Francis Bacon: Human Presence – a 'stirring, splendid' exhibition
'Riveting' show at the National Portrait Gallery explores the artist's 'wild' portraits

Francis Bacon (1909-1992) is generally remembered as "an artist who captured the darkness of his times in his work", said Waldemar Januszczak in The Sunday Times.
When we think of him, we tend to imagine "a painter expressing global angst" – about the "toxic" mid-20th century, Hitler, the Holocaust, and the nuclear arms race. He has not, though, generally been seen as a portrait artist.
The National Portrait Gallery's new exhibition sets the record straight, giving us a painter who created a variety of portraits that belong to the people depicted, "not the world around them". Bringing together more than 50 works painted between the 1940s and the artist's death, including many of his most emblematic, the show argues that Bacon was, in essence, "always a portraitist of sorts", a painter of the human figure, who frequently based his depictions on real people. It shows him not so much expressing "the screams of his times" as recording "a variety of highly personal moods and meanings in himself and his friends". It is "a riveting journey".
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
In some ways, it seems "an odd exercise" to point to these paintings as portraits, said Laura Cumming in The Observer. Although many of his subjects are named, barely any are identifiable in these canvases: their faces are "squashed, contorted, twisted, swerving". A depiction of the woman dubbed the "queen of Soho", Henrietta Moraes, for instance, sees her lying nude on a mattress, her body "corkscrewed", "features scrambled to oblivion"; a likeness of Lucian Freud turns out to have been based on a portrait of Franz Kafka. Indeed, the only recognisable face here is the artist's own, represented here in a number of eerie self-portraits. One "strange and captivating" example, painted in 1987, sees the 78-year-old painter style himself as a younger man with a "boyish fringe" capping the "distinctive moon shape" of his face. In general, these pictures are "images of life forces so zestful, original and wild they hold their own outside the old conventions of portraiture".
The show can seem unrelentingly dark, said Jackie Wullschläger in the Financial Times. A portrait of his doomed lover, George Dyer (who killed himself in a hotel room aged 37) sees his face "brutally sliced in half"; a panel from a triptych of 1973 self-portraits has Bacon base his likeness on a photo of a First World War bomb victim. Yet Bacon was radical in striving to uncover man's base animal nature through portraiture. Two likenesses of another lover, the sadistic Peter Lacy, variously see him "crouching – about to pounce – in long grass like a fierce beast" and "eviscerated, his internal organs bursting through his skin". Both works still "disrupt expectations" of what a portrait can be. In Bacon – "Britain's greatest postwar painter" – the NPG has found a "perfect subject". And this is a "stirring, splendid" exhibition.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
What are your retirement savings account options?
The explainer The two main types of accounts are 401(k) plans and individual retirement accounts (IRAs)
By Becca Stanek, The Week US
-
7 tranquil hotels worth the trek
The Week Recommends Find serenity off the beaten path
By Catherine Garcia, The Week US
-
'From his election as pope in 2013, Francis sought to reform'
Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
By Justin Klawans, The Week US
-
Exploring the three great gardens of Japan
The Week Recommends Beautiful gardens are 'the stuff of Japanese landscape legends'
By The Week UK
-
One-pan black chickpeas with baharat and orange recipe
The Week Recommends This one-pan dish offers bold flavours, low effort and minimum clean up
By The Week UK
-
G20: Viola Davis stars in 'ludicrous' but fun action thriller
The Week Recommends The award-winning actress plays the 'swashbuckling American president' in this newly released Prime Video film
By The Week UK
-
6 must-see homes in Boston
Feature Featuring a factory-turned-loft in South Boston and a wraparound roof deck in South End
By The Week US
-
Cartier at the V&A: a 'dazzling' show
The Week Recommends A 'once-in-a-lifetime' display of the French jeweller's 'exquisite' objects
By Irenie Forshaw, The Week UK
-
What is Free Speech?: a 'meticulous' look at the evolution of freedom of expression
The Week Recommends Fara Dabhoiwala provides both history and critique while 'correcting misconceptions'
By The Week UK
-
Rupert Gavin shares his favourite books
The Week Recommends The theatre impresario picks works by Dan Jones, Annie Ernaux and Floella Benjamin
By The Week UK
-
What They Found: Sam Mendes's powerful debut documentary
The Week Recommends The Oscar-winning director's harrowing film features footage and first-hand accounts of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp
By The Week UK