Triptych 1974–77, 1974–77 Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon Triptych 1974–77 1974–77 © Estate of Francis Bacon/DACS. Copyright Agency
The outdoor setting of this work is unusual for Francis Bacon, who was renowned as a master of psychological interiors. But the sense of open space contracts suddenly and poignantly in the triptych’s middle panel, where the horizon is revealed to be but the scrim surrounding a mortal arena which the figure is preparing to depart, like a battered fighter leaving a sawdust boxing ring. Inspired in part by Michelangelo’s muscular sculptures and Eadweard Muybridge’s photographic studies of male wrestlers, this figure is identifiable in the right-hand panel as Bacon’s lover George Dyer, who died in 1971.
The latest and perhaps the most movingly spare of the triptychs Bacon painted in Dyer’s memory, Triptych 1974–77 is also an anxiety-laden altarpiece. Its two side panels usher us towards a transformative central event: the body, reduced and naked, sliding towards the dark door of its final exit.