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122:, who to avoid suffocation provided his models with straws while submerged in the casting material. Although Bacon's work is titled as a "life mask", the painting more resembles a death mask, as evidence by dark black flat, simplified background and the figure's closed eyes and pallid skin. His lips are tightly pursed and turned downward as in Deville's cast. While his left eye is tightly shut, his right eyebrow is raised. Jones writes that, with this painting, Bacon "apprehends something beneath the visible skin: an inner self, suffering in absolute isolation." In this Bacon's portrait resembles Deville's original cast, which was viewed favourably by those who knew Blake. The National Portrait Gallery notes how Blake's friend, the artist
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Bacon did not work from a cast of the head, but instead from a black and white photograph supplied by the gallery, although a plaster replica of the mask was found in his bedroom at Reece Mews after his death. Study II is considered the most artistically successful of the series, and is described as
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to design the album cover for "Six Songs of
William Blake", pieces of music Schurmann had set to a number of Blake's poems. Bacon painted six separate versions, each a variant of his earlier "Man in Blue" series, and Bacon apparently viewed the series as one of his most successful. As so often with
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undescribed dark backgrounds, and can thus be viewed as extensions of his "Man in Blue" paintings of a few years earlier. This second of the versions completed in
January 1955 is considered the strongest, and is in the collection of
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Bacon's portraits, each of the works are provisionally titled as a "Study"; according to art critic
Jonathan Jones this may be because Bacon saw the Blake paintings only as " to get at the essence of what a portrait is."
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consisting of "broad strokes of pink and mauve, with which Bacon establishes an equivocation between waxen mask and human flesh, drag pain and loneliness and imperturbable spirit in their wake."
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The series resembles Bacon's late-1940s and early-1950s paintings of single bust-length single male figures set against anonymous
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The portrait has been described as similar to Blake's c. 1819–20 miniature painting
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in its "fleshy, monstrous intensity, the authority of a vision seen in darkness."
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Study for
Portrait II - after the Life Mask of William Blake, Francis Bacon (1955)
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Blake was around fifty years old when the cast was made by the sculptor and
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Bacon became interested in the series after he was asked by the composer
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Study for
Portrait II (After the Life Mask of William Blake)
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Study for
Portrait II (after the Life Mask of William Blake)
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Portrait of Isabel
Rawsthorne Standing in a Street in Soho
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Triptych
Inspired by T.S. Eliot's Poem "Sweeney Agonistes"
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Love Is the Devil: Study for a
Portrait of Francis Bacon
254:". National Portrait Gallery. Retrieved 4 November 2018
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Three
Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion
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Version No. 2 of Lying Figure with Hypodermic Syringe
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Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X
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820:Three Studies for a Portrait of Henrietta Moraes
828:Three Studies for a Portrait of Muriel Belcher
703:Triptych Inspired by the Oresteia of Aeschylus
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195:, 23 February 2002. Retrieved 4 November 2018
879:Study for a Self-Portrait—Triptych, 1985–86
761:Three Studies for a Portrait of George Dyer
687:Two Figures Lying on a Bed with Attendants
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90:James Deville's 1823 plaster cast. H: 92mm
897:List of large triptychs by Francis Bacon
785:Portrait of George Dyer and Lucian Freud
626:Study of Red Pope 1962. 2nd version 1971
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44:after the Life Mask of William Blake
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301:. London: Thames and Hudson, 2000.
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972:Collection of the Tate galleries
315:. London: Reaktion Books, 1992.
284:. London: Westview Press, 1996.
871:Three Studies for Self-Portrait
855:Three Studies for Self Portrait
769:Portrait of George Dyer Talking
711:Second Version of Triptych 1944
655:Three Studies for a Crucifixion
492:Study for a Bullfight, Number 2
500:Three Studies of the Male Back
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793:Three Studies of Lucian Freud
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299:Looking back at Francis Bacon
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914:Influences on Francis Bacon
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162:. Retrieved 4 November 2018
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663:Three Figures in a Room
409:Wound for a Crucifixion
340:William Blake life mask
204:Sylvester (2000), p. 69
156:Out of the Black Cavern
377:Francis Bacon (artist)
336:, Tate Britain, London
252:NPG 1809 William Blake
171:Peppiatt (1996), p. 83
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586:Study after Velázquez
436:Figure in a Landscape
334:Study for Portrait II
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734:Triptych–August 1972
282:Anatomy of an Enigma
215:William Blake's Head
908:The Black Triptychs
311:Van Alphen, Ernst.
154:Harrison, Martin. "
508:Blood on the Floor
185:Jones, Jonathan. "
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290:978-0-8133-3520-9
278:Peppiatt, Michael
219:Hugh Lane Gallery
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941:(1998 film)
933:(1981 book)
671:Crucifixion
519:Head series
460:Two Figures
401:Crucifixion
103:Description
66:in London.
41:(subtitled
956:Categories
307:0500019940
160:Christie's
82:Commission
78:, London.
53:printmaker
882:(1985–86)
638:Triptychs
613:(c. 1954)
60:life mask
543:Head III
32:, London
28:, 1955.
923:Related
567:Head VI
551:Head IV
535:Head II
428:Figures
271:Sources
62:at the
874:(1979)
866:(1973)
858:(1973)
839:(1967)
831:(1966)
823:(1963)
804:(1976)
796:(1969)
788:(1967)
780:(1967)
772:(1966)
764:(1964)
745:(1973)
737:(1972)
714:(1988)
706:(1981)
698:(1976)
690:(1968)
682:(1967)
674:(1965)
666:(1964)
658:(1962)
650:(1944)
629:(1971)
621:(1962)
605:(1954)
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589:(1950)
570:(1949)
562:(1949)
559:Head V
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527:Head I
511:(1986)
503:(1970)
495:(1969)
487:(1968)
479:(1955)
471:(1953)
463:(1953)
455:(1952)
447:(1946)
439:(1945)
420:(1950)
412:(1933)
404:(1933)
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578:Popes
139:Notes
317:ISBN
303:ISBN
286:ISBN
71:flat
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243:^
176:^
147:^
369:e
362:t
355:v
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Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Additional terms may apply.
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