ARTPEDIA

Francis Bacon - Reclining Figure Study No.1&2, 1961. Ballpoint pen and oil paint on paper

From the Tate Gallery, London:

These two works on paper by Bacon are the only ones in the display in which the page has been filled. As the pose remains the same, they may have served as colour studies and even responded to Mark Rothko’s contemporary work (seen in London in 1959). The male nude and horizontal bands (derived from a sofa against a wall) are common to a series of Bacon’s oil paintings from 1959 and 1961. The sketches appear to be later, as an impression of writing from another sheet but visible on ‘Reclining Figure, no.1’ gives his address as ‘7 Reece Mews’, the studio which he occupied in the autumn of 1961.