- Influences on painter Francis Bacon
The painter Francis Bacon was largely self-taught as an artist. His influences included:
*Pablo Picasso , in particular the biomorphic figures in Picasso's paintings of bathers atDinard of 1927-32.
*Diego Velázquez , Velázquez’s portrait ofPope Innocent X (1649–50). "that Velázquez is one of the great paintings of the world, of course - well, I was very obsessed with that Velázquez and, of course, I made a great mistake…". Bacon painted several versions of it, of which "Figure with Meat " (1954) is an atypicallyGrand Guignol example. Bacon never actually saw the original Velázquez.
*Vincent van Gogh , van Gogh’s "The Painter on the Road toTarascon " (July 1888).
*Rembrandt "Self-portrait" (Musée Granet,Aix-en-Provence )
*Chaim Soutine Céret period (1919-1923), "Carcass of Beef" (1926) (Minneapolis)
*John Constable - the full size oil-sketch for "The Leaping Horse" at the V&A.
*Titian "Portrait of Cardinal Filippo Archinto" (c.1551-1562)
*the drawings ofMichelangelo
*Henri Matisse "Bathers by a River" (1909-16), Although Bacon said that "He doesn't have Picasso's'Brutality of Fact' " "(Interviews with Francis Bacon )",David Sylvester has convincingly argued in his essay "Bacon and Matisse" (1996) [revised as "Bacon IV" in "About Modern Art"] for Matisse's pervasive influence on Bacon's painting.
* Pharonic Egyptiansculpture of the Eighteenth dynasty, from the rule ofAmenophis III andAmenophis IV especially.
* Masaccio "Trinity" c.1424-1428 Santa Maria Novella (Bacon greatly admired Masaccio and similarities between the composition of "Trinity" and "Painting" (1946) have been noted).
*Marcel Duchamp
*Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres "Oedipus and theSphinx " (1826-1827), "Le Bain Turc" (1859-1863)
*Edgar Degas "After the Bath, Woman drying herself" (1888-1892), "Beach Scene" (1868-1877) (Both in the collection of theNational Gallery, London .)*
Walter Sickert "Granby Street" (1912-1913)
*Henri Michaux "Untitled" (1962)
*Pierre Bonnard
*Georges-Pierre Seurat
*Cimabue "You know the great Cimabue "Crucifixion"? I always think of that as an image - as a worm crawling down the cross."
*Alberto Giacometti drawings
*Matthias Grünewald "Isenheim Altarpiece "
*Julia Margaret Cameron
*Étienne-Jules Marey
*Eadweard Muybridge "My principal source of visual information is Muybridge, the 19th-century photographer who photographed human and animal movement. His work is unbelievably precise. He created a visual dictionary of movement, a living dictionary."
*Nadar
*John Deakin . Regular at the Colony Room Club and noted photographer who took portraits of Bacons friends on which many of his 1960's paintings were based.*
Luis Buñuel . "I've been very influenced by the films of Buñuel, especially "Un chien andalou " because I think that Buñuel had a remarkable precision of imagery. I can't say how they have directly effected me but they certainly have affected my whole attitude to visual things - in the acuteness of the visual image which you've got to make."*
Sergei Eisenstein . "Strike" (Стачка, 1925) and "The Battleship Potemkin " (Броненосец „Потёмкин“, 1925), especially the famous scene on theOdessa Steps.Bacon also drew inspiration from the poems of
T. S. Eliot , Pound and Yeats; the plays ofAeschylus ,Sophocles andShakespeare ; Proust and the Joyce of Ulysses.External links
elect work
* [http://www.artsmia.org/uia-bin/uia_doc.cgi/list/173?uf=mia_collection.ldb&key=paintings&noframes=x&hr=null&nd=355 Chaim Soutine "Carcass of Beef" (1926) (The Minneapolis Institute of Arts)]
* [http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/cgi-bin/WebObjects.dll/CollectionPublisher.woa/wa/largeImage?workNumber=NG3247&collectionPublisherSection=work Degas, Hilaire-Germain-Edgar "Beach Scene" (1868-77) (NG London)]
* [http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/cgi-bin/WebObjects.dll/CollectionPublisher.woa/wa/largeImage?workNumber=NG6295&collectionPublisherSection=work Degas "After the Bath, Woman drying herself" (1888 - 1892) (NG London)]
* [http://essentialvermeer.20m.com/rembrandt/slf_prtrts/slf_prtrt_beret_infinished.htm Rembrandt "Self-portrait" (Musée Granet, Aix-en-Provence)]
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