Francis Bacon 1909-1992 FIGURE STUDY II (STUDY FOR THE MAGDELEN) 1945-1946 The extraordinary sexless figure is bent low, an umbrella shielding her face. Only the screaming mouth is revealed. We do not know the reason for her pain, although the subtitle links her with the Crucifixion. The acuteness of the figure’s torment is sharpened by the vivid orange background. This was painted at the end of the war as the horrors of the Holocaust were first being revealed. Bacon used an unusual combination of influences to create his grotesque figure: a book on mouth diseases and the screaming face from Sergei Eisenstein’s film The Battleship Potemkin both played a part. ‘I did hope one day to make the best painting of the human cry,’ he said, and this was the first of many that focused on a screaming, tortured face.

Francis Bacon (1909-1992) Self Portrait Francis Bacon by Lucian Freud

Francis Bacon (1909-1992) Isobel