''Head III'' is an oil painting by

Francis Bacon Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), also known as Lord Verulam, was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Bacon led the advancement of both ...

, one of series of works made in 1949 for his first one-man exhibition at the

Hanover Gallery The Hanover Gallery was an art gallery in London. It was opened in June 1948 by the German art expert Erica Brausen and financier and art collector Arthur Jeffress at 32A St. George's Street, W1, and closed on 31 March 1973. It was named afte ...

, in London. As with the other six paintings in the series, it focuses on the disembodied head of male figure, who looks out with a penetrating gaze, but is fixed against an isolating, flat, nondescript background, while also enfolded by hazy horizontal foreground curtain-like folds which seems to function like a surrounding cage.Davies; Yard, 19 ''Head III'' was first exhibited in November 1949 at the Hanover in a showing commissioned by one of the artist's early champions,

Erica Brausen Erica Brausen (31 January 1908 – 16 December 1992), was an art dealer and gallerist who established the Hanover Gallery in London in 1948. She was an early champion of several influential contemporary artists, most notably Francis Bacon. Biogr ...

.Zweite, 74 The six head paintings were painted during a short period of time, when Bacon was under pressure to provide works for the Hanover exhibition. Of the series, '' Head I'', ''

Head II ''Head II'' is an oil and tempera on hardboard painting by the Irish-born British figurative artist Francis Bacon. Completed in 1948, it is the second in a series of six heads, painted from the winter of 1948 in preparation for a November 1949 ...

'', and ''

Head VI ''Head VI'' is an oil-on-canvas painting by Irish-born figurative artist Francis Bacon, the last of six panels making up his "1949 Head" series. It shows a bust view of a single figure, modeled on Diego Velázquez's ''Portrait of Innocent X ...

'' are today seen as artistically successful, with ''Head VI'' as ground breaking, and a direct precursor to Bacon's seminal 1950s many representations of Popes. ''Head III'' is important in the development in that it is the first of the series in which Bacon masters the effect of the horizontal folds, and the ambiguous facial expression of the subject nears that of his

Diego Velázquez Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (baptized June 6, 1599August 6, 1660) was a Spanish painter, the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV of Spain and Portugal, and of the Spanish Golden Age. He was an individualistic artist of th ...

's ''

Portrait of Innocent X ''Portrait of Pope Innocent X'' is an oil on canvas portrait by the Spanish painter Diego Velázquez, executed during a trip to Italy around 1650. Many artists and art critics consider it the finest portrait ever created. It is housed in the Galle ...

''; his primary source for these paintings.Davies; Yard, 19 The painting is in a private collection, having been sold at auction at

Sotheby's Sotheby's () is a British-founded American multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, and ...

in 2013 for £10,442,500.Francis Bacon, ''Head III''
Sotheby's, 26 June 2013

Description

The painting measures . Perhaps a portrait of Bacon's lover Eric Hall, the

grisaille Grisaille ( or ; french: grisaille, lit=greyed , from ''gris'' 'grey') is a painting executed entirely in shades of grey or of another neutral greyish colour. It is particularly used in large decorative schemes in imitation of sculpture. Many g ...

work depicts a bald man's head with pock-marked discolored off-white face, partially concealed by diaphanous curtains. The face has an enigmatic expression, with his cold eyes - emphasised by bright marks of

zinc white Zinc oxide is an inorganic compound with the formula . It is a white powder that is insoluble in water. ZnO is used as an additive in numerous materials and products including cosmetics, food supplements, rubbers, plastics, ceramics, glass, cement ...

- looking out through broken

pince-nez Pince-nez ( or , plural form same as singular; ) is a style of glasses, popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, that are supported without earpieces, by pinching the bridge of the nose. The name comes from French ''pincer'', "to pinch ...

spectacles. This is the first occasion when the motif of broken glasses appears in Bacon's work, inspired by the image of an injured nurse in the 1925 film ''

Battleship Potemkin '' Battleship Potemkin'' (russian: Бронено́сец «Потёмкин», ''Bronenosets Potyomkin''), sometimes rendered as ''Battleship Potyomkin'', is a 1925 Soviet silent drama film produced by Mosfilm. Directed and co-written by S ...

''. The open-mouthed scream of the nurse in the film would also become a theme of Bacon's work, including ''

'',Peppiatt, 30 and '' Fragment of a Crucifixion''.Davies; Yard, 18

Commission and provenance

The 1949 Hanover gallery exhibition included the six ''Head'' paintings, and four other important early works by Bacon: ''

Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion ''Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion'' is a 1944 triptych painted by the Anglo-Irish people, Irish-born British artist Francis Bacon (artist), Francis Bacon. The canvasses are based on the Erinyes, Eumenides—or Furies—of ...

'', '' Figure in a landscape'', ''Study from the Human Body'' (also known as '' Study for Figure'') and '' Study for Portrait'' (also known as '' Man in a Blue Box''). They are usually interpreted as intermediate steps from the preliminary images in ''Head I'' and ''Head II'' towards the final image of ''Head VI'', the first of Bacon's paintings to reference Velázquez and his ''

'' of 1650. ''Head III'' was the first of the six paintings to be sold at the Hanover Gallery exhibition. It was acquired by US art collector Wright Saltus Ludington (brother of

Charles Townsend Ludington Charles Townsend Ludington (Charles T. Ludington, C. T. Ludington), (January 16, 1896 – January 19, 1968), was a businessman of Philadelphia. He was an aviation pioneer who helped establish an every-hour-on-the-hour air service between New Y ...

) in October 1949, shortly before the exhibition opened in November 1949. It was later sold to Sir and Lady

Edward Hulton Sir Edward George Stephen Hulton, 1st Baronet (3 March 1869 – 23 May 1925) was a British newspaper proprietor and thoroughbred racehorse owner. In 1921, he was awarded a baronetcy, of Downside in the parish of Leatherhead in Surrey, for p ...

, and passed through the hands of several private collectors. It was included in Bacon retrospective at the

Tate Gallery Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...

in 1985, and sold again at

in London in 2013.

Reception

''Head III'' was described by

Wyndham Lewis Percy Wyndham Lewis (18 November 1882 – 7 March 1957) was a British writer, painter and critic. He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art and edited ''BLAST,'' the literary magazine of the Vorticists. His novels include ''Tarr'' ( ...

in '' The Listener'' on 12 May 1949, page 811: "Bacon's picture, as usual, is in lamp-black monochrome, the zinc white of the monster’s eyes glittering in the cold crumbling grey of the face. Bacon is a Grand Guignol artist: the mouths in his heads are unpleasant places, evil passions make a glittering white mess of the lips." and then in ''The Listener'' on 17 November 1949, page 860. He later wrote that "part of the head is rotting away into space".Wyndham Lewis and Francis Bacon
Jan Cox, July 2009

References

Notes

Sources

* Davies, Hugh; Yard, Sally. ''Francis Bacon''. New York: Cross River Press, 1986. * Peppiatt, Michael. ''Anatomy of an Enigma''. London: Westview Press, 1996. * Zweite, Armin (ed). ''The Violence of the Real''. London: Thames and Hudson, 2006. {{Francis Bacon (artist) 1949 paintings Heads in the arts Paintings by Francis Bacon Portraits of men