Sotheby's London to offer Francis Bacon's Study for Head of George Dyer SOTHEBY’S LONDON TO OFFER EXCEPTIONALLY RARE STUDY FOR HEAD OF GEORGE DYER BY FRANCIS BACON
intense portraits of the 20th Century. It also serves as a counterpoint to the so-called ‘Black
Triptychs’ of the early 1970s that commemorate Dyer and which are widely considered to be the pinnacle of
Bacon’s whole oeuvre. Oliver Barker adds: “In the brilliance of its conception and the significance of its
subject, Study for Head of George Dyer should be included in the history of art alongside Picasso’s
Weeping Woman of 1937 in the Tate as an example of what portraiture can achieve.”
Contrary to the myth that they met when Dyer broke into Bacon’s mews house - popularised by accounts
such as the 1998 film Love is the Devil starring Derek Jacobi as Bacon and Daniel Craig as Dyer - according to
Bacon, they actually met in Autumn 1963 in a Soho drinking den when Dyer introduced himself to the artist’s
party. Hailing from the East End of London, Dyer had received little formal education, possessed a criminal
record and had served several short prison terms for theft and petty crime. Nevertheless, well-built and
immaculately dressed, he soon succeeded Peter Lacy, who had died the previous year, as Bacon’s companion
and lover. As the 1960s advanced, Bacon and Dyer’s affair became increasingly stormy. The artist repeatedly
bought Dyer out of trouble and by providing a ‘kept’ existence, inadvertently fuelled the East Ender’s paranoia
of lacking purpose, which in turn drove his worsening drink problem and the onset of depression. In the
Autumn of 1971 the pair travelled to Paris for the major retrospective for Bacon’s work that had been
organised at the Grand Palais. It was to be a monumental occasion celebrating the artist’s already stellar
career. However, barely 36 hours before the opening, George Dyer was found dead from an overdose of
sleeping pills, exacerbated by alcohol abuse, in the hotel suite the pair shared. Dyer’s suicide left Bacon griefstricken.
Thus, both before and after death, George Dyer provided a defining inspiration for Bacon’s work, proving the
catalyst for a string of masterworks. Similar to the way that Pablo Picasso created a profile of his young lover
Marie-Thérèse Walter and obsessively repeated it in works throughout the 1930s, Bacon created a distinctive
and instantly recognisable template for the outline of George Dyer’s head which became a highly visible
recurrence in his 1960s and ‘70s output.
In executing Study for Head of George Dyer, Bacon cut
out a photograph of his subject, taken by photographer John
Deakin who he had met in the late 1940s. Bacon and Deakin
were both habitués of Soho’s Colony Room, where the
photographer took endless shots of his fellow regulars, many
of which became the basis of the artist’s penetrating
portraits of their mutual drinking companions. Bacon never
painted from live models and this famous cut-out, circa
1964, is frequently cited as iconic evidence of Bacon’s use of
photography to aid his work. It was not used as a direct
template, but provides insight into Bacon’s working method.
Talking of his subjects, Bacon said:
