Éire-Ireland

NOTES AND QUERIES THE FRANCIS BACON STUDIO BARBARA DAWSON Francis Bacon Exhibition 2 June to 31 August 2000, curated by David Sylvester. This major exhibition of Francis Bacon’s paintings, drawn from worldwide collections, will be a highlight of Dublin’s Millennium celebrations. Francis Bacon Studio An exhibition of photographs will accompany the launch of a book of Perry Ogden’s photographs of the studio, taken before its removal to Dublin. Francis Bacon—The Studio Opening The plans for the studio opening will coincide with the completion of the database—targeted for autumn 2000. The recent donation of Francis Bacon’s studio (plate 12), its entire contents, and the artist’s last unfinished painting is the most important gift the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art has received since its founding in 1908, when Sir Hugh Lane gave the gallery a major collection of modern art. The internationally renowned British artist Francis Bacon was born in Dublin in 1909 and, contrary to popular opinion, spent most of the first sixteen years of his life in County Kildare. The studio and its famous clutter, although instantly recognizable from many previously published photographs, was the artist’s jealously guarded private space. Measuring only 4 x 5 x 4.8 meters, it was so littered with all sorts of material that it was difficult to negotiate without treading on something; it was virtually impossible to wade through to the walls, where items were stacked almost three feet high. Photographs of Bacon and his friends were piled among newspaper cuttings, magazines, books, and medTHE FRANCIS BACON STUDIO 310 ical journals—lying side by side with cases of Krug, Vat 1969 Mouton Rothschild (all empty), blank canvases, and slashed canvases. Bacon’s last unfinished painting, still standing on an easel, was the most significant item in the studio. A pattern emerges of the artist’s sources: those references most frequently used were nearest the easel, including Edweard Muybridge ’s Studies of the Human Body in Motion, books on bullfighting, and a detailed study of diseases of the mouth. Did Francis Bacon ever clean a brush? I doubt it. Empty orange juice and Maxwell House Instant coffee cans were crammed with brushes—each a multicolor still life in its own right. As his paintings conveyed, Francis Bacon used paint with a passion, one that spilled over onto splattered doors and walls that were used as mixing palettes. In some areas the paint on the wall was layered to three inches thick. Upon receipt of this gift, the Municipal Gallery devised a unique approach for the removal of the studio to Dublin. Under the leadership of Mary McGrath, Chief Conservator Consultant, a team of archaeologists and conservators approached the cluttered studio as an archaeological dig. Documentary drawings and a virtual reality CD-ROM of the studio were made before the team set to work removing the contents. Every item in the space—exceeding 20,000—received a feature number before being packed for transport to Dublin. We are currently inputting detailed cataloguing of each item into a database that will be accessible on the Internet and via CD-ROM. Before Francis Bacon’s birth, his parents moved from England to County Kildare, near the British military camp on the Curragh, where his father, Eddy Bacon, a retired British Army officer, trained racehorses. During this turbulent period in Irish history, the Bacon household—although not part of surviving remnants of the colonial landed ascendancy—would have been a target for attack, having been associated with that class. Despite the political unrest, the Bacon family lived in Ireland until the end of the 1920s, except for a period spent in England during World War I and a brief spell in Cheltenham. In his youth Bacon lived through political unrest —most notably the 1916 Easter Rising, the War of Independence in 1920 and 1921, and the ensuing Civil War in 1922. The artist’s equally turbulent domestic life left a permanent emotional mark. The animosity between father and son caused by the young Bacon’s homosexuality is well known and documented. After the artist’s death in 1992, his cousin, Lady Caroline Blackwell, recounted stories of cruel sexual exploits...