Study for a Portrait of John Edwards. by Francis Bacon, 1909-1992

Francis Bacon, 1909-1992
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Study for a Portrait of John Edwards.

Lithograph in colours. 1986. Signed in pencil. Numbered (66) from the edition of 180. Printed at the studio of Arts Litho, Paris 1986. Derived from an oil of the same date.

Extremely fine fresh impression with excellent colours. On pale cream wove paper. Excellent condition. Sheet: 37 1/2 x 26 3/4ins. Image: 26 3/4 x 19 7/8ins (680x503mm).

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Although the subject of this composition was John Edwards, Bacon's great friend for the later years of his life and the inheritor of his estate, it is nonetheless, like all Bacon's work, non specific. His portraits, although inspired by a sitter, are not 'of' that person, they are not personalised. He saw them rather as a collection of human elements brought together to make a universal statement.

Bacon became increasingly pessimistic about man's role in life. From the earliest moments of his career he felt that man's striving to justify and explain, and even focus the purpose of his existence was essentially futile. He was convinced that this striving had inspired the greatest of human artistic achievements but that in the final analysis it would lead nowhere. He wrote 'man now realises that he is an accident, that he is a completely futile being... Art has become a game by which man distracts himself...in my case through painting'.

Bacon's work in lithography is all derived from his paintings, but it evokes the same powerful emotions through the handling of the forms, through the use of the colours, and through the force of the imagery.