviewer, The Brutality of Fact, Arena documentary, BBC Television, November 16, 1964.

“But I always remember”: Ibid.

He loved reaching through: Peppiatt, Francis Bacon, 36.

“Gilded squalor”: Daniel Farson riffed off the well-known phrase in the title of his book on Bacon—The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon.

Dr Magnus Hirschfeld’s: Christopher Isherwood, quoted in Peppiatt, Francis Bacon, 35.

There were more than five hundred: See Tony Perrottet, “Weimar Club-hopping,” thesmartset.com. See also Mel Gordon, Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin (Port Townsend, Washington: Feral Publishings, 2008).

“Even the Rome”: Stefan Zweig, Die Welt von Gestern, quoted in Gay, 129–30.

Marlene Dietrich: Rachel Doyle, “Looking for Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin,” New York Times, April 12, 2013.

Bacon was impressed by the open: Bacon, in Hugh Davies, Francis Bacon: The Early and Middle Years, 1928–1958 (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1978), 7.

Berlin was far more raw: Bacon to Davies, interview of May 29, 1973, for ibid.

“Perhaps it was violent”: Bacon, quoted in Richard Cork, presenter, A Man Without Illusions, Radio 3, BBC archives, May 16, 1985.

Unlike W. H. Auden: Doyle, “Looking for Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin,” New York Times, April 12, 2013.

Instead, Harcourt-Smith: Bacon, interviewed in The Brutality of Fact, Arena.

But you wouldn’t have seen me: This exchange is recorded in David Plante, “Bacon’s Instinct,” New Yorker, November 1, 1993.

At an early age: Bacon in multiple interviews. In his interviews with David Sylvester, for example, Bacon spoke of seeing Battleship Potemkin “almost before I started to paint.” Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon, 34.

Berlin was: Ulrich Gregor, Berlin 1910–1922 (New York: Rizzoli, 1982), 171.

One critic said the story: Ibid., 178.

It became a living symbol: Fritz Lang’s Metropolis was first released in January 1927; Bacon could easily have seen it several months later.

The story of a mutiny: Information on the banning of the film can be found at Ronald Bergen, “Original Potemkin beats the censors after 79 years,” www.theguardian.com.

Battleship Potemkin was one of the early: Bacon in numerous interviews. See Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon, 34.

Bacon later spoke: Peppiatt, Francis Bacon, 38.

Bacon later claimed: Andrew Sinclair, Francis Bacon: His life and Violent Times (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1993), 51. For Bacon on German expressionism, see Bacon, in Cork, A Man Without Illusions.

It became a must-see: The authors are indebted to the research of art curator Nadine Söll for all information on the original show in Berlin.

“It always had too much”: Bacon, in Cork, A Man Without Illusions.

Founded and run: The information on the Bauhaus movement comes primarily from Gregor, Berlin, 1910–1922, 32.

In 1930 The Studio: W. Gaunt, “A Modern Utopia? Berlin—the New Germany—The New Movement,” The Studio magazine, vol. 98, 859. Bound volumes, V&A library.

John Richardson called him: Richardson, interview with Stevens, March 3, 2008.

He was “a brute”: Bacon, quoted in Michael Peppiatt, Francis Bacon in Your Blood: A Memoir (New York: Bloomsbury, 2015), 92.

A picture of Bacon: Barry Joule, interview with Annalyn Swan, November 5, 2017. Bacon had not realized that the pioneering photographer Lerski was the one who photographed him in Berlin.

Bacon wryly observed: Peppiatt, Francis Bacon, 39.

He had even once: Barry Joule, email with Annalyn Swan, March 29, 2020.

“I didn’t keep myself to myself”: Peppiatt, Francis Bacon, 52.

At an exhibition: Anne-Marie Crété de Chambine, “Un hôte singulier/A Very Special Guest,” in Majid Boustany, ed., Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation (Monaco: Francis Bacon Mb Art Foundation, 2005), 83. All of the following detail comes from this reminiscence.

“I was then six”: Ibid. Bacon was of average height but seemed tall to the six-year-old.

5 MARVELLOUS WOMEN

The Bocquentins resembled: Anne-Marie Crété de Chambine, “Un hôte singulier/A Very Special Guest,” in Majid Boustany, ed., Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation, 2nd ed. (Monaco: Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation, 2017), 83.

The family, said Anne-Marie: Crété de Chambine, interview for Adam Low, director, Francis Bacon, Arena documentary, BBC Four archive, March 19, 2005.

A photograph: Crété de Chambine, “Un hôte singulier,” Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation, 2nd edn. (2017), 82.

“My mother would conduct”: Ibid., 83.

They would retreat to: Ibid.

“My mother told me”: Crété de Chambine, Francis Bacon, Arena interview.

“He was so talented”: Ibid.

So charming did Bacon: Michael Peppiatt, Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma (London: Constable & Robinson, 2008), 41. The sister’s name was Geraldine Luntley. Valerie Beston papers. Estate of Francis Bacon archive.

The young Bacon’s round face: Crété de Chambine, Francis Bacon, Arena interview.

He was—“in the moon”: Ibid.

“I saw him always”: Ibid.

Madame Bocquentin was the first: Peppiatt, Francis Bacon, 40.

Bacon, still so young himself: Crété de Chambine, “Un hôte singulier,” in Baustang, Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation, 2nd edn., 83.

Two were by Eduard Fuchs: All of the books in Bacon’s studio and bedsit were catalogued after his death. Hugh Lane, Dublin, archive.

Fuchs’ Erotic Art: The authors are indebted to Nadine Söll, Berlin-based art curator and historian, for her research on Fuchs’s books. All of the subsequent information on the books comes from Söll. September 2013.

He would later purchase: Catalogue of books and publications, Hugh Lane archive.

In the end, it numbered: Ibid. See hughlane.ie/Baconsbooks.

He often spoke: David Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1987), 35.

He owned A. Radclyffe Dugmore’s: Catalogue of books and publications, Hugh Lane archive.

Phenomena of Materialisation: For more on von Schrenck-Notzing and the medium Eva Carrière, see “Policing Epistemic Deviance: Albert von Schrenck-Notzing and Albert Moll,” Medical History (Cambridge Journals) April 2012.

It was probably Madame Bocquentin: Crété de Chambine, Francis Bacon, Arena interview.

Madame Bocquentin was a talented: Ibid.

In the summer of 1927: “Giorgio de Chirico,” www.guggenheim.org.

Documents, for example: See Dawn Adès and Simon Baker, eds., Undercover Surrealism: Georges Bataille and Documents (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006).

The critic Dawn Adès: Adès, in Richard Cork, presenter, A Man Without Illusions, Radio 3, BBC archives, May 16, 1985.

Madame Bocquentin “knew all about”: Crété de Chambine, Francis Bacon, Arena interview.

“Cent Dessins”: Anne Baldassari, Bacon, Picasso: The Life of Images (Paris: Flammarion, 2005), 39. Bacon recalled six decades later that the show “had a huge effect on me.” Michel Archimbaud, Francis Bacon: In Conversation with Michel Archimbaud (New York: Phaidon Press, 2004), 33.

Another major show: Ibid, 34–5.

“The Galerie Rosenberg used”: Ibid.

Founded by the art critic Christian Zervos: See “Christian Zervos,” www.metmuseum.org.

The final issue of 1927: Baldassari, Bacon, Picasso, 36.

In 1929, Cahiers d’Art published: Ibid.

The result was the same: Martin Harrison, “Diana Watson’s Diary,” in Inside Francis Bacon: Francis Bacon Studies III (London: The Estate of Francis Bacon Publishing, in association with Thames & Hudson, 2020), 69.

Bacon underwent: Ibid.

Bacon later denied having attended: Crété de Chambine, quoted in Peppiatt, Francis Bacon, 41.

Bacon would return home: Ibid.

His sister Ianthe: Ianthe Knott interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

Two in particular attracted: See “Academie Colarossi,” www.tate.org.uk.

Henry Moore had done: See “Academie Colarossi,” www.artbiogs.co.uk.

Among those who made their way: Peter Adam, Eileen Gray: Architect/Designer (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1987), 28.

“We were so hedged in”: Ibid., 40.

Anne-Marie Crété de Chambine recalled: Crété de Chambine, Francis Bacon, Arena interview.

Ianthe remembered: Ianthe Knott, interviews with Mark Stevens, March 5 and 6, 2008.

“Ladies with long cigarette holders”: Ibid.

He brought home playful gifts: Crété de Chambine, quoted in Peppiatt, Francis Bacon, 41.

He would send similar gifts: Knott, interview with Stevens.

Madame Bocquentin understood: The Bocquentin family knew that Bacon’s next stop was Montparnasse. Crété de Chambine, “Un hôte singulier,” 84, Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation, second edition.

Montparnasse, concentrated: For a lively history of Montparnasse, especially in the 1920s and 1930s, see Billy Kluver and Julie Martin, Kiki’s Paris: Artists and Lovers 1900–1930 (New York: Harry Abrams, Inc, 1989).

Isadora Duncan and Man Ray: “Isadora Duncan,” fr.usembassy.gov/fr.

At the head of the street: “Edward Titus,” Leonard Lauder Research Center, www.metmuseum.org.

Its American owner, Edward Titus: “Edward Titus,” www/findingaids.library.emory.edu.

Bacon, continuing to read avidly: Peppiatt, Francis Bacon, 46.

Bacon also discovered, read and liked: Ibid.

Le Select, where Bacon had noted: Ibid., 52. He described going around with a male prostitute to places like Le Select, “which was one of the big homosexual cafés at the time.”

One of the representative figures: Kluver and Martin, Kiki’s Paris, 167.

“Kiki’s Paris”: Ibid., 11.

Bacon himself: Harrison, “Diana Watson’s Diary,” Inside Francis Bacon, 86.

Hemingway, with comic hyperbole: Ibid.

“All of his life”: Crété de Chambine, Francis Bacon, Arena interview.

In a chatty letter: The Estate of Francis Bacon archive. The letter was dated August 22, 1966.

“He asked me”: Ibid.

The opulence and orientalism: In his introduction to Christopher Wilk, Marcel Breuer: Furniture and Interiors (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1981), J. Stewart Johnson provided an excellent overview of the rapid changes in interior design. “As it happened, the 1925 Exposition not only signalled the triumph of the Art Deco style, but also turned out to be its high-water mark,” he wrote. “Art Deco would persist, though increasingly compromised, for fifteen years. From 1925 on, however, it rapidly lost ground to its rival style, modernism; and this was due largely to that second, private event of the year: Marcel Breuer’s creation in Dessau of the first chair to be made out of bent steel tubes.” Wilk, Marcel Breuer, 9.

An apartment she created: Philippe Garner, Eileen Gray: Design and Architecture 1878–1976 (Köhn: Benedikt Taschen, 1993), 7.

The boundaries between fashion: The convergence of fashion, art, and design in Paris in the 1920s is at the heart of an extended essay, “Paris to Providence: French Couture and the Tirocchi Shop,” by Susan Hay, curator of Costume and Textiles at the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). As Hay wrote, “It seemed that everyone [in the 1920s] looked to Paris for fashion, for art, for contemporary life. Now, artists in all media were flocking to Paris from around the world, forever changing art, as well as fashion, which converged as never before during these years.”

Coco Chanel knew Picasso: Elisabetta Povoledo, “Chanel, the Woman Who Reads,” New York Times, September 22, 2016. For Schiaparelli see “Schiaparelli and Dalí Artistic Collaboration,” www.thedaliuniverse.com.

The painter Marie Laurencin: Lisa Cohen, All We Know: Three Lives (New York, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012), 251.

Peter Adam, a biographer of Eileen Gray: Adam, Eileen Gray, 120.

By the time he arrived in Paris: As Peter Adam noted in his biography of Gray, she was in the South of France building her first house, called E.1027, after herself and her then-partner, the architect Jean Badovici, while Bacon would have been in Paris. “While Jean Désert fought for survival, Eileen, for almost three years, led a very solitary existence, living in the south of France, on site or in a little hotel room,” wrote Adam. The house was finished in 1929, so this period—1926 to 1929—would have coincided almost exactly with Bacon’s Paris trip. Adam, Eileen Gray, 191.

Garland was a second remarkable woman: Most of the information about Garland that follows comes from Lisa Cohen’s portrait in All We Know: Three Lives.

Like Bacon, she suffered: Ibid., 212.

Cecil Beaton, then eager: Julie Kavanagh, Secret Muses: The Life of Frederick Ashton (New York: Pantheon Books, 1996), 71–2.

Madge Garland helped to dress: Cohen, All We Know, 255, 269.

Bacon later mentioned: Bacon, in Peppiatt, Francis Bacon, 91.

Woolf herself described: Cohen, All We Know, 269.

Beaton, more waspish: See “The 1920s lesbian power couple who transformed Vogue,” www.dazeddigital.com.

The novelist Rebecca West: Cohen, All We Know, 247.

Garland loved all things French: Ibid., 214. Galleries also respected her artistic judgement. “Her eye for art impressed the directors of the Leicester Galleries and Agnew’s, who introduced her to the work they owned and represented, gave her lists of paintings to look at in London and abroad, and quizzed her on what she had seen when she returned.” Cohen, All We Know, 252.

“In the 1920s”: Cohen, All We Know, 277.

Just before Bacon came to Paris: See ibid., 269–73, for details of the firing and its aftermath in the lives of Todd and Garland.

In 1927 and 1928: John Richardson, interview with the authors, June 28, 2012.

“Madge was the sort of woman”: Ibid.

In a narrow street: Adam, Eileen Gray, 61–3.

Wyld’s letters: The papers of Elizabeth Eyre de Lanux, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian, Washington, DC Specifically: Series 1: Diaries (Box 1) Series 2: Correspondence (Boxes 4 and 6) Series 6: Box 11.

Eyre de Lanux: Rita Reif, “Elizabeth Eyre de Lanux, 102, Art Deco Designer” (obituary), September 10, 1996, www.nytimes.com.

The drawings that he: The papers of Eyre de Lanux at the Smithsonian contain a two-page illustrated magazine story from the early 1920s in which the women wear cloche hats and stylish sports clothes that seem similar to the fashionable period illustrations that Bacon brought home to Ireland on visits. There is no record of which magazine ran the story.

Born in Paris, Ivan: See “Juan da Silva Bruhns,” www.blouinartinfo.com. Most of the information on da Silva Bruhns comes from this biographical note.

In contrast to: See “Ivan da Silva Bruhns,” www.phillips.com.

In 1928, Bacon made designs: Clive Rogers and Jean Manuel de Noronha, “Rugs of the Young Francis Bacon,” draught form of published article (unedited) from Hali Magazine 162 (winter 2009), www.orient-rug.com.

Two early Bacon rugs: Ibid.

Many of her signature chairs: Adam, Eileen Gray, 207. As Adam wrote, “Many of her chrome designs preceded those of Le Corbusier (who showed his first chrome furniture in 1928), Mies van der Rohe, Marcel Breuer, and Charlotte Perriand.”

“There seems to have been an instant recognition”: J. Stewart Johnson, introduction, in Wilk, Marcel Breuer, 10–11.

Robert Mallet-Stevens (1886–1945): For more on Mallet-Stevens, see Jean-François Pinchon, ed., Rob. Mallet-Stevens: Architecture, Furniture, Interior Design (Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 1990).

He spoke with rare passion: Terence Conran, interview with Mark Stevens, July 7, 2011.

Ruhlmann, who opened: David Netto, “All Hands on Deco,” Wall Street Journal, updated April 9, 2011.

An early résumé: Undated résumé, Marlborough Gallery archive.

He also knew of weavers: See “Francis Bacon Rugs Remain an Enigma after Second Withdrawal,” Antiques Trade Gazette, www.antiquestradegazette.com. See also “Francis Bacon,” www.orient-rug.com.

He told David Sylvester: Bacon, in David Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1987), 186.

Many artists have been reluctant: Neither Roy de Maistre nor Graham Sutherland wanted, later in their lives, to discuss their early design work. Before leaving his native Australia, Roy de Maistre did quite a bit of design and decorating. See Heather Johnson, Roy de Maistre: The English Years (Roseville East, New South Wales: Craftsman House, 1995), 57–9. His one commission after arriving in London seems to have been painting murals on the walls of Lady de Clair’s dining room in Carrington House, Hartford Street, London. Her husband “had been governor of New South Wales from 1925 to 1929, so they were part of the old Australian world,” as Johnson wrote. In Roger Berthoud, Graham Sutherland: A Biography, Berthoud quoted from a January 1980 letter that Sutherland wrote him: “You should remember the climate of the time. It was a very fortunate one in that field, so what was done by me and a few others could hardly be considered commercial art. It was more a question of gouaches literally copied, often by hand.” Berthoud, Graham Sutherland (London: Faber and Faber, 1982), 67.

Shortly before leaving for London: Just how Bacon knew of, or was invited to the party for Toto Koopman’s twentieth birthday is something of a question. The missing connector may well be Madge Garland, who would, of course, have known Koopman through the world of Vogue and haute couture. See also Jean-Noël Liaut, La Javanaise (Paris: Robert Laffont, 2011). The authors are grateful to James Norton for his translations from Liaut’s biography.

6 GALLANT MEN

On July 15, 1929, Eric Allden: All of the information about Eric Allden and Bacon comes from Allden’s 1929 diary, which the researcher James Norton discovered while helping the authors research Bacon’s early life. The diaries are now part of The Estate of Francis Bacon archive.

Two weeks later: Ibid.

When his amanuensis, the critic David Sylvester: Bacon, quoted in David Sylvester, Looking Back at Francis Bacon (London: Thames & Hudson, 2000), 231.

Asked if he ever went: Ibid.

He had located a place: Eric Allden diary, October 8, 1929. The Estate of Francis Bacon archive.

Many of Madge Garland’s friends: In vol. 97 of The Studio, the influential magazine of arts and design, there was an unsigned piece titled “New Designs for Wilton Rugs by E. McK Kauffer and Marion V. Dorn: A Conversation with a ‘Studio’ Representative.” Probably written by Garland, it was a rave for Wilton Rugs. When asked about their craftsmanship, Kauffer replied, “Wilton rugs, I must say, are superb in craftsmanship and provide the finest texture obtainable.” Garland was especially close to Kauffer and Dorn: she was infatuated with Dorn and spent time with them in France at the home of Vanessa Bell. Lisa Cohen, All We Know: Three Lives (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012), 271.

Allden described going with Bacon: Allden diary, August 1, 1929.

A shipment of glassware: Ibid., August 14, 1929.

Well aware of the importance of design: Ibid., October 24, 1929.

Bacon’s dream as he returned to London: Bacon’s first studio, at 17 Queensberry Mews, was remarkably similar in feeling and sensibility to Jean Désert.

Allden was a key figure: Allden’s diaries in the 1930s and 1940s contain a number of references to Bacon’s mother long after he and Bacon were no longer living together. On one occasion, he and a friend visited Mrs Bacon after the Bacons moved to England from Ireland, settling in Bradford Peverell near the south coast of England. Allden diary, April 29, 1936.

Several months later: Allden, diary October 29, 1929.

Eric Allden grew up: The authors are indebted to James Norton for his research into the family and background of Eric Allden. Ancestry.co.uk proved valuable in further fleshing out details of the Allden family, as did Allden’s photo albums, part of The Estate of Francis Bacon archives. See Francesca Pipe, “Bacon’s First Patrons: Eric Allden’s Diary,” in Inside Francis Bacon: Francis Bacon Studies III (London: The Estate of Francis Bacon Publishing, in association with Thames & Hudson, 2020), 12–61.

His father, John Horatio Allden: UK & Ireland Medical Directories, 1845–1942.

Later, Eric’s father and Peruvian-born mother: See “Northgate House, Beccles, Suffolk,” www.britishlistedbuildings.co.uk. John Allden and Francisca Maria Stubbs were married on September 8, 1885. London, England, Church of England Marriages and Births, 1754–1932, ancestry.co.uk.

The family albums: The previous owners of the Allden diaries were kind enough to show family photographs to Mark Stevens and James Norton on a visit in November 2010.

Like many other graduates: All of the information about Allden in this paragraph comes from James Norton’s research.

On his return to London: Ibid.

Initially, he found: Allden diary, July 31, 1929.

A photograph of Bacon: See the opening page of Part I, “I,” for a reproduction of the photograph.

Having left the main: In later years Ianthe Knott stayed, on at least one visit to London, with Nanny in Pimlico. Ianthe Knott, interviews with Mark Stevens, March 5 and 6, 2008. Nanny Lightfoot kept her boarding house at least during 1939. Harrison, ed., Catalogue Raisonné Francis Bacon, vol. I, 81.

On an early visit: Allden diary, July 31, 1929.

The man was Guy Brunton: See “Guy Brunton,” giza.fas.harvard.edu.

Only two or three weeks: Allden diary, August 2, 1929.

The irascible Major groused: Knott, interview with Stevens.

Decades later: Harry McDowell, genealogist and historian, Celbridge, County Kildare, Ireland.

In later years: Caroline Blackwood, quoted by Daniel Farson, in The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993), 19. Blackwood told Farson that Bacon “developed a neurotic attack of asthma on the plane whenever he tried to get there. He could fly to any country in the world without physical mishap, but any flight to his homeland always proved disastrous.”

He had now done his duty: Ianthe Knott recalled periodic visits by her brother. Ianthe Knott, interviews with Mark Stevens, South Africa, March 5 and 6, 2008.

“He wants me to remain”: Allden diary, August 19, 1929.

“The cottage has”: Ibid.

He entered a clinic: Allden diary, August 11, 1929.

In addition to being: For this and Arthur Conan Doyle, see “New Light in the Final Days of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,” Psypioneer 2, no. 7 (July 2006).

It was yet another time: Bacon’s interest in seances and spirits—he owned a copy of Baron von Schrenk-Notzing’s Phenomena of Materialisation, published in 1920 (see chapter 5)—may have been underscored by his interaction with Fielding-Ould. Later, Bacon and the poet Thomas Blackburn, along with Blackburn’s wife, Rosalie de Meric, conducted seances together in the early 1950s. Julia Blackburn, The Three of Us: A Family Story (New York: Vintage Books, 2009), 57–9.

Fielding-Ould’s diagnosis: Allden diary, August 11, 1929.

The cure was: Ibid.

“I found him looking”: Allden diary, August 14, 1929.

On subsequent days: Ibid.

Foremost among them: Allden catalogued Bacon’s books in his diary entry of September 24, 1929.

“In the 1920s and 1930s”: Stephen Spender, World Within World: The Autobiography of Stephen Spender (New York: The Modern Library, 2001), 370–9.

Allden was astonished: Allden diary, September 1, 1929.

No doubt Bacon was already prone: Michael Peppiatt, Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma (London: Constable & Robinson, 2008), 58.

They were concerned: Allden diary, September 1, 1929.

“The Kingston Yacht Club”: Ibid.

“He took me through”: Ibid.

On the way: Ibid., September 4, 1929.

The rural cottage: Ibid., August 21, 1929.

Allden admired: All quotations in this paragraph and the next come from Allden’s diary, September 4, 1929.

On most days: Details of the local adventures of the two all come from Allden’s diary entries, September 5–September 17, 1929.

Dr Gogarty, an on-and-off: See “Dr Oliver St. John Gogarty Dies,” New York Times, September 23, 1957. The rest of the quotations about the Gogartys come from Allden’s diaries.

“Mrs Bacon, née Watson”: Ibid., September 5, 1929.

She was “anxious to understand”: Ibid., September 24, 1929.

“I cannot see that any of his characteristics”: Ibid.

“He is as selfish”: Ibid.

Both Francis and his older brother Harley: Ibid., September 5, 1929.

“I have been here three weeks”: Ibid., September 24, 1929.

“He can cook admirably”: Ibid.

He noted cheerfully: Ibid., October 6, 1929.

“Last night I walked down to the sea”: Ibid., September 28, 1929.

Allden found: Ibid., October 23 and 27, 1929. Details of the new flat all come from these diary entries.

To a remarkable degree: See “The Great Depression,” historic-uk.com.

He knew: Allden’s diaries contain numerous references not only to plays but to actors, including Ernest Thesiger and John Gielgud.

“She is quite young”: Allden diary, October 8, 1929.

In October, Bacon wanted to show: Allden diary, October 29, 1929.

“Both are most strange”: Ibid.

A few days later: Ibid., November 1, 1929.

At the time: Ibid., September 24, 1929.

It was a mélange: Ronald Alley, ed., Francis Bacon (London: Thames & Hudson, 1964), 26. This was the first catalogue raisonné of Bacon’s work.

“They have made them up beautifully”: Allden diary, October 8, 1929.

Allden’s diary recorded a lunch: Ibid., August 30, 1929. Allden may have misremembered the name. An Arundell Clarke, a designer and good friend of Madge Garland’s, would soon become an important figure in Bacon’s life.

On their first day: Ibid., October 29, 1929.

“This put him in a mood”: Ibid.

“South Kensington was enormously respectable”: John Richardson, interview with the authors, June 28, 2012.

“South Kens was known”: Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life, 156.

“That Bacon chose”: Richard Shone, “Francis Bacon in 1930: An Early Exhibition Rediscovered,” Burlington Magazine, April 1996, 253–5.

Bacon settled on 17 Queensberry Mews: The source for the garage is “The 1930 Look in British Decoration,” The Studio 100 (September 1930), 140–5.

Its main purpose, however: Converting mews houses into chic residences was just coming into vogue in London in the late 1920s. Michael Peppiatt, Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma (London: Constable & Robinson), 58.

One major source: Ibid.

Dedicated to Frank Lloyd Wright: Paul Frankl, New Dimensions: The Decorative Arts of Today in Words & Pictures (New York: Payson & Clarke Ltd, 1928), 26, 33.

Frankl reserved: Ibid., 78.

Above all: Photographs of the interior of Jean Désert and Bacon’s studio show a strikingly similar aesthetic at work, including the central feature, the moulded, curving staircase. “The 1930 Look in British Decoration,” 140–5.

His glass-topped circular tables: Philippe Garner, Eileen Gray: Design and Architecture 1878–1976 (Kohn: Benedikt Taschen, 1993), 85.

Bacon sent his mother a photo: Winnie passed along her old clippings to Ianthe Knott when she died. Ianthe showed them to Mark Stevens on a visit to South Africa, March 5 and 6, 2008.

Another armchair hasd very thick: Jean-François Pinchon, ed., Rob. Mallet-Stevens: Architecture, Furniture, Interior Design (Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 1990). See full-page photographs of Mallet-Stevens’s designs.

A large cabinet: Ibid.

7 STAGE SETS

Founded in London: See “Studio: a brief history,” www.studiointernational.com.

Articles were devoted: Volumes 97 to 100 of the magazine—the year 1930—revealed an extraordinary range of topics. V&A library archives, London.

The six-page spread: Madge Garland, “The 1930 Look in British Decoration,” The Studio (August 1930), 190–5.

But the surprise of the package: Ibid.

After her extended stays: Lisa Cohen, All We Know: Three Lives (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012), 274.

“Rebecca West told her”: Ibid.

One signed article: Madge Garland, “Interiors by Eyre de Lanux,” The Studio 99 (October 1930), 263–5.

Garland never acknowledged: Lisa Cohen, phone interview with Annalyn Swan, November 4, 2011.

Garland was in love …: Ibid.

While the couple’s work: “New Designs for Wilton Rugs by E. McK Kauffer and Marion V. Dorn: A Conversation with a ‘Studio’ Representative,” The Studio 97, 1930, 35–9.

No other young artists or designers: A review of The Studio magazine at the V&A library revealed no other pieces on young designers from vol. 97, MCMXXIX (1929) to vol. 100 (end of 1930).

“Francis Bacon is a young English designer”: Garland, “The 1930 Look in British Decoration,” 140–1.

“We have been perhaps slower”: Ibid.

“The appeal of steel and glass”: Ibid.

These same curtains: Michael Peppiatt, Francis Bacon (London: Constable & Robinson, 2008), 59.

“His rugs are particularly representative”: Garland, “The 1930 Look in British Decoration.”

“Francis Bacon, today internationally famous”: Madge Garland, The Indecisive Decade: The World of Fashion and Entertainment in the Thirties (London: Macdonald, 1968), 14.

“The staircase leads up”: Francis Bacon, undated letter to his mother, collection of Ianthe Knott. Estate of Francis Bacon archive.

(She would have been dumbfounded): Paul Frankl, New Dimensions: The Decorative Arts of Today in Words and Pictures (New York: Payson & Clarke Ltd., 1928), 27.

Two years later: Ianthe Knott, interview for Adam Low, director, Francis Bacon, Arena documentary, BBC Four archive, March 19, 2005.

Bacon sent the Easter eggs: Bacon postcard to Ianthe Knott, cited in Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, vol. I, 78.

Bacon was less appreciative: Martin Harrison, “Diana Watson’s Diary,” in Inside Francis Bacon: Francis Bacon Studies III (London: The Estate of Francis Bacon Publishing, in association with Thames & Hudson, 2020), 73.

The artist H. M. Sutton: Marlborough Gallery archives, London. Sutton’s letter, dated November 17, 1984, was wrong in recalling the year of his visit to 17 Queensberry Mews as the summer of 1928. It would have been the summer of 1930, as Bacon had not moved to Queensberry Mews until January of that year.

Bacon also prepared: Richard Shone, “Francis Bacon in 1930: An Early Exhibition Rediscovered,” Burlington Magazine, 253–5.

Like Bacon, de Maistre was: Much of the biographical information on de Maistre comes from Heather Johnson, Roy de Maistre: The English Years (Roseville East, New South Wales: Craftsman House, 1995) and Roy de Maistre: The Australian Years (Roseville East, New South Wales: Craftsman House, 1988). Johnson is de Maistre’s great-niece.

Like Bacon: Caroline de Mestre Walker, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

He was remembered: Andrew Sinclair, Francis Bacon: His Life and Violent Times (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1993), 61.

De Maistre grew up: Johnson, Roy de Maistre: The English Years, 11.

He liked to imply: Ibid., 16.

It belonged: Ibid.

De Maistre served dinner: Ibid., 14.

He doted over: Ibid.

In the end, he found that: De Maistre’s royal aspirations and social pretensions put him at odds with many in his family, who felt that he condescended to them. Caroline de Mestre Walker, Arena interview. Also interview with Annalyn Swan, October 18, 2013.

Like Wassily Kandinsky: Ossian Ward, “How Wassily Kandinsky’s synaesthesia changed art,” The Telegraph, December 16, 2014. See also “Roy de Maistre,” www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au.

Eventually, de Maistre created: See his “Colour Harmonizing Chart,” “Colour Music in Australia: de-mystifying De Maistre,” www.colourmusic.info.

His most famous painting: See “Artist Profile: Roy de Maistre,” www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au.

The Colour in Art show: “Colour Music in Australia,” www.colourmusic.info.

One of the purposes of his Colour Harmonizing Disc: Sinclair, Francis Bacon, 62.

No sooner did he arrive: Johnson, Roy de Maistre: The English Years, 11.

The gallery had been founded: See “Lessore, Helen 1907–1994,” www.artbiogs.co.uk.

Bacon would say: Bacon and Lessore remained close friends throughout his life. “Francis respected her; she loved him.” Daniel Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon (New York: Pantheon, 1994), 99.

Bacon met de Maistre: Johnson, Roy de Maistre: The English Years, 11.

The connection was almost certainly: In his diary Eric Allden noted, on November 5, 1929, that Bacon was dining “with a Mrs MacDermot and going to the Gate Theatre.” The connection to the Bacon family might well have come from Australia—Bacon’s paternal grandmother, Alice Lawrence Bacon, was Australian. MacDermot also knew Roy de Maistre well from Australia. During her time in Sydney, MacDermot had been associated with a bohemian café, patronized by artists and intellectuals, whose modernist interior had been designed by de Maistre. De Maistre also featured a room from Mrs MacDermot’s house in an important interior design show held at the Burdekin House just before he left. David Marr, Patrick White: A Life (London: Jonathan Cape, 1991), 148.

He became enamoured of Bacon: De Maistre’s two relatives, Caroline de Mestre Walker and Heather Johnson, have no knowledge that the two were ever romantically involved. Johnson also interviewed several of his close friends for her biography of de Maistre. They “stated categorically,” as she put it, that the two never had an affair. Johnson, Roy de Maistre: The English Years, 21.

De Maistre’s one passionate affair: Ibid., 26.

It was probably then that Bacon and de Maistre: Bacon was once thought, on the basis of his vague recollections, to have exhibited his work in a show in 1929. But in 1929 he did not have his studio in place, and he was only beginning to fabricate his furniture and rugs. The exhibition he organized was in November 1930.

And so Bacon thought of a third artist: Most of the information on Jean Shepeard comes from her niece Doreen Kern, interview with Annalyn Swan, November 17, 2012, as well as a chronology and short account of her aunt’s life compiled by Kern. See also “Jean Shepeard 1904–1989,” www.portrait.gov.au and Shone, “Francis Bacon in 1930,” Burlington Magazine, 253–5.

Like de Maistre, Shepeard was more established: Kern, interview with Swan.

A critic in 1931 wrote: The article, which Shepeard kept, is unsigned and no information exists about where it appeared.

Shepeard was never without her sketchbook: Kern, interview with Swan.

She once toured: Ibid.

Shepeard may have met Bacon: Information on R. O. Dunlop comes from Doreen Kern, interview with Swan.

Dunlop’s background would have interested: See “Ronald Ossory Dunlop, 1894–1973,” www.howgill-tattershall.co.uk.

Or, possibly: Eric Allden’s photo albums and diary contain references to both Thesiger and Noël Coward. The Estate of Francis Bacon archives.

In her biography of Ivy Compton-Burnett: Hilary Spurling, Ivy: The Life of Ivy Compton-Burnett (London: Richard Cohen books, 1974), 242–3.

Shepeard provided: Much of the information on the 1930 show comes from Shone, “Francis Bacon in 1930,” Burlington Magazine, 253–5.

De Maistre contributed: Ibid. A well-known surviving portrait of the young Bacon by de Maistre is sometimes assumed to be the portrait included in the 1930 show. But until the end of 1930 de Maistre spelled his name—and signed his paintings—Roi de Mestre. His name in the small catalogue of the show is spelled “Roi de Mestre,” and he signed one extant painting from the same show with that spelling of his name. The spelling on the surviving portrait is “Roy de Maistre,” and it probably dates instead to c. 1935, after de Maistre had re-established himself in London following several peripatetic years on the Continent. The existing portrait also depicts Bacon with some makeup and lipstick—certainly not his look while he was with Eric Allden in 1930. (A keen observer, Allden would have been sure to note makeup, as both Patrick White and Caroline de Mestre did later in the 1930s.)

The far more likely candidate for the “portrait” of 1930 was reproduced in a 1964 article in Australia. The picture depicted Bacon’s Queensberry Mews studio, complete with the same furnishings—and Jacques Adnet seagull—that de Maistre included in other depictions of Bacon’s studio that year. But here the young artist himself is incorporated into the painting, thereby making the title Portrait of Francis Bacon from the catalogue to the 1930 show plausible. The authors are indebted to Andrew Gaynor, a PhD candidate at Australian National University who has made de Maistre his subject, for bringing this painting to our attention. It has since disappeared. The authors are also indebted to Heather Johnson, correspondence of October 12, 2013, and Caroline de Mestre Walker, interview of October 18, 2013. Bacon himself exhibited: Shone, “Francis Bacon in 1930,” Burlington Magazine, 253–5.

Just one Bacon picture: It is impossible to tell for certain whether the painting blandly retitled (in Bacon’s non-descriptive style) Painting 1929 is the same as Trees by the Sea, although it appears likely from the fact that the painting depicts tree trunks against a distant beach.

The painting resembled: See “Jean Lurcat, Paysage a Smyrne,” mutualart.com.

Some rugs were hung: One photograph in the Studio article shows a blocky, cubistic rug hanging prominently on the wall between two signature, rounded mirrors by Bacon.

Before the opening: The card is reproduced in Shone, “Francis Bacon in 1930,” Burlington Magazine, 253–5.

He also made up: The authors are grateful to Richard Shone for providing the catalogue and other background information on the 1930 show. Richard Shone interview with the authors, February 17, 2011.

The reviewer praised: The review, unsigned and undated, was provided to the author and to Richard Shone by Doreen Kern, Shepeard’s niece.

“Transported”: Ibid.

In one picture: The lesser-known Interior, reproduced in Richard Shone’s piece in the Burlington Magazine, is in the collection of Manchester City Art Galleries.

She portrayed him: The authors are indebted to Doreen Kern and to Richard Shone for reproductions of Shepeard’s drawing of Bacon.

In the months after: Harrison, “Diana Watson’s Diary,” 80.

In 1931, as Bacon took up the life: Ibid., 74, 76.

Les Enfants Terribles: Ibid., 70.

In 1931, Bacon visited his cousin: Ibid., 76. In this diary entry, Watson appears to be looking back to an earlier time, seeming to suggest that, while the later Bacon may claim that such ideas left him “indifferent,” the young man who used to visit her in Yorkshire often brought them up.

In December 1931: Electoral rolls, researched by James Norton.

“We would simply adore”: Bacon, letter to his mother, cited in Martin Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné vol. I (London: Estate of Francis Bacon, 2016), 78.

Allden eventually moved: Allden was photographed on November 24, 1935, in his flat at Egerton Gardens, with Bacon furniture and paintings sprinkled in among the more traditional furnishings. The photograph is reproduced in Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, vol. I, 78.

8 STARTING OVER

Why not share a flat: Martin Harrison, “Diana Watson’s Diary,” in Inside Francis Bacon: Francis Bacon Studies III (London: The Estate of Francis Bacon Publishing, in association with Thames & Hudson, 2020), 81.

During the early 1930s: Heather Johnson, Roy de Maistre: The English Years (Roseville East, New South Wales: Craftsman House, 1995), 12–13, 18.

A recent émigré: At least three photographs exist of the space at Carlyle Studios, taken by Eric Megaw. See Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation, www.mbartfoundation.com.That Bacon used this space as an occasional showroom, and that he continued to produce rugs, seems clear from a letter that Bacon sent his mother in Ireland. He included with his letter a picture of a rug—its design much like its predecessors—that he dated 8 April, 1932. Roy de Maistre might also have painted his 1933 Still Life, which depicted elements of Bacon’s design (a hanging rug, a round table), in this space.

By the time of his Queensberry: Angus Stewart, interview with James Norton, February 9, 2016. Stewart met Bacon in 1962, when both were looking at paintings in the National Gallery. A member of the Royal Society of Arts, Stewart is known for curating exhibitions on twentieth-century British artists and the English arts and crafts movement, among many others. Stewart also lived near Bacon and spoke with him often.

Not surprisingly—in the small world: Clarke and Garland both moved to Bruton Street after Royal Hospital Road and were neighbours there. Research by James Norton.

During the late 1920s: Street directories for 1930 and 1931 show Arundell Clarke at 71 Royal Hospital Road. Research by James Norton.

One was Misha Black: Angus Stewart, interview with James Norton. For more on Black, see http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/collections/designarchives/.

The second was Richard Levin: Stewart, interview with James Norton.

Levin would become: Philip Purser, “Richard Levin: Designer Who Gave the BBC Its Visual Identity and Revolutionized Programme Presentation,” The Guardian, July 9, 2000.

His daughter, the artist Gill Levin …: Conversation with James Norton, February, 2016.

In addition to occasional work: John Richardson, interview with the authors, June 28, 2016.

He later told: Miriam Gross, “Bringing Home Bacon,” The Observer Review, November 30, 1990, 29, 31.

An exception was Diana Watson: Harrison, “Watson’s Diary,” 76.

“He seems to be without”: Ibid., 77.

Mrs Watson, said her daughter: Ibid., 64.

As Francis set out: John Richardson lived across from Diana and her mother on Thurloe Place. Interview with Richardson.

Diana had always found: Harrison, “Watson’s Diary,” 76, 82.

In a diary she kept: Harrison, Ibid. In publishing Diana Watson’s diary, Martin Harrison and The Estate of Francis Bacon have opened an essential window onto Bacon’s life and sensibility as a young artist in the 1930s, a period when information on Bacon is otherwise scarce; Bacon went to great lengths in later life to conceal his early years. It is important to note that the entries that survive are not Watson’s original versions, but were copied later in her life. Watson may have been reviewing her diary with the intention of either publishing a version of the entries or a piece that described her perspective on Bacon’s early life. Bacon himself was aware of the existence of the diary. (Watson observes, “He wants this diary to be finished.”) The language used in the Watson diaries suggests that, at certain points, Watson is commenting from her present vantage point on Bacon’s life many years before. Indeed, it is not always clear when she is commenting and when she is copying. These are, in short, both diary entries and, occasionally, “reflections inspired by a diary entry.” There is little doubt that Watson, when she was older, sensed Bacon looking over her shoulder as she revisited her early observations. In particular, Watson would have known that Bacon did not want certain aspects of his early life presented to the world—especially his life as a designer, with which she was familiar. Watson and her mother were often in London during Bacon’s brief career as a designer, and Watson herself purchased some of his pieces. Although it is possible that Watson began her diary only in late 1931, just as Bacon committed himself to being an artist, it seems more likely—though it must remain speculation unless other diary entries are found—that she also kept a diary in the late 1920s. Few things would have been more exciting to a restless and isolated young woman from Yorkshire than her cousin’s exotic and shockingly modern London showroom. In her diaries, however, she makes only one oblique reference to Bacon’s work in design, which suggests that during her later review she left out that part of his life. Watson also makes no obvious mention of Eric Allden and rarely brings up Eric Hall. (And Bacon was probably not shy about recounting his personal life before the cousin-confessor of his childhood.) It seems possible that, in the end, Bacon discouraged her effort to record his early life. Her description of a struggling and vulnerable young artist eager for success who worked very hard for most of the 1930s does not conform to the picture of his youth that Bacon himself presented to the world.

“Francis was now “separated”: Ibid., 64.

“The painting was more serious”: Ibid., 77.

The two “went to music halls”: Ibid., 64.

Francis informed her: Ibid., 74.

Her cousin was being led into: Ibid., 69.

“Everything was done”: Ibid., 76.

Sometimes, they went: Ibid., 80.

At the Corner House in Coventry Street: Lyons Corner House—“The Lily Pond,” www.historicengland.org.uk/.

In a “darkened empty teashop”: Harrison, “Watson’s Diary,” 74.

She noted that her cousin’s “freedom”: Ibid., 80.

Francis “always had contacts”: Ibid., 77.

“His mind seldom moved”: Ibid., 72.

He loved the visceral physics: Ibid., 71.

The arm holding the brush: Ibid.

A thick neck: Ibid., 76.

He wondered what the refined: Ibid., 72.

He would look for models: Ibid., 70.

He hoped to find: Ibid.

The ordinary surface: Ibid., 70.

“A thing has to arrive”: Ibid.

Once, after the camera: Ibid., 73.

He took Diana to see: Ibid., 70.

He admired the legendary: Ibid., 81.

To provide the brutal facts: Ibid., 70.

“Everything is given”: Ibid., 76.

“He always had a feeling”: Ibid., 77.

He once became angry: Ibid., 69.

In 1932, Diana watched: Ibid., 70.

He saved almost nothing: Ibid.

“At tea,” wrote Diana: Ibid., 74.

She called it: Ibid., 71.

One Christ figure: Ibid., 69.

On his studio wall: Ibid., 69.

Occasionally, he worked without brushes: Ibid., 70.

If the picture became a mess: Ibid., 71.

He sought power: Ibid.

Early in the summer of 1932: Ibid., 80.

Her cousin “liked”: Ibid. The rest of the quotations about Paris come from Watson’s diary.

They took photographs: Ibid., 65.

In 1932, Arundell Clarke: Street directories show that Clarke left 71 Royal Hospital Road in 1932 and Garland the following year. Research by James Norton.

The famous couturier: Lisa Cohen, All We Know: Three Lives (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012), 274–5.

In October 1933: “Gets Downtown Building,” The New York Times, October 10, 1933. A ship full of the titled had sailed to New York for the suitably stylish opening of the building in 1932. “English Nobility Here for Ceremony,” New York Times, July 2, 1952.

By 1947, “former”: “Work of Noted Textile Designers Put on View at New Showroom,” New York Times, February 27, 1947. In 1949, Clarke “showed several new patterns by each of the designers he represents” at the American Institute of Decorators annual awards ceremony. Among them was Philip Johnson (New York Times, March 23, 1949). In a room designed by Clarke for a national furnishings show in 1957, New York Times Magazine (September 8, 1957) noted that “pleated leather covers the walls, except that adorned with Ellsworth Kelly’s vivid abstraction, in this room in which all background surfaces are white.” Bacon had designed a similarly all-white room for Madge Garland. Photographs of Clarke’s New York showroom taken in 1935 also show a vanity desk that has the same large, rounded mirror, curved bench, glass top and squared-off lines as did Bacon’s own furniture. Archives, Museum of the City of New York.

Clarke was fond: Eric Allden went to Arundell Clarke’s flat on Bruton Street, where Nanny Lightfoot often cooked, to wish her happy birthday. Allden diary, July 1, 1934. Estate of Francis Bacon archive.

When Clarke’s elderly father: Edward John Arundell Clarke, Arundell Clarke’s father, died on June 19, 1932. England and Wales, National Probate Calendar, ancestry.co.uk. James Norton also supplied information on rate books and street directories for 71 Royal Hospital Road.

By the autumn of 1932: Ray de Maistre dated one of his pictures of Bacon’s studio to 1932. The same studio appears in later images when Bacon was known to be at 71 Hospital Road, which suggests that Bacon was already working there in 1932.

A later friend of Bacon: Michael Wishart, High Diver (London: Blond and Briggs, 1977), 7–8.

“Artists really were here”: Margaret Fenton, interview with Annalyn Swan, July 5, 2011.

At the time: Richard Shone, “Francis Bacon in 1930: An Early Exhibition Rediscovered,” Burlington Magazine, April 1996, 253–5.

“Later, when I lived”: Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil Servant (New York: Penguin Books, 1997), 54.

“It was,” said Fenton: Fenton, interview with Swan.

The writer Radclyffe Hall: Ianthe Knott, interview for Adam Low, director, Francis Bacon, Arena documentary, BBC Four archive, March 19, 2005.

When a well-known Chelsea house: “5,000 Pound Chelsea House Now On Sale for 8.5 Million,” Evening Standard, July 4, 2011.

Next door, at 27 Ormonde Gate: Geoffrey Gilbey lived at 27 Ormonde Gate from 1930 to 1940. London rate books, researched by James Norton. He is also listed there in the London City Directory of 1930. Ancestry.co.uk.

After founding: See “1872—Gilbey’s Gin Established,” www.diffordsguide.com.

He sometimes wrote pieces: Books by Geoffrey Gilbey, including She’s and Skis and Not Really Rude, are still for sale on the internet. Pass It On: Religious Essays was published in 1931.

He was the author: His Horse Racing for Beginners was published in London by Grant Richards in 1923.

He kept a stable: Alan Yuill Walker, The Scots & the Turf: Racing and Breeding—The Scottish Influence (Edinburgh: Black and White Publishing, 2017), ch. 15, 2.

Like many public school men: See “Geoffrey Hall and Gilbey,” www.thepeerage.com.

He had an affair: Sean O’Connor, Straight Acting: Popular Gay Drama from Wilde to Rattigan (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 129.

“Rattigan was probably not: Christopher Tyerman, A History of Harrow School 1324–1991 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 447.

Geoffrey’s first cousin: Gerard Noel, “Obituary: Monsignor Alfred Gilbey,” The Independent, March 28, 1998.

Bacon’s old friend: A. L. Jayne, 1993 reminiscence in the annual Old Decanian House Journal, The Decanian News, Dean Close School, a year after Bacon’s death. The authors are indebted to Charles Whitney, head archivist, Dean Close School Archives Department for providing the reminiscence.

In what sounds like a highly fanciful: Ibid.

Gilbey’s next-door neighbour: Eric Hall was listed in the London Electoral Registers as living at 26 Ormonde Gate from 1926 through 1930. Gilbey moved next door in 1930. Hall and his family moved in 1931 to Tennyson Mansions off Lordship Place, an eleven-minute walk away. ancestry.co.uk.

It was thought: “Jeeves and Wooster Part 4: The Drones Club,” www.parbakeandprose.com.

It was the most natural thing: Bacon told Michel Archimbaud that he met Eric Hall in the late 1920s— although Bacon’s dating was notoriously unreliable. Francis Bacon: In Conversation with Michel Archimbaud (New York: Phaidon Press, 2004), 24.

His father, a surveyor: The authors are indebted to James Norton for his research into Eric Hall’s family and background.

Like Wellington: Many graduates fought in WWI and WWII, and 457 were killed. “The Chapel,” Old Malvernian newsletter. no. 23 (May 2000).

In the autumn of 1909: Biographical research by James Norton.

He chose to pursue: All of the information on Hall’s academic career comes from Clare Hopkins, archivist, Trinity College, Cambridge, to James Norton, October 2012.

“To modern eyes”: Ibid.

In September 1914: Records, War Office, National Archives. Research by James Norton.

Like Bacon’s father, Hall succeeded: Ibid.

“On the morning of July 1st 1916”: Ibid. All further quotes about Hall’s war experiences and wounding are taken from Hall’s written testimonial at the War Office.

The operation left: Hall’s military record notes that he wore a built-up shoe because his left leg became an inch shorter than his right following the surgery.

Hall married: England and Wales, Civil Registration Marriage Index, 1916–2005, ancestry.co.uk.

Barbara Preston: Research by James Norton.

In a wedding photograph: The authors are grateful to James Norton for supplying the photograph, which was given to him by Béatrice Mitchell, Hall’s granddaughter.

After he left the Army: Research by James Norton. Peter Jones, on Sloane Square, was within easy walking distance of Eric Hall’s house on Ormonde Gate.

He would spend over three decades: Ibid.

Hall possessed: All photographs were taken from family albums. Research by James Norton. The dates of his children’s births come from England and Wales, Civil Registration Birth Index, 1916–2007, ancestry.co.uk.

He liked the fashionable Bath Club: James Norton research.

The wife of one of Hall’s friends: Diana Keast, interview for Adam Low, director, Francis Bacon, Arena.

In the 1920s, Hall inherited: Hall’s family background and civic record comes from the research of James Norton.

He was the kind of man: Ibid.

“One day he came”: Bacon, in Archimbaud, Francis Bacon, 24.

The Englishman who marched: Ivan Hall, Eric Hall’s son, thought that Bacon felt guilty in later years about spending so much of his father’s money on Bacon. Swan, email correspondence with Heather Johnson, Roy de Maistre’s great-niece, October 2013. As Heather Johnson wrote in Roy de Maistre: The English Years, after interviewing Ivan Hall, “De Maistre also expressed disapproval of Bacon’s lifestyle in the later 1930s—of doing little else but gambling and of running gambling houses—and of being a partner with Eric Hall in wasting away most of the latter’s inheritance instead of preserving what should have been passed on to Hall’s son.” Heather Johnson, Roy de Maistre: The English Years (Roseville East, New South Wales: Craftsman House, 1995), 28–9.

Eric Hall, said John Richardson: Richardson, interview with the authors, June 28, 2012.

John Richardson acknowledged: Ibid.

The young Australian novelist: Patrick White, Flaws in the Glass: A Self-Portrait (New York: The Viking Press, 1981), 63.

In September 1933: Allden diary entry, September 18, 1933.

Some months later, Allden and de Maistre: Ibid.

Hall recalled with nostalgia: Harrison, “Watson’s Diary,” 72.

Oh, those Greeks: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), 38.

Mid-decade, de Maistre painted: The portrait is now owned by The Estate of Francis Bacon.

Bacon once observed to Diana: Harrison, “Watson’s Diary,” 79.

In 1931, Amédée Ozenfant: See “Amédée Ozenfant,” www.guggenheim.org/.

It helped Bacon: The 1931 edition is included on the complete list of books found in Bacon’s studio and bedsit after his death, Hugh Lane Gallery archive.

“Purism”: See “Amédée Ozenfant,” www.guggenheim.org.

The relation was also close: Anne Baldassari, Bacon, Picasso: The Life of Images (Paris: Flammarion, 2005), 76. There were also hints of Lurcat, Léger and Souverbie, as in some of Bacon’s other early works. Interestingly, at just the moment when Ozenfant and Le Corbusier were collaborating on their seminal La Peinture modern (1925), Ozenfant was also collaborating with Léger; Léger and Ozenfant were two of the four founders, in 1924, of a free studio of art in Paris. (Another founder was Marie Laurencin, Madge Garland’s close friend in Paris.) There is no record of Bacon attending the school, but he was an early devotee of Ozenfant and may well have known Laurencin through Madge Garland. The figures on Bacon’s screen also echo a contemporaneous book jacket design by Madge Garland’s great friend E. McKnight Kauffer for T. S. Eliot’s book of poems Triumphal March, published in 1931. Bacon admired Eliot and might well have seen Kauffer’s jacket in advance. In a further connection, Valerie Eliot, T. S. Eliot’s wife, later purchased Bacon’s Watercolour of 1929 shown in the 1930 Queensberry Mews exhibition. She may well have known of an early connection between Eliot, Kauffer, and Bacon.

“It was only after”: Amédée Ozenfant, Foundations of Modern Art, trans. by John Rodker (New York: Dover Publications, 1952), 64.

Ozenfant gave credit to Dada: Ibid., 117.

“The turn of thought of the Surrealists”: Ibid., 23.

“At certain of my lectures”: Ibid., 212.

Not only did art: Ibid., 287.

Ozenfant’s book contained: Ibid., 154.

He would say that “observing”: Bacon, interviewed for Pierre Koralnik, director, Francis Bacon, Radio Television Suisse Romande, Geneva, 1964.

“It is somewhat surprising”: Ozenfant, Foundations of Modern Art, 53–55. Ozenfant may well have been the very first to pique Bacon’s interest in Rodin.

The novelist Patrick White, who came to know: White, Flaws in the Glass, 63.

John Rothenstein, the director: John Rothenstein, Time’s Thievish Progress (London: Cassell, 1970), 93–5. This is the third volume of Rothenstein’s autobiography.

To enter his studio at 13 Ecclestone Street: White, Flaws in the Glass, 63.

To Rothenstein, the “theatre”: Rothenstein, Time’s Thievish Progress, 93–5.

“Roy’s studio was a work”: Ibid.

“Friends reported dinner parties”: Johnson, Roy de Maistre: The English Years, 16.

De Maistre’s friend Geoffrey Houghton Brown: Ibid. See also James Lees-Milne, “Obituary: Geoffrey Houghton Brown,” www.independent.co.uk.

De Maistre’s friends and patrons: “De Maistre’s most beneficent patrons were Rab Butler and his first wife Sydney Courtauld/Butler,” wrote Heather Johnson in Roy de Maistre: The English Years, 39. “The Butlers met de Maistre in Australia in 1927 while on a honeymoon world tour following their marriage in 1926. De Maistre renewed his friendship with them as soon as he arrived in London and this spread to the extended Butler/Courtauld family.”

“I believe his faith”: White, Flaws in the Glass, 63.

In the early 1930s, de Maistre became: For more on Mitrinović, see the New Atlantis Foundation Dimitrije Mitrinović archive: archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk.

“There is no record”: Johnson, Roy de Maistre: The English Years, 77.

Bacon later said: Ibid., Johnson interview with Francis Bacon, 1988, cited in endnotes.

When de Maistre was asked: Ibid., Johnson interview with Ronald Alley, 1988, cited in endnotes. At one point de Maistre did tell his great friend John Rothenstein, however, that he was shocked that Bacon “knew nothing whatsoever about the technical side of painting and had scarcely drawn at all.” See John Rothenstein, Modern English Painters. Volume Three: Hennell to Hockney (London: Macdonald & Co., 1984), 152.

Thirty years later: Terry Danziger Miles, interview for Adam Low, director, Francis Bacon, Arena.

“Each of its huge issues”: Geoffrey Grigson, quoted in Nigel Vaux Halliday, More Than a Bookshop: Zwemmer’s and Art in the 20th Century (London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 1991), 46.

Picasso’s Dinard series: Johnson, Roy de Maistre: The English Years, 19–21.

Bacon himself emphasized: Bacon, quoted in Jean Clair, “Pathos and Death: Interview with Francis Bacon by Jean Clair,” Le Monde, May 2, 1992. The interview appeared in English in the exhibition catalogue for The Body on the Cross at the Musée Picasso in Paris, 1992.

The figures in the Dinard series: Michael Peppiatt, “Francis Bacon: Reality Conveyed by a Lie,” Art International (Fall 1987), 30.

He and de Maistre would have: Bacon was in Paris at the time of the show. See Harrison, ed., “Diana Watson’s Diary,” 80.

In 1932, de Maistre asked: It was suggested, in the catalogue of the Australian exhibition Francis Bacon: Five Decades (Art Gallery, New South Wales, 2012) that de Maistre’s paintings of Bacon’s studio in 1932 and 1933 following the well-known ones of his 17 Queensberry Mews space were not of Bacon’s studio at all, but of de Mestre’s. (See catalogue endnotes, 222). But the painting of 1932 titled Francis Bacon’s Studio was displayed at the Tate at the time of Bacon’s first retrospective there in 1962. (See “Roy de Maistre, Important Australian Art, 24 November 2008,” www.sothebys.com.) It is unlikely that either Bacon or de Maistre would have allowed the painting to be displayed with that title had it not been of his actual studio. It is also unlikely that de Maistre was painting a picture of his own studio in 1932 and 1933, as he only returned to live in London full time in the autumn of 1933. In the autumn of 1933, Eric Allden noted in his diaries that de Maistre, newly back from extended stays in France, was intending to settle at 21 Moor Street: “He uses his room as a studio,” Allden wrote. It was only in April 1934 that de Maistre finally settled into more permanent space. Allden visited him at 104 Ebury Street and wrote that de Maistre “has got quite an attractive studio there.” De Maistre’s final, and best-known, studio was at 13 Eccleston Street.

The painting was titled New Atlantis: The second painting that de Maistre made of the space, New Atlantis of c. 1933, has exactly the same distinctive physical features as in the earlier painting: it is demonstrably the same space. What’s more, one of the central features of this New Atlantis painting (and of a subsequent one of the same space) is the large round mirror that Bacon designed, and that followed him all the way to his Reece Mews studio almost three decades later.

9 EARLY SUCCESS

The Tate Gallery did not purchase: www.tate.org.uk. As the Tate’s own gallery label of the painting noted, “This surprising flower painting by Picasso reveals a lot about the tastes of the Tate Gallery Trustees in the early twentieth century. In 1933 Picasso was already an established avant-garde artist, but the decision to buy this conservative early work shows that the Trustees were resisting the more radical developments in modern art.”

Kenneth Clark, the art historian: Clark, quoted in Nigel Vaux Halliday, More Than a Bookshop: Zwemmer’s and Art in the 20th Century (London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 1991), 11.

“About very modern”: Sydney Courtauld, letter to Rab Butler, November 26, 1925. Butler archive, Trinity College, Cambridge.

Located at 78 Charing Cross Road: Halliday, More Than a Bookshop, 12.

The ageing wooden shelves: Ibid., 10.

T. S. Eliot located: Ibid., 101.

Clark, who had become director: Ibid., 84–5.

Zwemmer himself usually had: Ibid., 52.

Clark later recalled: Ibid., 11.

When Zwemmer went to Paris: Ibid., 12.

At first, he intended: Heather Johnson, Roy de Maistre: The English Years (Roseville East, New South Wales: Craftsman House), 1995, 64.

The son of: Ibid., 89.

“Robert Wellington’s meticulously”: Ibid., 64.

In 1933: Ibid.

The two almost immediately: Ibid.

In 1932, the year: Halliday, More Than a Bookshop. Ibid.

He mounted the first: Ibid., 101–2. For more on Hamnett, see “Nine Hamnett,” www.npg.org.uk.

Art met the martini glass: Halliday, More Than a Bookshop, 101–2.

Like Wellington, he was exceptionally: John Richardson, interview with the authors, June 28, 2012.

“He was the most charming man”: Lindy Guinness, Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava, interview with Annalyn Swan, March 18, 2013.

“He knew all these young peers”: Richardson, interview with the authors, June 28, 2012.

When that gallery folded: Information on Mayor’s career in the 1920s comes from James Mayor, interview with Annalyn Swan, March 12, 2013.

The most significant: The following biographical information on Cooper comes from John Richardson, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: Picasso, Provence and Douglas Cooper (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 19–32.

Cooper had studied at the Sorbonne: Ibid.

He had already begun: Information on Cooper’s art collection comes from Richardson, interview with the authors.

Mayor, raised in France: “Classics,” Daily Express, February 21, 1933, Mayor Gallery archive.

The Daily Express dubbed: Ibid.

Mayor and Cooper selected: Not surprisingly, O’Rorke was included in Madge Garland’s The Indecisive Decade: The World of Fashion and Entertainment in the Thirties. (London: Macdonald, 1968), 61–3. Arundell Clarke may also have helped design the gallery space. Martin Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, vol. I (London: The Estate of Francis Bacon, 2016), 80.

The Daily Mail: “The Vermilion Lure,” Daily Mail, April 13, 1933.

The Daily Mail’s critic: P. G. Konody, “Gayest Art Show: Last Word in Modernism Presents a Puzzle,” Daily Mail, April 20, 1933.

The inaugural exhibition: Exhibition catalogue, Mayor Gallery archive, London.

Hanging beside: Ibid.

Affixed to the Hillier: “Too, Too Symbolic,” Daily Sketch, April 20, 1933.

Not only was Bacon: Tristram Hillier, born in 1905, was the only other artist under the age of thirty included in the inaugural show.

Personal connections: James Mayor confirmed his father’s close friendship with Roy de Maistre. Mayor, interview with Swan. De Maistre was also given his own one-man show at the Mayor Gallery in 1934. (Heather Johnson, Roy de Maistre: The English Years (Roseville East, New South Wales: Craftsman House, 1995) 70–1.

The most important link: Cooper had a large number of “country cousins” on his mother’s side. Richardson, interview with the authors.

Cooper even commissioned: Ibid.

In the summer of 1932: Eric Allden mentioned, in a diary entry of May 23, 1939, that Bacon and Cooper had been in Paris together at one point in the 1930s, and that Cooper had introduced Bacon there to the painter Pavel Tchelitchew. Estate of Francis Bacon archive.

Bacon “wanted success very badly”: Martin Harrison, “Diana Watson’s Diary,” in Inside Francis Bacon, Francis Bacon Studies III (London: The Estate of Francis Bacon Publishing, in association with Thames & Hudson, 2020), 78.

(In 1931, Diana observed): Harrison, “Diana Watson’s Diary,” 80.

The critic for The Times: “Art Exhibitions, The Mayor Gallery,” The Times, April 22, 1933. Mayor Gallery archives.

But Mayor was: Edward Crankshaw, “Art, Recent Paintings by English, French and German Artists at the Mayor Gallery, Ltd., 18, Cork Street, W.1.” Week End Review, April 29, 1933. Mayor Gallery archive.

Time and Tide reported: G. Raverat, Time and Tide, May 6, 1933.

The Observer thought: P. G. Konody, April 23, 1933.

Harper’s Bazaar described: June, 1933. Mayor Gallery archive.

Bacon was also attracted to: In her diary, Watson mentions that Bacon gave her a book on Bonnard. (In later years Bacon would also mention Bonnard with admiration.) See Harrison, “Watson’s Diary,” 75.

So was de Maistre: Figure by Bath is reproduced in Johnson, Roy de Maistre: The English Years.

The two artists possessed: Adrian Mibus, a London art dealer, wrote that Bacon and de Maistre shared a long-necked stuffed creature whose likeness would show up in the paintings of each. Mibus, letter of March 14, 1984 to Daniel Thomas at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, cited in Johnson, Ibid., 22–4.

Bacon in 1934 also made: Anne Baldassari, Bacon, Picasso: The Life of Images (Paris: Flammarion, 2005), 96.

Bacon studied them: Baldassari, Bacon, Picasso, 148.

This one—the so-called: As Baldassari points out, not only Bacon but de Maistre was inspired by Matthias Grünewald’s Crucifixion. Ibid., 134.

Six different Picasso drawings: Ibid.

Later that year: Eric Allden, diary, December 10, 1933.

He owned a book called: Harrison, “Watson’s Diary,” 73.

Following “Recent Paintings”: Mayor Gallery archive.

An energetic young man: Information on Read’s early life can be found at “Sir Herbert Read,” library.leeds.ac.uk.

Read was phenomenally prolific: Heather Johnson, Roy de Maistre, 68–70.

In the foreword he wrote: Herbert Read, Art Now: An Introduction to the Theory of Modern Painting and Sculpture (London: Faber and Faber, 1933). A copy of the original 1933 edition is in the Mayor Gallery archives.

Read made a remarkable: John Richardson wrote, in The Sorceror’s Apprentice, that it was Douglas Cooper, more than Herbert Read himself, who argued for Bacon’s early Crucifixion to be included in the show and reproduced in Art Now. Sorceror, 14.

The Art Now show opened: The information on the show comes from the Mayor Gallery archive.

Read’s book was: See Herbert Read, Art Now: An Introduction to the Theory of Modern Painting and Sculpture (London: Faber & Faber, 1933).

“London’s Strangest Art Show”: “By our Art Critic,” “London’s Strangest Art Show,” News Chronicle, Oct. 21, 1933.

The critic of the Sunday Times: Frank Rutter, “Gangster Art: A Hold-up in Cork Street,” Sunday Times, Oct. 15, 1933.

Geoffrey Grigson wrote in The Bookman: Geoffrey Grigson, “Henry Moore and Ben Nicholson,” The Bookman, November 4, 1933.

“Lunched at the Carlton and afterwards”: Eric Allden, diary, October 25, 1933. In the catalogue of the Art Now show, Bacon’s painting was titled Composition, not Crucifixion. The titles of Bacon’s early paintings were often changed, some multiple times.

The small reproduction: Richardson, The Sorceror’s Apprentice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 14.

“On the way home”: Ibid., 11–12.

And then: Sir Michael Sadler: John Russell, Francis Bacon (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1985), 17.

From 1911 to 1923: See Sir Michael Sadler, library.leeds.ac.uk.

At the time of the Mayor Gallery: Ibid.

Writing in The Spectator: John Piper, quoted in Tracey Hebron, “Sir Michael Sadler,” Memories of Barnsley, Winter, 2015, traceyhebron.co.uk.

“I’ve discovered a new painter”: Kenneth Clark: Clark, Another Part of the Wood: A Self-Portrait (London: Harper-Collins, 1975), 200, 201.

Eric Allden noted in his diary: Diary entry, Oct. 19, 1933.

On November 28, five weeks after: Ibid.

“For Bacon to engage”: John Russell, Francis Bacon (London: Thames & Hudson, 1993), 17.

Or perhaps Bacon dropped: The Mayor Gallery continued to promote the other artists who had exhibited with Bacon, including Roy de Maistre. Mayor Gallery archive. Also see Heather Johnson, Roy de Maistre: The English Years, 67-72. Another artist who benefited from the Mayor Gallery’s interest—and Douglas Cooper’s in particular—was Graham Sutherland, who met Cooper around 1936–37. In the next few years the gallery would sell some dozen of his watercolours and gouaches. See Roger Berthoud, Graham Sutherland: A Biography (London: Faber and Faber, 1982), 85. Interestingly, de Maistre was also dropped, over time, by the Mayor Gallery, and Patrick White named Cooper as his nemesis. De Maistre was a close friend of John Weyman, a one-time boyfriend of Cooper’s, which triggered intense jealousy in Cooper—a “lot of hate,” in White’s words. De Maistre’s ongoing friendship with Bacon might have been a factor as well. See Johnson, de Maistre, 72–4.

He began to refer: Richardson recalled the nickname “the alderman.” John Richardson, interview with the authors, June 28, 2012.

In April 1934: Eric Allden stopped by the gallery on April 7. Allden diary, April 8, 1934.

“He was an absolute”: Mayor, interview with Swan.

The feud with Bacon: Bacon reciprocated. Decades later, he refused to have anything to do with Cooper. Once, Cooper’s literary heir asked to interview Bacon about Cooper. Valerie Beston, Bacon’s longtime “minder” at the Marlborough Gallery, wrote a note that said, “FB does not want to reply. Hasn’t spoken to [Cooper] for 30 years.” Marlborough Gallery archive.

Later in 1934: Allden diary, July 29, 1934. Cooper’s treatment of Bacon’s desk was recalled by Richardson, interview with Mark Stevens, Mar. 3, 2008.

After he moved: Richardson, interview with the authors, June 28, 2012.

He spread it around: Richardson, The Sorceror’s Apprentice, 14.

To outsiders: Ibid.

But to his homosexual friends: Ibid.

Located on Curzon Street: Sunderland House was described in admiring detail in American newspaper accounts of rich Americans abroad. See “Duke and Duchess of Marlborough the First to Build a Palace on the Thoroughfare and Americans Follow,” The San Francisco Call, July 10, 1904.

In December 1930: “Trade Gets New Mansion,” New York Times, December 8, 1930. 7.

Arundell Clarke, a close friend: Madge Garland, The Indecisive Decade: The World of Fashion and Entertainment in the Thirties (London: Macdonald, 1968), 23–5.

Bacon and Hall: Allden diary, February 22, 1934.

He was torn between: Harrison, “Watson’s Diary,” 72.

Money was no object: Ibid., 71.

He included seven large: Martin Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon: Catalogue Raisonné (London: Estate of Francis Bacon, 2016), vol. I, 80.

Diana Watson immediately: Ronald Alley, ed., John Rothenstein, introduction, Francis Bacon: Catalogue Raisonné (London: Thames & Hudson, 1964); see also the second catalogue raisonné.

One was Composition (Figure): Allden, diary entry dated July 1, 1934.

John Russell later wrote: Russell, Francis Bacon, 17.

The exhibition seemed to Diana Watson: Harrison, “Watson’s Diary,” 71–2.

Like many people: Ibid., 71.

A friend, probably Allden: Ibid., 72.

He said, “I may never: Ibid.

The exhibition opened: Allden, diary entry, Feb. 22, 1934.

10 EARLY FAILURE

No one came: Martin Harrison, “Diana Watson’s Diary,” in Inside Francis Bacon, Francis Bacon Studies III (London: The Estate of Francis Bacon publishing, in association with Thames & Hudson, 2020), 72.

The Daily Mail: Martin Harrison, ed.; Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, vol. 2, 80.

The Times began: “Mr Francis Bacon,” The Times, February 16, 1934. Marlborough Gallery archive.

“Does it, as a matter of cold fact”: Ibid.

A week after the opening: Eric Allden, diary entry, February 22, 1934. The Estate of Francis Bacon archive.

Skeaping was well-established: “John Skeaping,” www.sculptured.gla.ac.uk.

Allden reported: Eric Allden, diary entry, February 22, 1934. The Estate of Francis Bacon archive.

Allden could not get accustomed: Ibid.

Eventually, Allden asked: Ibid, July 1, 1934.

“I cannot wait till”: Ibid.

Once, during the course: Harrison, “Watson’s Diary,” 71.

After the show closed: Ibid.

He regretted its loss: John Russell, John Russell, Francis Bacon (London: Thames & Hudson, 1985), 17.

Diana reported “flaming forms”: Harrison, “Watson’s Diary,” 72.

She did not immediately: Ibid.

He was now taking: Ibid., 78.

His relationship with Eric: Ibid., 77.

Bacon mentioned to Diana: Ibid., 77.

And in late 1932 or early 1933: John MacDermot, quoted in Anthony Bond, ed., Francis Bacon: Five Decades, exhibition catalogue (Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2000), 35.

The Butlers were redecorating: Papers of Richard Austen Butler, Trinity College, Cambridge: RAB.

A friend wrote Sydney a letter: Letter of Doreen, Lady Brabourne, to Sydney Courtauld Butler, July, 8, 1934. Ibid.

The writer—probably Madge Garland: There is no identification of the publication or writer of the article that Bacon sent his mother. But it depicts the Butlers’ dining room as described by Patrick White, who later bought the furniture. Bacon designed an impressively large glass table for the Butlers with a heavy top that rested on a base of two parallel chrome bars and legs. But the chrome base was off-centre, giving to the table the effect of floating glass. Instead of chairs, Bacon’s dining room featured the same laminated, backless stools that he had shown in his Queensberry Mews showroom. They were, in turn, close in design to ones produced by Eileen Gray. See Bond, ed., Francis Bacon: Five Decades, 36. Ianthe Knott kindly provided the article.

In the autumn of 1934: Bacon’s desire to leave London and move to Berlin indefinitely was probably precipitated by the knowledge that he would have to leave his studio at 71 Royal Hospital Road, a studio he was unlikely to give up by choice. Diana recorded that he moved out of the studio in late October and departed for Berlin in early November 1934. Payment of rates for 71 Royal Hospital Road remained in Arundell Clarke’s deceased father’s name through 1935. No doubt his son kept paying the rates in the building after his father’s death: the family may well have had a long lease on it. But as Clarke’s focus turned towards New York, he no longer needed the property and probably turned over the property to someone else at the beginning of 1935.

Bacon now sometimes spoke: Harrison, “Watson’s Diary,” 78.

As early as December, 1933: Ibid., 81.

In the spring of 1934: Ibid., 82.

(It would be awful): Ibid., 81.

“Amid the clatter of Hitlerism: Ibid.

At the end of October, 1934: Ibid., 82.

He planned to stay: Ibid., 82.

It was not long, however: Ibid., 78. Watson has an entry from 1934, in which a month is not listed, that reports: “He’s decided to settle in London again and look for a flat.” If Bacon left for Berlin in early November, Watson’s entry date of 1934 suggests that he was back by the turn of the new year in 1935 unless there was an extended and unreported trip from earlier in 1934. By March 1935, Bacon was moving from room to room without a long-term address.

In March 1935: Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, vol. I, 80–1.

She was sometimes “in a temper”: Harrison, “Watson’s Diary,” 81.

Such a life: Ibid., 78.

Now, reported Diana: Ibid.

It was during 1935: Sophie Pretorius, “A Pathological Painter: Francis Bacon and the control of suffering,” in Inside Francis Bacon, Francis Bacon Studies III (London: The Estate of Francis Bacon publishing, in association with Thames & Hudson, 2020), 165.

She had first known him: Harrison, “Watson’s Diary,” 76.

Then, when he determined: Ibid.

“I had become convinced: Ibid., 81.

She possessed a photograph: Ibid., 79.

By 1935, Bacon was telling: Ibid., 78.

No doubt Francis regaled her: Ibid., 79.

He said something revealing: Ibid., 77.

During the 1930s: Michael Peppiatt, Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma (London: Constable and Robinson, 2008), 30.

The year before, after returning from Berlin: Harrison, “Watson’s Diary,” 78.

Earlier in the decade: The Hall family moved from Ormonde Gate to 4, Tennyson Mansions, in 1931, a short walk from Ormonde Gate.

It was probably late in 1935: Diana Watson reported Bacon hard at work in a studio at that time of year. Harrison, ed., “Watson’s Diary,” 74.

The building was on: Molly Craven, quoted in Daniel Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993), 37. Craven lived below Bacon at 1 Glebe Place.

Hall probably arranged: Ibid. Molly Craven recalled taking weekly rent to Bacon. Research by James Norton indicated that the London rate books of 1936 list Bacon’s name at 1 Glebe Place, which suggested that he was more than a tenant passing through. In the 1950s, while he was in Tangier, he wrote to Denis Wirth-Miller that he was being sued over Glebe Place, an indication that he held a lease of at least twenty years. “I am being sued for dilapidations for about 1200 pounds for the home I had in Chelsea and assigned the lease to a house agent like a fool I didn’t go to a solicitor and I have been taken for a big ride as he has been screwing the rents from the house for 11 years and now refuses to pay the dilapidation and the landlords have the right to come down on me,” he wrote. Bacon, undated [1957] letter to Wirth-Miller from Tangier, quoted in Jon Lys Turner, The Visitor’s Book: In Francis Bacon’s Shadow: The Lives of Richard Chopping and Denis Wirth-Miller (London: Constable, 2016), 185.

Offered the chance to lease: Harrison, “Watson’s Diary,” 82.

Diana said Francis lived: Ibid., 78.

In early October 1935: Ibid., 74.

Francis was interested in the idea: Ibid., 73, 74.

He imagined “a party”: Ibid., 74.

He even quoted Nietzsche: Ibid.

Mollie saw many “river-and-leaves”: Craven, in Farson, The Gilded Gutter. 38–9.

Craven also vividly remembered: Ibid., 38.

In 1925, at the suggestion: Johnson, Roy de Maistre: The English Years, 65. For Roger Fry’s pivotal role, see: London-artists-association, www.artbiogs.co.uk/2/societies.

In 1934, Roy de Maistre: Much of the information on the collective and the artists chosen to participate comes from Johnson, ibid., 64-67, unless otherwise noted. See also Roger Berthoud, Graham Sutherland, a biography (London: Faber and Faber, 1982), 84–6.

The organizers kept detailed records: Johnson, Roy de Maistre, 64-67.

In the end, money was difficult: Johnson, Roy de Maistre, 67, and Berthoud, Graham Sutherland, 86.

Important surrealist shows: John Russell, “In 1936 Surrealism Ruled the Creative Roost,” The New York Times, March 30, 1986, 25.

The idea for a London show: Berthoud, Sutherland, 83.

According to Penrose, Gascoyne: Sir Roland Penrose, interview with Roger Berthoud, July, 1980, quoted in Berthoud, Sutherland, 83.

Eventually, they selected about four hundred works: The final number was around 390, according to the International Surrealist Bulletin, no. 4. The original catalogue listed 392.

Picasso (the surrealist flirt): Berthoud, Sutherland, 83.

Breton wrote the preface: Ibid. For more on Herbert Read’s introduction, see Hugh Davies, Francis Bacon: The Early and Middle Years 1928–1958 (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1978), 32.

On opening day: The Surrealist Exhibition, www.luxonline.org.uk/histories/1900-1949.

Dalí gave a talk: London International Surrealists Exhibition, www.historytoday.com/archive/months-past.

Penrose found his work: Penrose, quoted from an interview conducted in March 29, 1973, by Hugh Davies. Bacon spoke quite bitterly about his exclusion in later years. See Davies, Francis Bacon: The Early and Middle Years, 32, 33.

But Penrose also saw: Penrose probably saw Abstraction from the Human Form.

He may also have seen: Abstraction, in ibid., 140.

Penrose later explained: Davies, Francis Bacon, 32, 176fn.

Bacon informed friends: Craven, quoted in Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life, 38.

At a time when: Ronald Blythe, The Age of Illusion: England in the Twenties and Thirties (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1964), 160.

One was to the art dealer: Ivan Hall confirmed his father’s friendship with Geoffrey Agnew. Ivan Hall described Agnew’s as a “gentlemanly business which tried to treat artists in the best possible way.” Heather Johnson, Roy de Maistre: The English Years, 100.

Located on Old Bond Street: See “History,” www.agnewsgallery.com.

Agnew’s occasionally organized: Johnson, Roy de Maistre: The English Years, 97–8.

All expenses: Ibid.

The distinguished lineup: Richard Kingzett, “An Exhibition That Failed,” Burlington Magazine, August 1992, 499–502.

Hall also brought in: Johnson, Roy de Maistre: The English Years, 98.

Of the eleven artists included: Ibid., 65–7.

On the favourable side: Unsigned articles in The New English Review and the Jewish Chronicle; L.B.P, “Encouraging Artists, Helpful Movement in London, Present-day Dangers,” Birmingham Mail, January 13, 1937. All of the newspaper articles are taken from the Mayor Gallery archive.

Under the headline “Nonsense Art”: Pierre Jeannerat, Daily Mail.

Far more damaging than: Frank Rutter, “A New Idiom? Abstraction at Agnew’s,” The Sunday Times, January 17, 1937.

On the invitation itself, Hall had written: Kingzett, “An Exhibition that Failed,” Burlington Magazine.

So vexing did Hall: Eric Hall, “A New Idiom in Painting,” letter to the Sunday Times, January 24, 1937. Sent from The Bath Club, Hall’s club.

It was purchased by Diana: Bacon, quoted in Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, vol. 2, 136.

At one point: Ibid.

The caption under an illustration: “The title of these three pictures, reading from left to right, are ‘Abstraction from the Human Form,’ ‘Abstraction’ and ‘The Sculptor.’ But, as this is Nonsense art, you might just as well read from the right to left. Prices are from 12 to 45 guineas. That’s more nonsense.” The Referee, January 17, 1937.

Only two of the thirty-five: Johnson, Roy de Maistre: The English Years, 102.

The buyer of the de Maistre: Ibid.

At the private view: Harrison, “Watson’s Diary,” 75.

Hall himself was not demonstative: Ibid., 78.

Hall’s weakness for gambling: Eric Allden and Roy de Maistre both commented on how worried they were that Hall was leading Bacon astray with gambling. Allden diary, April 8, 1934.

One time in the mid-to-late 1930s: Michael Peppiatt, Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma (London: Constable & Robinson, 2008), 101.

Throughout the 1930s and well into: Research into Eric Hall’s background by James Norton, including written records of Eric Hall’s many positions on the London County Council. For the Justice of the Peace title, also see David Sylvester, Looking Back at Francis Bacon (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2000), 254.

Bacon even hosted: See Heather Johnson, Roy de Maistre: The English Years (Roseville East, New South Wales: Craftsman House, 1995), 28–9.

As a child: Caroline de Mestre Walker, interview with Annalyn Swan, October 18, 2013.

Most members: Ibid.

“Eric Hall was fashionable”: Ianthe Knott, interviews with Mark Stevens, March 5 and 6, 2008.

“I remember de Valera”: Knott, interview with Stevens.

The deed for Straffan Lodge: Information on the house deeds comes from Marcus Beresford, 7th Baron Decies, a subsequent owner of Straffan Lodge. Email to Annalyn Swan, July 29, 2011.

Granny Supple had placed: Ibid.

Granny also left: Ibid.

“A friend of my mother’s”: Knott, interview with Stevens.

“When we went back”: Ibid.

The Old Rectory, later placed: See The Old Rectory A Grade 11 Listed Building in Bardford Peverall, Dorset, britishlistedbuildings.co.uk.

“He was very, very keen”: Knott, interview with Stevens.

Bacon’s mother regularly sent: Mollie Craven recalled the “constant deliveries of fruit and game,” at 1 Glebe Place. Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life, 37.

On December 10, 1933: Allden diary, December 10, 1933.

Ianthe believed the Major: Knott, interview with Stevens.

Ianthe remembered tramping: Ibid.

“We came up”: Ibid.

The table was sloppy: Mollie Craven, Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life, 39.

“It didn’t look very comfortable”: Knott interview with Stevens. The following quotations come from this interview.

“Mrs Bacon drove us”: Allden diary, April 1936.

Bacon chafed: Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life, 20.

Their mother: Knott, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena documentary.

Bacon later claimed: Mollie Craven recalled that “he seemed to be working all the time.” Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life, 37.

And Eric Allden recorded: Allden diary, May 23, 1939.

Once, when Bacon was ill: Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life, 39.

11 BREAKDOWNS

“Roy’s relationships with either sex”: Patrick White, Flaws in the Glass: A Self-Portrait (New York: The Viking Press, 1981), 63.

To White’s regret: Two different versions exist of de Maistre’s and White’s early relationship. In his memoir, Flaws in the Glass, White wrote that he and de Maistre, after the “initial skirmishes,” never had an affair. But in David Marr’s biography, Marr wrote that they briefly had a physical relationship and quotes White as saying, “[De Maistre] himself was trying to recover from something unhappy, but said that in any case an intimate relationship of ours wouldn’t have worked because he was twenty years older. It wouldn’t have worked either. We were both too irritable and unyielding.” Marr, Patrick White: A Life (New York: Vintage Books, 1991).

De Maistre had not yet recovered: His affair with Robert Wellington had ended in the early autumn of 1935, not long after White arrived in London from Cambridge. Heather Johnson, Roy de Maistre: The English Years (Roseville East, New South Wales: Craftsman House, 1995), 67.

But a “fruitful, lasting”: White, Flaws iin the Glass, 63.

Not long after they met: White’s inheritance has been reported at £10,000. See “Patrick White,” nobelprize.org.

White came from a background: Ibid. All of the early biographical detail and quotations from White in the following pages comes from White, Flaws in the Glass, 57–63.

Douglas Cooper, said White: Ibid.

White “did not dare”: Ibid.

Bacon “opened my eyes”: Ibid.

“I like to remember”: Ibid.

White, like some critics of the times: Marr, Patrick White, 169.

Calling it “the best desk”: Patrick White, letter to James Soby, July 3, 1962, written from “Dogwoods,” Coach Hill, New South Wales, Australia. Museum of Modern Art, New York archive, Soby papers, JTS, 1.21. All of the information on the furniture comes from this letter.

“In his dedication to painting”: White, Flaws in the Glass, 63.

Among intellectuals, by mid-decade: Blythe, The Age of Illusion: England in the Twenties and Thirties (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1964), 109.

The Spanish Civil War particularly: Stephen Spender, World Within World: The Autobiography of Stephen Spender (New York: The Modern Library, 2001), 370–9.

White found Spender: White, Flaws in the Glass, 63.

Spender later wrote: Spender, World Within World, 370–9.

In April 1937: See “Guernica: Testimony of War,” www.pbs.org/treasuresoftheworld.

The completed painting—a powerful piece: Gijs van Hensbergen, Guernica: The Biography of a Twentieth-century Icon (London: Bloomsbury, 2004), 63.

The German-language guide: Ibid., 72.

Guernica arrived in London: Johnson, Roy de Maistre: The English Years, 113.

The principal organizer: Beech and Stephens, eds., Picasso and Modern British Art, 162–3.

Two years before: Herbert Read, “The Triumph of Picasso,” The Listener XV, no. 385 (May 27, 1936).

Not surprisingly: Nigel Vaux Halliday, More Than a Bookshop: Zwemmer’s and Art in the 20th Century (London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 1991), 135.

It was the second showing: Jan Hensbergen, Guernica, 95.

The painting created: Helen Little, “Picasso in Britain 1937–1939,” in Beech and Stephens, eds., Picasso and Modern British Art, 162–3.

It was “a reminder”: van Hensbergen, Guernica, 106.

Bacon would later become: Bacon, in David Sylvester, Looking Back at Francis Bacon (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2000), 244.

Twenty minutes later: Leonard Mosley, Backs to the Wall: London Under Fire 1939–45 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971), 17.

By order of the National Service: “Conscription: The Second World War,” www.parliament.uk.

Eric Hall, as an alderman: Eric Hall’s official title was Acting Superintendent of the ARP (Air Raid Precautions) Depot, Chelsea. He was also a member of the British Red Cross Service. Martin Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, vol. I (London: Estate of Francis Bacon, 2016), 81. Hall’s wife, Barbara, who was a nurse, also played an important role in the Red Cross. Margaret Fenton, interview with Annalyn Swan, July 5, 2011.

To ensure that the officials: Bacon’s sleeping with a German shepherd dog the night before his physical is a well and often-told tale about Bacon. See Michael Peppiatt, Anatomy of an Enigma (London: Constable & Robinson, 2008), 101.

Bacon served honourably: Bacon in Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon, 188.

Bacon never indicated: John Minton was a declared pacifist—see Frances Spalding, John Minton: Dance Till the Stars Come Down (Aldershot, Hants: Hodder & Stoughton, 1991), 48. He later joined the Pioneer Corps. Keith Vaughan was another conscientious objector; he later joined the St John Ambulance service. Alan Ross, introduction, in Keith Vaughan, Journals 1939–1977 (London: John Murray, 1989).

Or he might have applied: Roger Berthoud, Graham Sutherland (London: Faber and Faber, 1982), 95.

Graham Sutherland and Henry Moore: Ibid., 100.

He first served: Bacon was listed in the National Register in September 1939 as an artist living at 1 Glebe Place and “serving in the Red Cross.” Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, vol. I, 81.

On September 8, 1939: Eric Allden diary, September 8, 1939.

That Bacon was working: Conscription began with twenty- to twenty-three-year-olds and went up from there. Bacon, almost thirty, would most probably have been in a third wave of the draft, or even later. As the BBC noted, “Men aged 20 to 23 were required to register by 21 October 1939—the start of a long and drawn-out process of registration by age group.” “World War Two,” www.bbc.co.uk.

On their heads: “Steel Helmet, MKII: British Army,” iwm.org.uk.

Stephen Spender was a fireman: Lara Feigel, The Love-charm of Bombs: Restless Lives in the Second World War (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013), 7. For Sonia Orwell’s war experiences, see Hilary Spurling, The Girl from the Fiction Department: A Portrait of Sonia Orwell (Berkeley: Counterpoint Press, 2004), 42–7.

Diana Watson joined: Allden diary, January 7, 1942.

Roy de Maistre served: Ibid., January 13, 1943.

Early on: Mosley, Backs to the Wall, 15.

“Rents had dropped”: Theodora FitzGibbon, With Love (London: Century Publishing, 1982), 53.

“Back in London”: White, Flaws in the Glass, 76–7.

Hall was busy: Margaret Fenton, for one, recalled Hall’s wife’s nursing job. Fenton, interview with Annalyn Swan, July 5, 2011.

Ianthe, at war’s outbreak: Knott, interview with Stevens.

But in 1942: Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, vol. I, 82.

Her younger sister Winifred: Knott, interview with Stevens.

Patrick White joined: White, Flaws in the Glass, 126–7.

Thickly drawn curtains: Feigel, The Love-charm of Bombs, 1.

As the writer William Sansom: William Sansom, The Blitz: Westminster at War (London: Faber & Faber, 2010), 49.

“Overhead, searchlights”: J. B. Priestley broadcasts, David Welch, World War II Propaganda: Analyzing the Art of Persuasion (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 2017), 23–5.

“Waiting, always waiting”: FitzGibbon, With Love, 25.

The Major suffered from: Knott, interview with Stevens.

“I did go home”: Ibid.

He had witnessed: Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, vol. I, 82.

Eric Hall made the arrangements: Ibid.

“I hope you are not”: Diana Watson, letter of June 3, 1940, to Bacon. The letter was discovered by Martin Harrison in the course of researching the Catalogue Raisonné. The authors are indebted to Harrison for providing them with a copy of the letter.

“About a day before he died”: Francis Bacon in Peppiatt, Francis Bacon, 99.

Bacon’s mother implored: Ibid.

“You know, there were thirteen years”: Ianthe Knott, interview for Adam Low, director, Francis Bacon, Arena documentary, BBC Four archives, March 19, 2005.

Bacon did not report: Peppiatt, Francis Bacon, 99.

Accordingly, A. E. M. Bacon was cremated: Knott interview, Francis Bacon, Arena.

The Major’s estate amounted: England and Wales, National Probate Calendar, July 22, 1940.

During the Battle of Dunkirk: Mosley, Backs to the Wall, 43.

Three days later, Marshal Petain: Ibid.

Faculty members at art schools: Spurling, The Girl from the Fiction Department, 37.

At the Mayor Gallery: Mayor Gallery archives.

The final hurrah at Zwemmer’s: Halliday, More Than a Bookshop, 159–60, quoting from the Daily Sketch of June 14, 1940.

Using their “characteristic”: Ibid.

The Times observed: Ibid., 160–1, quoting from The Times, June 14, 1940.

For an asthmatic: Paul Brass, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

On the afternoon: Peter Stansky, The First Day of the Blitz: September 7, 1940 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007), 1. There had been sporadic earlier attacks from the air. But the true Blitz began on September 7.

Hermann Göring, commander-in-chief: Mosley, Backs to the Wall, 94.

Thousands were in the streets: Ibid., 98–104.

About 430 people: Ibid., 121. The 1,600 wounded comes from this account as well.

Heavy bombs fell: Stansky, First Day of the Blitz, 68.

One resident of Chelsea: Ibid.

Bacon was a driver: A copy of his driver’s licence is reproduced as an unpaginated insert in Majid Boustany, ed., Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation (Monaco: Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation, 2015).

Each typically began: For a detailed description of the incendiary bombs and the high-explosive bombs, see David Johnson, The London Blitz: The City Ablaze (New York: Stein and Day, 1981), 79–80. As Johnson wrote of the big bombs: “The blast from these bombs had a psychological, almost super-natural, aspect that went far beyond their capabilities for physical destruction. Shock waves could derail a train or wrench the steering wheel right out of a bus driver’s grasp, as though an evil hand had come out of nowhere to wreak havoc among the unsuspecting.”

“I mean, one’s lived”: Francis Bacon, interview for Richard Cork, presenter, BBC’s Kaleidoscope, Radio 4, August 17, 1991. It was his last broadcast interview. Leonard Mosley described the after-shocks felt by one woman who was on an ambulance team. She “had been coming home day after day from the ambulance station with her hair and clothes covered in blood and a series of horrifying experiences with bomb-victims so much on her mind that she had felt compelled to unburden for hour after hour.” Mosley, Backs to the Wall, 187.

In Digging for Mrs Miller: John Strachey, Digging for Mrs Miller: Some Experiences of an Air-Raid Warden (New York: Random House, 1941), 94, 83, 37–8.

“London became a city”: Feigel, The Love-charm of Bombs, 4.

He found the visual drama: Janetta Parladé, interview with Annalyn Swan, November 2, 2017.

Evelyn Waugh wrote: Feigel, The Love-charm of Bombs, 48, quoting Evelyn Waugh, Officers and Gentlemen.

But Bacon began: Anne Dunn, interview with the authors, July 26, 2010.

“It was like running”: Strachey, Digging for Mrs Miller, 20, 83.

In the aftermath of an attack: John Rothenstein, Brave Day Hideous Night. Autobiography 1939–1965 (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1966), 116.

About two weeks into the Blitz: Since the ARP photograph of Bacon dates to 1943, he either continued to have some relationship with his Chelsea unit, or else, and more likely, served in the Red Cross at the beginning of the war and in Air Raid Precautions later. The Catalogue Raisonné states that Bacon was “invalided out” of the ARP in 1943. Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, vol. I, 82.

Hall first came: Diana Keast, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena documentary, BBC Four archive, March 19, 2005.

Keast was now: Ibid.

In January 1940: Ken Keast, letter to his future wife, Diana, dated January 18, 1940. “That evening an old friend rang me up and took me out to ‘Whose taking liberty’, a slightly patriotic, but quite amusing, satirical pantomime and to a grand supper at the Café Royal. My friend is on the Education Committee of the L.C.C. and his wife was once at Bedales, so I had to tell him a lot about it all,” wrote Keast. The authors are indebted to James Norton for a copy of the letters that Diana Keast provided to Arena.

Nine months later: Diana Keast, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

Bacon went to see: Bacon, letter of September 22, 1940, to Frederic Meier, headmaster, Bedales. Correspondence between Bacon and Meier courtesy of Bedales school archive.

Bacon agreed to lease: Ibid. Bacon letter to Meier, September 27, 1940.

“I am sure”: Ibid. Bacon letter of September 22, 1940.

He moved: Ibid. Bacon letter of September 27, 1940. In another letter to his future wife, dated October 18, 1940, Ken Keast wrote, “Did you know that a friend of Eric Hall’s had taken it? Eric Hall … was down for the week-end with his son, Ivan, whom I once took skiing. I had a very pleasant evening, though they insisted on discussing Bedales a lot.”

12 WILDERNESS

The cottage was set apart: Diana Keast, interview for Adam Low, director, Francis Bacon, Arena documentary, BBC Four archive, March 19, 2005. The other details about the cottage come from this interview.

On one such visit: Ibid. The quotations in this paragraph come from the Arena interview.

“He was extremely kind”: Ibid.

They supposed Hall: Ibid.

He would become, in 1943 and 1944: Information on Eric Hall’s years with the London County Council comes from the research of James Norton for the authors.

Even school life in Steep: Diana Keast, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

It was twelve: Bacon’s letter of September 28, 1929 to Eric Allden, which Allden quoted in his diaries, was written by someone who felt that the nature outside the door was threatening.

He or Nanny: The village store at the time was “quite adequate,” as Diana Keast recalled.

The coast was less: See “Timeline for the 1930s,” www.bedales.org.uk.

He could not abide: Bacon, quoted in Michael Peppiatt, Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma (London: Constable & Robinson, 2008), 102.

Bacon hardly ever spoke: In his extended interviews with Bacon while researching his dissertation, Hugh Davies managed to elicit from Bacon that he spent 1941 and 1942 in a cottage at Petersfield, Hampshire “and did a little painting.” Hugh Davies, Francis Bacon: The Early and Middle Years, 1928–1958 (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1978), 42.

The only visible contemporary art: Kenneth Clark was in charge of employing wartime artists. See Roger Berthoud, Graham Sutherland (London: Faber and Faber, 1982), 95, 99.

Later, Bacon said he might never: Bacon, quoted in John Russell, Francis Bacon (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1993), 20.

The library at Bedales: See www.bedales.org.uk.

Bacon was already well read: At the time of his death, seven books by Nietzsche were found in his studio and bedsit, including Human, All-Too-Human, Part One from The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, published in 1924. He clearly continued to replace lost volumes. His copy of Beyond Good and Evil was printed in 1990, two years before he died.

“In his fondness”: Martin Hammer, Francis Bacon and Nazi Propaganda (London: Tate Publishing, 2012), 131.

“We shall fight”: This was one of Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s most-repeated rallying cries during the Second World War. It came from a speech he delivered to the House of Commons on June 4, 1940, right after the evacuation of Dunkirk.

Yeats was an admirer: See Otto Bohlmann, Yeats and Nietzsche: An Exploration of Major Nietzschean Echoes in the Writings of William Butler Yeats (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1982).

In “The Second Coming”: Bacon, quoted in Richard Cork, presenter, A Man Without Illusions, BBC Radio Three, May 16, 1985.

Bacon admired Eliot’s play: Bacon, quoted in Peppiatt, Francis Bacon, 109.

Stephen Spender wrote: Stephen Spender, World Within World: The Autobiography of Stephen Spender (New York: The Modern Library, 2001), 370–9.

The impact of Nietzsche on Bacon: Lucian Freud, quoted in John Rothenstein, Time’s Thievish Progress (London: Cassell, 1970), 82–91.

Nietzsche “told us it’s all”: Bacon, quoted in “Francis Bacon: Remarks from an Interview with Peter Beard,” Francis Bacon: Recent Paintings 1968–1974 (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art catalogue, 1975), 20.

He probably did not: John Russell, Francis Bacon (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1993), 20.

Bacon was particularly excited: Martin Hammer explored at length Bacon’s fascination with Nazi imagery during World War II. As he wrote, “Bacon seems to have been almost unique among ambitious, progressively minded artists of the period in choosing, independently of any external requirements, to make Hitler and Nazi Germany one of the principal subjects of his art.” Hammer, Francis Bacon and Nazi Propaganda, 7.

Picture Post published: Ibid., 42.

Photographs stimulated: John Russell explored in detail how Bacon used photographs as a primary source but then transmogrified them into images that were almost always unrecognizable when compared to the original “source.” Russell, Francis Bacon, 56–71.

“Photographs are not only”: David Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1987), 30.

Bacon later said, “I think it’s the slight”: Ibid.

Even before the war: Patrick White, quoted in David Marr, Patrick White: A Life (London: Vintage, 1991), 169.

“Man is a rope”: Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, Prologue 4.

“I think the only thing”: David Sylvester, Looking Back at Francis Bacon (London: Thames & Hudson, 2000), 232.

The four pictures that survived: Daniel Farson noted that Bacon’s early paintings in the 1940s were done on Sundlea wood-fibre board, since canvas was so scarce during the war. Far from a hardship, Bacon found that the board’s absorbency suited him: it was so absorbent that he was initially put off, after the war, by the different texture of primed canvas. It was only after he was once forced to use the unprimed side of canvas—he had run out of new canvas and needed a surface to paint on—that he found, by accident, that the reverse side held the paint better. Daniel Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon (New York: Pantheon, 1993), 87–8.

The most finished of the figural: Bacon was already fascinated by open mouths: he himself cited, again and again, the early book on mouth diseases that he had bought in Paris during his stay there. And the open mouth and rows of teeth echo the more benign ones that had previously appeared in Bacon’s “surreal” painting of 1936, Abstraction from the Human Form.

Here, perhaps for the first time: It also marks the first appearance in Bacon’s art of a representational figure. The earlier, Picasso-inspired figures in the paintings of 1933–34 were far more abstract.

The genesis of the image: A decade after Man in a Cap was painted, the American art historian and writer Sam Hunter visited Bacon’s studio and created several photographic montages of the images he found there. Two were from the same issue of the Picture Post (July 13, 1940). See Sam Hunter, “Francis Bacon: The Anatomy of Horror,” Magazine of Art, January 1952, 11–15.

Bacon depicted Hitler’s: The painting on the verso side of Man Standing is Seated Man. They are painted on the same composition board as Man in a Cap and are roughly the same dimensions.

Bacon did not regard such paintings: In many ways, Seated Man anticipates Bacon’s famous “Men in Blue” series of the 1950s, in which similarly seated and faceless male figures are portrayed against a dark, indeterminate and forbidding interior. But here the figure is much more terrifying. The body, in its formal suit, is massive—possibly referring again to the photograph of Hermann Göring, with his bull-like chest. And instead of a face and head there is a “gaping blackness,” as Ronald Alley described it in his 1964 catalogue raisonné. The black void where the head should be also suggests a dark hood thrown over the figure—just as executioners cover the head of the accused before a hanging or a firing squad. Incongruously, Bacon included a hanging tassel that appeared in a photograph of Hitler that was also found in his studio—a motif that would appear again and again in his later paintings. While not nearly as unsettling as Man in a Cap, Man Standing is a direct forerunner of the half-human, half-beast creatures that populated Bacon’s paintings of the late 1940s. Bacon would continue to work through the same motifs and images, in fact, for the rest of the decade.

Landscape with Colonnade: The rally photo ran in the same issue of the Picture Post, in July 1940, as the lineup of Nazi leaders that Bacon used for other paintings. Chris Stephens, cited in Hammer, Francis Bacon and Nazi Propaganda, 63.

A moment came in the summer: Frederic Meier, letter to Bacon, August 4, 1941. Bedales school archive.

But then what was: Ibid. “I feel much more hopeful tonight,” wrote Meier to Bacon on August 19, 1941.

In early February 1943: Bacon, letter to Sutherland in Martin Hammer, Bacon and Sutherland (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 234.

He was thirty-nine: Much of Sutherland’s early success can be attributed to Kenneth Clark’s promotion. Clark was himself a wunderkind of the art world: he became the director of Oxford’s august Ashmolean Museum at twenty-seven and the director of the National Gallery by the age of thirty. He liked Sutherland so much that he invited Graham and his wife, Kathy, to live with his family outside of London when the Second World War was declared. Roger Berthoud, Graham Sutherland: A Biography (London: Faber and Faber, 1982), 95.

Bacon knew Sutherland: See Ch. 11, “Early Failure.”

Its author, W. B. Stanford: For a short biographical note on Stanford, see “W. B. Stanford,” www.ricorso.net. All of the following biographical information comes from this source.

From the opening sentence: W. B. Stanford, Aeschylus in His Style (Dublin: Dublin University Press, 1942), 1.

Throughout the book: Ibid., 87.

His “untutored genius”: Ibid., 14.

He had instead: Ibid., 60.

“At best,” wrote Stanford: Ibid., 61.

Stanford quoted Aristotle’s famous: Ibid., 13.

Stanford, Bacon later said: Bacon, quoted in Cork, A Man Without Illusions.

“One is reminded”: Stanford, Aeschylus in His Style, 65–6.

13 GOOD BOYS AND BAD

A terraced town house: The attached town houses on Cromwell Place are quite grand. The information on Millais’s residency there comes from Alyson Wilson, “Housed in Art History—Part I,” Art Quarterly, Spring 1994, 23–5.

E. O. Hoppé: Ibid.

Cecil Beaton called: Ibid.

Another fashionable photographer: Alyson Wilson, “Housed in Art History—Part II,” Art Quarterly, Winter 1996, 25–9.

In 1943, Bacon leased: Bacon told David Sylvester that the “whole of the roof of Millais’s studio had been blown in, and the room I painted in was never built as a studio. It was an enormous billiard room, like the Edwardians often used to have at the backs of their houses.” David Sylvester, Looking Back at Francis Bacon (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1987), 189. However, E. O. Hoppé wrote in his autobiography that he relished using Millais’s former studio, which he said was on the ground floor. So while the room’s earliest origins may well have been as a billiards room, it had long since become a studio. The confusion probably stems from the fact that there was a smaller second studio on the floor above the ground floor that Millais used for “artificial light work.” It was no doubt this smaller studio that was damaged by bombs during the Second World War. Bacon stored abandoned paintings in the basement. Robert Buhler, his artist friend and the next tenant after him, found the paintings and eventually sold them.

On the floor above: Wilson, “Housed in Art History—Part II.”

The front: Bacon, letter to Colin Anderson from Monte Carlo, October 9, 1947, quoted in Adrian Clarke, “Francis Bacon’s Correspondence with Sir Colin Anderson,” The British Art Journal VIII, no. 1 (Summer 2007), 39–43.

There was also a bedroom: Ibid.

Nanny Lightfoot each night: Michael Wishart, among others, noted that Nanny Lightfoot slept in the kitchen. Michael Wishart, High Diver (London: Blond and Briggs, 1977), 61–4.

Margaret Fenton, who met: Margaret Fenton, interview with Annalyn Swan, February 17, 2009.

Bacon was still nominally: Martin Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, vol. I (London: Estate of Francis Bacon, 2016), 82.

Messerschmitt: Leonard Mosley, Backs to the Wall: London Under Fire 1939–45 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971), 296.

After the death: Eric Allden’s diaries report that, as per Diana Watson, Mrs Bacon and her younger daughter Winifred were still living in Bradford Peverell in January 1942. Allden diary, January 7, 1942. The Estate of Francis Bacon archive.

But the house became: In January 1946, Bacon asked Eric Allden if Allden could “introduce [Bacon’s] mother to any people as she doesn’t know many people in London.” Diary, January 12, 1946. Mrs Bacon probably moved to London sometime in 1945. Allden recorded the address elsewhere as 12 Grenville Place.

“Winnie at the age”: Allden diary, January 7, 1942.

“When we left Dorset”: Ianthe Knott, interviews with Mark Stevens, March 5 and 6, 2008.

A shipment of family: Janetta Parladé, interview with Annalyn Swan, November 2, 2017. Parladé kept the embossed serving spoon until her death. She died on July 4, 2018.

He was also prepared: In a letter of February 20, 1948, to Colin Anderson, Bacon wrote, “I have been trying to sell the furniture but I have not been able to get the offer of a reasonable price as they all say it is too big.” Clarke, “Francis Bacon’s Correspondence with Colin Anderson,” British Art Journal.

“The dowdy chintz”: Wishart, High Diver, 61–4.

Two large Waterford: Ibid. Ianthe Knott recalled only one crystal chandelier, but everyone who came to 7 Cromwell Place remembered a pair of chandeliers. Knott interview with Stevens.

Graham Sutherland told: Cecil Beaton, Self Portrait with Friends: The Selected Diaries of Cecil Beaton, 1926–1974, Richard Buckle, ed. (New York: Times Books, 1979), 321.

“Upon a dais”: Wishart, High Diver, 61–4.

He and his wife were now: Barbara Preston Hall, a nurse, is listed in the U.K. and Ireland Nursing Registers, 1898–1968 as having no permanent address in 1948. Her “permanent” address is recorded as the National Provincial Bank. This would indicate that she and her husband had no established address together at the time. The last listing for Eric and Barbara Hall jointly at Tennyson Mansions was in 1939. From 1940 to 1944 all electoral record-keeping was suspended. See “UK electoral registers,” www.bl.uk. Records of their joint attendance at their daughter Pamela’s wedding come from the research of James Norton.

Hall’s wife wrote Bacon: Ibid. Daniel Farson quoted Robert Medley’s saying that Barbara Hall objected more to the money flowing to Bacon than the actual affair. Daniel Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon (New York: Pantheon, 1993), 33.

During the war, Hall became: Bacon’s first letter to Graham Sutherland in February 1943 mentioned that he still knew “one or two places where the food is not too bad.” Martin Hammer, Bacon and Sutherland (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 234.

Shrewdly cashing in: A few years after the war, Michael Wishart joined in the gambling. “I rashly went ‘Banco’ at one of these, and lost a packet: not that the wheel was fixed.” Wishart, High Diver, 61–4.

As a result: Lucian Freud, in William Feaver, The Lives of Lucian Freud: The Restless Years, 1922–1968 (New York: Knopf, 2019), 199.

Although the Sutherlands lived: Roger Berthoud, Graham Sutherland: A Biography (London: Faber and Faber, 1982), 129–32.

Sutherland told Cecil Beaton: Beaton, Self-Portrait with Friends, 321.

Sutherland noted Bacon’s: Ibid.

“Dear Graham”: Bacon, second letter to Sutherland in Hammer, Bacon and Sutherland, 234.

Sutherland’s landscapes became: See such paintings as Red Landscape, 1942, or Thorn Trees of 1945 (Albright-Knox Museum). Once Sutherland went to the Mediterranean following the war, his paintings filled with thorn trees and other jagged surfaces.

Sutherland had a “thoroughly conventional”: Berthoud, Graham Sutherland, 129–32.

In contrast to Bacon: Ibid., 43.

While Bacon went to Berlin: Ibid., 115.

“British art had long been torn”: Ibid., 43–4.

Bacon was an avowed: Sutherland had converted to Catholicism in 1926. Ibid., 56.

If Bacon was an open: “Graham was incredibly kind and gentle and charming,” said Anne Dunn, who met Bacon around 1948 and knew the Sutherlands before. “A real gentleman.” Anne Dunn, interview with the authors, July 26, 2010.

“His wife was ambitious”: Ibid.

“Please do not send”: Bacon, second letter to Sutherland in Hammer, Bacon and Sutherland, 234.

“Sutherland’s correspondence”: Ibid., 15–16.

“In Graham’s battered”: Berthoud, Graham Sutherland, 87.

In A Paradise Lost: David Mellor, A Paradise Lost: The Neo-Romantic Imagination in Britain 1935–55, exhibition catalogue (London: Barbican Art Gallery exhibition catalogue, 1987), 16.

By the early 1940s: Ibid. In October 1941, all three artists showed together at Temple Newsom, Leeds, in a show that then toured throughout England into 1942. It marked “the emergence of this triumvirate as the leading senior painters in the Neo-Romantic style,” as Mellor wrote.

As Berthoud described Sutherland’s: Berthoud, Graham Sutherland, 76.

In an introduction to one booklet: Spender, quoted in Mellor, A Paradise Lost, 128.

The charm was what people often: Berthoud, Graham Sutherland, 19–20.

He introduced Sutherland to Colin: Ibid., 75.

While visiting Paris in February: Ibid., 89–90.

The dealer had recently branched out: See “Paul Rosenberg and Co.,” The Frick Collection, Archives Directory for the History of Collecting in America, research.frick.org.

Clark not only persuaded: Berthoud, Graham Sutherland, 89–90.

Sutherland’s response: Ibid.

Seven of his paintings: Ibid., 91.

Promoting his protégés, Clark included: Ibid., 93.

When war was declared: Ibid., 95.

In the New Statesman: Ibid., 98. Raymond Mortimer’s review appeared on May 10, 1940.

“Graham’s exhibitions of 1938”: Ibid., 110.

He wanted to join the bigger: Ibid., 118.

The next few years saw him: Berthoud, Graham Sutherland, 118.

Fellow artist, and critic: Hammer, Bacon and Sutherland, 69–70.

“I want you to meet”: Berthoud, Graham Sutherland, 110–11.

He would describe: Ibid.

The second son of a wealthy: See Adrian Clark and Jeremy Dronfield, Queer Saint: The Cultivated Life of Peter Watson, Who Shook Twentieth-Century Art and Shocked High Society (London: John Blake Publishing, 2015).

He collected among others: Ibid., 133.

His eye then turned to English: Ibid., 150.

Watson bought his first Sutherland: Hammer, Bacon and Sutherland, 12.

The amiable Watson: Ibid. See also Clark and Dronfield, Queer Saint, 170–7.

The first issue appeared: Ibid.

It was initially: Ibid., 146. Watson did not trust Connolly to head the magazine alone; his faults included “laziness and vanity,” as Clark and Donfield wrote in Queer Saint. So Watson asked Stephen Spender to be the co-editor.

Watson was determined: Mellor, A Paradise Lost, 40.

Sonia Brownell: See Hilary Spurling, The Girl from the Fiction Department: A Portrait of Sonia Orwell (Berkeley: Counterpoint Press, 2003) for more details about her life in wartime London and her postwar life.

She would also marry: Kukula Glastris, “The Widow Orwell,” Washington Monthly, July/August 2003.

“Where Cyril was short”: Spurling, The Girl from the Fiction Department, 56–7.

The two Roberts, for example: Roger Bristow, The Last Bohemians: The Two Roberts Colquhoun and MacBryde (Bristol: Sansom & Company, 2010), 161.

Bacon probably went sometimes: Frances Spalding, John Minton: Dance till the Stars Come Down (Aldershot, Hants UK: Hodder & Stoughton, 1991), 61.

Watson arranged for the homeless: Feaver, The Lives of Lucian Freud, 140–2.

“Sutherland,” he said: Berthoud, Graham Sutherland, 110.

He also disliked Cyril: Bacon, quoted in Michael Luke, David Tennant and the Gargoyle Years (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1991), 181–3. “I always got on terribly badly with Cyril,” Bacon said. “I think he probably hated me as much as I disliked him. I found him profoundly unsympathetic.”

Bacon was a “Dionysian”: Stanford, Aeschylus in His Style, 14.

Once a home, in the 17th: Peter Stone, The History of the Port of London, “The Development of Soho,” www.thehistoryoflondon.co.uk.

This was the period of “sepia”: Keith Waterhouse, “My Soho,” Evening Standard, April 12, 2001.

In the 1940s, there remained: Ibid.

“We fought our way in”: Denton Welch, quoted in Philip Hoare, “Obituary: Gaston Berlemont,” The Independent, November 11, 1999.

Soho had small one-room: Theodora FitzGibbon, With Love (London: Century Publishing, 1982), 109. The early Colony was a basement club, not the far more famous Colony Room presided over by Muriel Belcher that opened in the late 1940s.

Not too far: Ibid. FitzGibbon wrote that her crowd would go to the back bar at the Café Royal only on “very step-up occasions.” There, “Jimmy the barman presided priest-like over a vaguely literary gathering.”

“In North Soho”: Anthony Cronin, Dead as Doornails: A Chronicle of Life (Dublin: The Dolmen Press, 1976), 129.

“The sort of artist”: Ibid.

In the mid-forties, the poet Dylan: FitzGibbon, With Love, 109.

Another was the artist: Ibid., 3.

“Peter always thought Francis”: Ibid., 109.

After Oxford, he established: See “Peter Rose Pulham,” www.nationalgalleries.org.

He did a famous: Ibid.

One sign of Sutherland’s: Hammer, Bacon and Sutherland, 10.

He moved to Paris: Ibid., 211–12.

Pulham was far more cultivated: FitzGibbon, With Love, 14. In the mid-1940s, Pulham was also much further along in his career than Bacon. He showed at the Redfern Gallery in 1945, in a mixed show that included drawings by the French surrealist André Masson, who knew of and collected Pulham’s work. He later showed in 1950 at the Hanover Gallery. Even after Pulham moved back to France in the early 1950s, he and Bacon kept up through their mutual close friend Isabel Rawsthorne.

He shared with Bacon: Hammer, Bacon and Sutherland, 211–12.

Cecil Beaton described: Ibid., 212 fn. Beaton described Pulham this way in his book British Photographers (London: William Collins, 1944), 44.

By far the wildest: See Bristow, The Last Bohemians. The following information in this paragraph comes from this book.

They “lived on”: Mellor, A Paradise Lost, 54.

Not long after reaching: Bristow, The Last Bohemians, 112.

They moved through: Mellor, A Paradise Lost, 52.

The roistering Roberts: Cronin, Dead as Doornails, 131–2.

It was also now: Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life, 41.

With the exception of an exciting moment: Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil Servant (New York: Penguin Books, 1997), 73–5.

“I met several guardsmen”: John Lehmann, In the Purely Pagan Sense (London: GMP Publishers, 1985), 128.

“If it had not been”: Crisp, The Naked Civil Servant, 132.

“There were goings-on”: Grey Gowrie, interview with Mark Stevens, November 2011.

“The French Pub was filled”: John Richardson, interview with Mark Stevens, March 3, 2008.

There were also: Dan Chapman, interview with the authors, February 12, 2011.

“Most of them were well-brought-up”: Heather Johnson, email to Annalyn Swan, November 2, 2013.

14 SEWER BOOTS

One of the first was John Rothenstein: For a quick precis of Rothenstein’s not uncontroversial role in British art, see arthistorians.info/rothensteinj.

Just three months: John Rothenstein, Brave Day Hideous Night: Autobiography 1939–1965 (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1966), 105–6.

Sutherland also talked up: The correspondence between Bacon and Anderson can be read in Adrian Clark, “Francis Bacon’s Correspondence with Sir Colin Anderson,” British Art Journal VIII, no. 1 (Summer 2007), 39–43.

In 1944 or early 1945: Roger Berthoud, Graham Sutherland: A Biography (London: Faber and Faber, 1982) 129–32.

Clark walked into: Ibid. Kathleen Sutherland remembered the “tightly rolled umbrella.”

He “gave Bacon’s work”: Ibid.

Once the door closed: Ibid.

That same night at dinner: Ibid.

Although the gallery traditionally: Martin Hammer, “Francis Bacon and the Lefevre Gallery,” Burlington Magazine, May 2010, 307.

Macdonald therefore discussed: Ibid., 307–8.

Then Nicolson decided not: Ibid., 308.

“I should really prefer”: Ibid.

In February 1945, Macdonald asked: Ibid.

The invitation “may have”: Martin Hammer, Francis Bacon and Nazi Propaganda (London: Tate Publishing, 2012), 69.

Two and a half weeks before: Macdonald, letter of March 12, 1945, to Bacon, cited in Hammer, “Francis Bacon and the Lefevre Gallery,” Burlington Magazine, 308 fn.

On the precious new: It may well be that Sutherland procured the canvas for Bacon. As Martin Hammer wrote, “It was not just that normal materials such as canvas and the wood required for stretchers had become difficult to obtain or prohibitively expensive in the conditions of extreme deprivation and restriction that pertained in wartime Britain. Sutherland’s correspondence with the WAAC [Wartime Artists’ Committee] indicates that official permission was required to obtain virtually all materials.” Martin Hammer, Bacon and Sutherland (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 15–16.

In 1944, Graham Sutherland saw: Bacon may have begun Three Studies earlier, when he was in Steep, given that it was painted on fibreboard and not canvas. Bacon told Hugh Davies that he had started to paint the Eumenides “early in the ‘thirties” and that the triptych was the “culmination of these studies.” (Hugh Davies, Francis Bacon: The Early and Middle Years, 1928–1958). This could only be the case if Bacon were incorporating his “surrealist” paintings of c. 1936 into the timeline. Bacon was also influenced by Sutherland. As Martin Hammer noted, Sutherland’s use of a “strongly modelled, almost sculptural form” in some of his early 1940s paintings, as well as a “flat, brightly coloured backdrop,” might have shown Bacon how he could achieve “a heightened expressive charge.” Hammer, Bacon and Sutherland, 11. Sutherland was also the first to use the high-keyed orange that Bacon made so famous. See Sutherland’s Horned Forms of 1944, now at the Tate Gallery. There is also more than a passing resemblance between Sutherland’s Green Tree Form of 1940 (also at the Tate) and the creatures in Three Studies.

Denton Welch published: “Sickert at St. Peter’s,” Horizon (August, 1942), 91–7. The quotations in the next two paragraphs all come from this article.

Its real subject, however: Bacon’s highest praise for another artist was to own one of his works. At one point Bacon owned a Sickert. Richard Shone, interview with the authors, February 17, 2011.

Bacon relished: W. B. Stanford, Aeschylus in His Style (Dublin: Dublin University Press, 1942). See Ch. 13. Bacon made many references later in life to this book.

One phrase particularly pleased: Bacon often quoted that line of Aeschylus from Stanford’s book. See Daniel Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon (New York: Pantheon, 1993), 133. As Farson wrote, “The reek of human blood smiles out at me,’ also translated as ‘the reek of human blood is laughter to my heart,’ was a favourite quotation of his from the Oresteia.”

John Russell would later call: As Russell wrote in his first, slim book on Bacon, “British art has never been quite the same since the day in April, nineteen years ago, when three of the strangest pictures ever put on show in London were slipped without warning into an exhibition at the Lefevre Gallery.” John Russell, Francis Bacon (London: Methuen, 1964), 2.

15 “I BEGAN”

In April 1945: The National Gallery’s collection did not begin to return from remote storage until early May 1945.

At the Lefevre Gallery: Martin Hammer, “Francis Bacon and the Lefevre Gallery,” Burlington Magazine, May 2010, 308.

Almost everything sold: Ibid. MacDonald wrote to Sutherland on April 19 that only two Sutherland paintings and two Moore drawings had not yet sold. The catalogue was reprinted three times.

“Visitors tempted”: John Russell, Francis Bacon (London: Methuen, 1964), 2.

The figures in the images: Ibid.

Russell fretted: Russell, “Round the Art Exhibitions,” The Listener XXXIII, no. 848 (April 12, 1945), 412.

Raymond Mortimer: Raymond Mortimer, “At the Lefevre,” New Statesman and Nation, April 14, 1945.

Macdonald, the curator: Hammer, “Francis Bacon and the Lefevre Gallery,” Burlington Magazine, 308.

The painter and critic Michael Ayrton: Michael Ayrton, “Art,” Spectator, April 13, 1945.

In his spectral Shelter Drawings: For more on Moore’s wartime drawings, see “Henry Moore: Room Guide, Room 5: Wartime,” www.tate.org.uk.

Moore became especially: Russell, Francis Bacon, 9.

“All over the country”: Ibid., 9–10.

“I began”: Bacon in John Rothenstein, introduction to Ronald Alley, ed., Francis Bacon (London: Thames & Hudson, 1964), 11. Catalogue raisonné.

Three Studies went to Eric: Hammer, “Francis Bacon and the Lefevre Gallery,” Burlington Magazine, 308.

His cousin Diana: Alley, ed., Francis Bacon, 36.

Bacon’s mother never seemed: There was no mention of Winnie ever going to Bacon’s shows in the 1930s, even after the family moved back to England.

Bacon’s sister Ianthe: Ianthe Knott, interviews with Mark Stevens, March 5 and 6, 2008.

The critic David Sylvester loved: David Sylvester, Looking Back at Francis Bacon (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2000), 22.

Over five weeks: Brandon Taylor, “Picasso and the Psychoanalysts,” in Andrei Pop and Mechtild Widrich, eds., All from Ugliness: The Non-beautiful in Art and Theory (London: I.B. Tauris, 2014), 59–67. The show also travelled to Manchester and Glasgow.

Picasso was criticized: James Beechey and Chris Stephens, eds., Picasso and Modern British Art (London: Tate, 2012), 186.

Matisse’s paintings: Hilary Spurling, “Matisse v. Picasso,” The Telegraph, April 27, 2002.

The critic for The Sunday Times: Ibid.

His latest paintings had “a galvanizing”: Beechey and Stephens, eds., Picasso and Modern British Art, 17.

Vaughan thought Picasso: Vaughan, quoted in ibid., 186.

In her biography of Minton: Frances Spalding, John Minton: Dance Till the Stars Come Down (Aldershot, Hants UK: Hodder & Stoughton, 1991), 80.

What did Francis think: Eric Allden diary, January 12, 1946. The Estate of Francis Bacon archive.

Bacon found it: Ibid.

Bacon acknowledged that: “According to Bacon,” Sylvester later wrote, “the particular Picasso figures which inspired those in the triptych were biomorphs on beaches turning keys in the doors of their bathing cabins. In the triptych, the eroticism and the comedy of those figures was displaced by terror.” Sylvester, Looking Back at Francis Bacon, 19.

A reliance on line: Bacon spoke often and adamantly, throughout his life, against “illustration” and “decoration” in art, even claiming that Picasso’s Guernica was just illustration. Bacon, quoted in ibid., 244.

David Sylvester called: Ibid., 21.

In Figure Study II: In a letter to his dealer, Duncan Macdonald at Lefevre, Bacon wrote, “These paintings are studies for the Magdalene … and I would like them entitled as such in the catalogue.” Martin Hammer, “Francis Bacon and the Lefevre Gallery,” Burlington Magazine, May 2010, 308.

Graham Sutherland also painted: Martin Hammer, Bacon and Sutherland (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005), 131–2.

Hoping to consolidate: Hammer, “Francis Bacon and the Lefevre Gallery,” Burlington Magazine, 307–12.

This time: Ibid., 309.

Macdonald was hoping: Ibid., 308.

He had earlier sold: Ibid., 308.

There might be: Ibid.

“Roger Marvell”: Roger Marvell, “New Pictures,” New Statesman and Nation, XXXI, no. 16 (February 1946).

Anderson “radiated”: Roger Berthoud, Graham Sutherland: A Biography (London: Faber and Faber, 1982), 75.

He admired: Ibid.

Since Anderson: Hammer, “Francis Bacon and the Lefevre Gallery,” Burlington Magazine, 309.

Another member: Ibid.

Not long before: William Feaver, The Lives of Lucian Freud: The Restless Years, 1922–1968 (New York: Knopf, 2019), 201.

Francis Bacon, Freud would later say: Ibid.

le Brocquy was “staggered”: Louis le Brocquy, interview with Annalyn Swan, May 7, 2008.

Having spent: Hammer, “Francis Bacon and the Lefevre Gallery,” Burlington Magazine, 310–11.

In 1935, Soby published: James Thrall Soby, After Picasso (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1935).

“For art students raised”: Spalding, John Minton, 25–6.

Macdonald began sending: Hammer, “Francis Bacon and the Lefevre Gallery,” Burlington Magazine, 310–11.

The promotion: Ibid.

In 1946, Graham Sutherland: Jean-Yves Mock, Memoir of Erica Brausen, Gill Hedley, trans., www.gillhedley.co.uk. “It was Graham Sutherland who suggested that she visit Bacon’s studio,” wrote Mock. Mock worked for years with Brausen at the gallery. See also Mock, Erica Bransen: Premier Marchand de Francis Bacon (Paris: L’Echappe, 1996).

She was a war: Ibid. For a good portrait of Erica Brausen, see also John Moynihan, Restless Lives: The Bohemian World of Rodrigo and Elinor Moynihan (Bristol: Sansom & Company, 2002), 171–2.

She had recently joined: Mock, Memoir of Erica Brausen.

Brausen was raised: Ibid. For Brausen’s background, see also Barry Joule, “Obituary: Erica Brausen,” Independent, December 30, 1992.

Brausen, who was just: Ibid. “Give or take 18 months they were the same age,” wrote Mock. “Bacon was the younger.” The following biographical detail comes from this account as well.

The main figure at Redfern: See John Thompson, “Nan Kivell, Sir Rex De Charembac (1898–1977)” in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, adb.anu.edu.au. As Thompson wrote, “In 1925 Nan Kivell joined the Redfern Gallery. By 1931 he had assumed control as managing director. His association with the Redfern, maintained in partnership with Australian-born Harry Tatlock Miller, continued until his death. The gallery promoted contemporary art, assisting a number of British artists who became major figures. Nan Kivell helped to bring to England the work of important European painters, and he encouraged some young Australian artists, including (Sir) Sidney Nolan.

Nan Kivall owned: See nla. gov.au.

Bacon accepted: In a handwritten note, Brausen said that she bought Painting, 1946 for £200. Tate Archive, 863/6/16. Bacon used the money to go to the South of France.

“She was a powerful person”: Louis le Brocquy, interview with Swan, May 7, 2008.

Brausen now sold: For the sales history of the painting, see Martin Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, vol. II (London: Estate of Francis Bacon, 2016), 118.

One critic observed: “The Redfern Gallery” The Times, July 29, 1946.

The average annual English wage in 1946: See thedesignlab.co.uk.