Bacon / Freud: Selected graphic works

Bacon / Freud Selected graphic works

18 January – 25 February 2017

Bacon / Freud Selected graphic works

Marlborough Fine Art 6 Albemarle Street, London W1S 4BY + 44 (0)20 7629 5161 jbalfour@marlboroughfineart.com www.marlboroughlondon.com

Introduction

by Nancy Campbell

Francis Bacon encountered Lucian Freud in 1945, and an intense friendship developed between the two men, played out against the bleak background of postwar London. Freud and Bacon met in Soho day and night, drinking together in Wheeler’s, the Colony and the Gargoyle. It was an association that continued into the studio. Freud sat for Bacon for the first time in 1951 (a noteworthy event – Bacon rarely worked from life) and Bacon appears in three drawings made by Freud the same year. While the conversations that flowed between them are lost, the iconic works they created during these years remain in the spotlight: in 2013 Bacon’s Three Studies of Lucian Freud (1969) sold for US$142.4 million at Christie’s New York, nominally setting a world record for the most expensive artwork sold at auction.

Bacon / Freud: Selected Graphic Works brings these great figurative artists face to face once again. Printmaking can focus and heighten an artist’s concerns, and Bacon is no exception – these atmospheric works capture his singular vocabulary. The lithographic process allowed Bacon to remain faithful to the distinctive pigments of his painting: flesh tones are contrasted with backgrounds of lurid orange, dusty pink and mauve, and the ominous darkness beyond. In these prints Bacon turns his characteristically merciless gaze on the human figure,

including his own: in Study for Self Portrait (1982, 6) the artist’s body exudes vulnerability, poised like a twist of touchpaper at the moment of combustion.

Bacon’s preoccupation with mortality intensified after he suffered multiple bereavements in the 1970s, including the suicide of his lover, recorded in Triptych in Memory of George Dyer (1971, 10). He painted Three Studies for a Self Portrait in 1975, returning to the image in a dramatic lithograph, After Three Studies for a Self Portrait (1981, 7), which portrays the artist’s head close-up against a dense field of black ink. These triptych portraits are reminiscent of the pioneering photographic studies of the figure in motion by Eadweard Muybridge, as well as modern photobooth portraits and the police mugshot.

Bacon often worked directly from photographs, describing himself as “haunted” by them; he also spoke of his fascination with old, hand-coloured medical illustrations.

The camera’s capacity for creating multiple images and the accuracy of the hand-coloured scientific plates surely informed Bacon’s vision for his own editions, which entailed an uncompromising translation of his equivocal, evanescent forms into ink on paper. “I’ve always hoped to put over things as directly and rawly as I can,” Bacon told the art critic David Sylvester, adding that he dealt in “facts – or what used to be called truth”.

List of works All works illustrated are for sale

1. Triptych 1983 A set of three lithographs, edition of 180 Paper: 86.7 x 60.6 cm (each) Image: 67 x 50 cm (each) Published by Galerie Maeght Lelong, Paris, 1984

4. Triptych 1986–87 A set of three etchings and aquatints, edition of 99 Paper: 89.5 x 62.7 cm (each) Image: 65.4 x 48.7 cm (each) Published by Editions Poligrafa, Barcelona, 1988

2. Study for portrait of John Edwards, 1986 Lithograph, edition of 180 Paper: 94.4 x 67.9 cm Image: 68 x 49 cm Published by Galerie Maeght Lelong, Paris, 1987

5. Oedipus and the Sphinx after Ingres, 1983 Lithograph, edition of 150 Paper: 127.7 x 89.5 cm Image: 117 x 86 cm Published by Editions de la Difference, Paris, 1984

3. Three Studies of the Male Back, 1970 (centre panel) Lithograph, edition of 99 Paper: 81 x 59.5 cm Image: 60.5 x 45 cm Published by Art International, Paris, 1987

6. Study for Self Portrait, 1982 Offset lithograph, edition of 182 Paper: 94 x 65 cm Image: 81.5 x 60.5 cm Published by Marlborough Graphics, 1984

7. After Three Studies for a Self Portrait, 1981 Lithograph, edition of 150 Paper: 47 x 103.5 cm, Each image: 32.5 x 28 cm Published by Editions de la Difference, Paris, 1981 8. Study from the Human Body, 1987 Aquatint, edition of 90 Paper: 163 x 121 cm Image: 135 x 100 cm Published by Marlborough / 2RC Rome. 1992

11. Seated Figure, 1977 Aquatint, edition of 90 Paper: 163 x 119 cm Image: 134 x 98.4 cm Published by Marlborough / 2RC Rome. 1992 12. Triptych August 1972 A set of three lithographs, edition of 180 Paper: 89.5 x 62.5 cm (each) Image: 65.4 x 48.5 cm (each) Published by Galerie Maeght Lelong, Paris, 1989

9. Study from the Human Body, 1981 Lithograph, edition of 150 Paper: 45.1 x 32.7 cm Published by Editions de la Difference, Paris, 1981

13. Study from Pope Innocent X, 1965 Lithograph, edition of 60 Paper: 115.5 x 76.8 cm Image: 95 x 69 cm Published by ICRAM for Centre Pompidou, Paris, 1989

10. Triptych in Memory of George Dyer, 1971 (left hand panel) Offset lithograph, edition of 200 Paper: 85.6 x 61 cm Image: 75.5 x 55.8 cm Published by Marlborough Graphics, 1976

14. Studies of the Human Body 1979 Offset Lithograph Paper: 101.5 x 65.9 cm Image: 88 x 65.9 cm Edition of 250 Published by Marlborough Graphics, 1980

1.

Triptych 1983 Paper: 86.7 x 60.6 cm (each)

2.

Study for portrait of John Edwards, 1986 Paper: 94.4 x 67.9 cm

3.

Three Studies of the Male Back, 1970 (centre panel) Paper: 81 x 59.5 cm

4.

Triptych 1986–87 Paper: 89.5 x 62.7 cm (each)

5.

Oedipus and the Sphinx after Ingres, 1983 Paper: 127.7 x 89.5 cm

6.

Study for Self Portrait, 1982 Paper: 94 x 65 cm

7.

After Three Studies for a Self Portrait, 1981 Paper: 47 x 103.5 cm

8.

Study from the Human Body, 1987 Paper: 163 x 121 cm

9.

Study from the Human Body, 1981 Paper: 45.1 x 32.7 cm

10.

Triptych in Memory of George Dyer, 1971 (left hand panel) Paper: 85.6 x 61 cm

11.

Seated Figure, 1977 Paper: 163 x 119 cm

12.

Triptych August 1972 Paper: 89.5 x 62.5 cm (each)

13.

Study from Pope Innocent X 1965 Paper: 115.5 x 76.8 cm

14.

Sudies of the Human Body, 1979 Paper: 101.5 x 65.9 cm

Marlborough London Marlborough Fine Art (London) Ltd 6 Albemarle Street London, W1S 4BY Telephone: +44 (0)20 7629 5161 Telefax: +44 (0)20 7629 6338 mfa@marlboroughfineart.com info@marlboroughgraphics.com www.marlboroughlondon.com Marlborough Contemporary 6 Albemarle Street London, W1S 4BY Telephone: +44 (0)20 7629 5161 Telefax: +44 (0)20 7629 6338 info@marlboroughcontemporary.com www.marlboroughlondon.com Madrid Galería Marlborough SA Orfila 5 28010 Madrid Telephone: +34 91 319 1414 Telefax: +34 91 308 4345 info@galeriamarlborough.com www.galeriamarlborough.com

New York Marlborough Gallery Inc. 40 West 57th Street New York, N.Y. 10019 Telephone: +1 212 541 4900 Telefax: +1 212 541 4948 mny@marlboroughgallery.com www.marlboroughgallery.com Marlborough Chelsea 545 West 25th Street New York, N.Y. 10001 Telephone: +1 212 463 8634 Telefax: +1 212 463 9658 chelsea@marlboroughgallery.com Barcelona Marlborough Barcelona Enric Granados, 68 08008 Barcelona.

Telephone: +34 93 467 4454 Telefax: +34 93 467 4451 infobarcelona@galeriamarlborough.com www.galeriamarlborough.com

Photography: © The Lucian Freud Archive / Bridgeman Images © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved / DACS 2016 Design: Shine Design, London, Print: Impress Print Services ISBN 978-1-909707-35-1, Catalogue No. 662, © 2017 Marlborough

18 January – 25 February 2017

Bacon / Freud Selected graphic works

Marlborough Fine Art 6 Albemarle Street, London W1S 4BY + 44 (0)20 7629 5161 jbalfour@marlboroughfineart.com www.marlboroughlondon.com

Introduction

by Nancy Campbell

Lucian Freud encountered Francis Bacon in 1945, and an intense friendship developed between the two men, played out against the bleak background of postwar London. They met in Soho day and night, drinking together in Wheeler’s, the Colony and the Gargoyle. It was an association that continued into the studio. Freud sat for Bacon for the first time in 1951 (a singular event – Bacon rarely worked from life) and Bacon appears in three drawings made by Freud the same year.

Freud was renowned for the punishing sittings he demanded from his models, and made no exception for Bacon – his fellow artist spent three months under scrutiny. The conversations that flowed between them are lost, but the works created during these years remain in the spotlight: the famous portrait Freud painted during these sittings was stolen in Germany in 1988, and has never been recovered.

Bacon / Freud: Selected Graphic Works brings these major artists face to face once again. Printmaking can focus and heighten an artist’s concerns, and Freud is no exception – etching was perfectly suited to his meticulous realism. These outstanding works demonstrate his deep understanding of the technique, developed in partnership with master printers such as Marc Balakjian at Studio Prints workshop, London. Many of Freud’s great graphic works explore the same subjects as his paintings. Woman Sleeping (1995, 6) is a full-length study of Sue Tilley, the model for Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, painted the same year. (This astonishing work garnered the world record for the highest price paid for a painting by a living artist when it sold for US$33.6 million at Christie’s New York in

2008.) The flesh tones and background scenery depicted in the painting are replaced in the etching with a subtler, more minimalist focus on the lines of the face and fabric folds. Ink has been carefully wiped from the plate, emphasizing the outline of the figure and its impressive physical mass, while also implying the forgetfulness of sleep. Freud returned to the subject a year later in the etching Woman with an Arm Tattoo (5), which shows a continued fascination with the contorted shape of Tilley’s crushed face.

Freud made several penetrating large-scale portrait etchings of people he knew well. David Dawson (7), an artist whom Freud described as “deeply honourable man”, became his studio assistant and confidante at the end of his life; Eli (2) features the whippet Freud was to give him. (Dawson and Eli appear again in Freud’s final painting, Portrait of the Hound, left unfinished at his death in 2011.) In the 1970s Freud had embarked on an epic project: a series of paintings of his mother. The etching The Painter’s Mother (1982, 11), modest in scale yet extraordinary in its vision, can be seen as the coda to this body of work. Art historian Lawrence Gowing observed, “it is more than 300 years since a painter showed as directly and as visually his relationship with his mother. And that was Rembrandt.” The comparison is not surprising, given the artist’s handling of light and shade, his understanding of human nature. In Self-Portrait: Reflection (1996, 12) we are permitted to gaze at the remarkable face Freud’s sitters would have seen: aging yet proud, with the eyes profound pools of darkness, looking back into our own.

List of works All works illustrated are for sale

1. Blond Girl, 1985 Etching, edition of 50 Paper: 89 x 72 cm Plate: 69 x 54.2 cm Published by James Kirkman, London and Brooke Alexander, New York

5. Woman with an Arm Tattoo, 1996 Etching, edition of 40 Paper: 70 x 91.7 cm Plate: 59.3 x 81.6 cm Published by Matthew Marks Gallery, New York

2. Eli, 2002 Etching, edition of 46 Paper: 77.3 x 95.6 cm Plate: 66 x 85.1 cm Published by Matthew Marks Gallery, New York

6. Woman Sleeping, 1995 Etching, edition of 36 Paper: 81.9 x 67.6 cm Plate: 73 x 59.4 cm Published by Matthew Marks Gallery, New York

3. Kai, 1991–2 Etching, edition of 40 Paper: 78.7 x 62.4 cm Plate: 69.8 x 54.5 cm Published by Matthew Marks Gallery, New York

7. David Dawson, 1998 Etching, edition of 46 Paper: 75.7 x 57.7 cm Plate: 59.7 x 42.9 cm Published by Matthew Marks Gallery, New York

4. Head and Shoulders of a Girl, 1990 Etching, edition of 50 Paper: 78 x 62.8 cm Plate: 69.1 x 54.5 cm Published by James Kirkman, London and Brooke Alexander, New York

8. The New Yorker, 2006 Etching, edition of 46 Paper: 74.9 x 56.9 cm Plate: 37.5 x 37.5 cm Published by Acquavella LLC

9. The Painter’s Doctor, 2006 Etching, edition of 46 Paper: 77.5 x 61.5 cm Plate: 59.7 x 45.7 cm Published by Acquavella LLC

14. Donegal Man, 2007 Etching, edition of 46 Paper: 66.7 x 57.8 cm Plate: 45.1 x 37.5 Published by Acquavella LLC

10. Portrait Head, 2005 etching, edition of 46 Paper: 61.5 x 50.8 cm Plate: 40 x 31.8 cm Published by Acquavella LLC

15. Girl Holding her Foot, 1985 Etching, edition of 50 Paper: 89 x 72 cm Plate: 69 x 54 cm Published by James Kirkman, London and Brooke Alexander, New York

11. The Painter’s Mother, 1982 Etching, edition of 25 Paper: 27.3 x 21 cm Plate: 17.8 x 15.2 cm Published by James Kirkman, London and Anthony d’Offay, London 12. Self Portrait: Reflection, 1996 Etching, edition of 46 Paper: 88 x 70.2 cm Plate: 59.4 x 43 cm Published by Matthew Marks Gallery, New York 13. Naked Man on a Bed, 1987 Etching, edition of 10 Paper: 57.2 x 74.4 cm Plate: 36.9 x 52.1 cm Published by James Kirkman, London and Brooke Alexander, New York

16. Girl Sitting, 1987 Etching, edition of 50 Paper: 61.1 x 77.6 cm Plate: 52.9 x 70 cm Published by James Kirkman, London and Brooke Alexander, New York 17. Painter’s Garden, 2003–04 Etching, edition of 46 Paper: 77.5 x 100.1 cm Plate: 63.5 x 86.8 cm Published by Acquavella LLC 18. Solicitor’s Head, 2003 Etching, edition of 46 Paper: 59.1 x 48.3 cm Plate: 36.7 x 27.8 cm Published by Acquavella LLC

1.

Blond Girl, 1985 Paper: 89 x 72 cm

2.

Eli, 2002 Paper: 77.3 x 95.6 cm

3.

Kai, 1991– 2 Paper: 78.7 x 62.4 cm

4.

Head and Shoulders of a Girl, 1990 Paper: 78 x 62.8 cm

5.

Woman with an Arm Tattoo, 1996 Paper: 70 x 91.7 cm

6.

Woman Sleeping, 1995 Paper: 81.9 x 67.6 cm

7.

David Dawson, 1998 Paper: 75.7 x 57.7 cm

8.

New Yorker, 2006 Paper: 74.9 x 56.9 cm

9.

The Painter’s Doctor, 2006 Paper: 77.5 x 61.5 cm

10.

Portrait Head, 2005 Paper: 61.5 x 50.8 cm

11.

The Painter’s Mother, 1982 Paper: 27.3 x 21 cm

12.

Self Portrait: Reflection, 1996 Paper: 88 x 70.2 cm

13.

Naked Man on a Bed, 1987 Paper: 57.2 x 74.4 cm

14.

Donegal Man, 2007 Paper: 66.7 x 57.8 cm

15.

Girl Holding her Foot, 1985 Paper: 89 x 72 cm

16.

Girl Sitting, 1987 Paper: 61.1 x 77.6 cm

17.

Painter’s Garden Paper: 77.5 x 100.1 cm

18.

Solicitor’s Head Paper: 59.1 x 48.3 cm

Marlborough London Marlborough Fine Art (London) Ltd 6 Albemarle Street London, W1S 4BY Telephone: +44 (0)20 7629 5161 Telefax: +44 (0)20 7629 6338 mfa@marlboroughfineart.com info@marlboroughgraphics.com www.marlboroughlondon.com Marlborough Contemporary 6 Albemarle Street London, W1S 4BY Telephone: +44 (0)20 7629 5161 Telefax: +44 (0)20 7629 6338 info@marlboroughcontemporary.com www.marlboroughlondon.com Madrid Galería Marlborough SA Orfila 5 28010 Madrid Telephone: +34 91 319 1414 Telefax: +34 91 308 4345 info@galeriamarlborough.com www.galeriamarlborough.com

New York Marlborough Gallery Inc. 40 West 57th Street New York, N.Y. 10019 Telephone: +1 212 541 4900 Telefax: +1 212 541 4948 mny@marlboroughgallery.com www.marlboroughgallery.com Marlborough Chelsea 545 West 25th Street New York, N.Y. 10001 Telephone: +1 212 463 8634 Telefax: +1 212 463 9658 chelsea@marlboroughgallery.com Barcelona Marlborough Barcelona Enric Granados, 68 08008 Barcelona.

Telephone: +34 93 467 4454 Telefax: +34 93 467 4451 infobarcelona@galeriamarlborough.com www.galeriamarlborough.com

Photography: © The Lucian Freud Archive / Bridgeman Images © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved / DACS 2016 Design: Shine Design, London, Print: Impress Print Services ISBN 978-1-909707-35-1, Catalogue No. 662, © 2017 Marlborough

Bacon / Freud Selected graphic works