Source materials and objects from Francis Bacon's Studios

Francis Bacon was inspired by a staggering variety of source images. He drew on a visual reservoir fed by a torrent of pages torn from books, fragments of illustrations, newspapers and magazines, folded, creased and paint-spattered photographs of friends and lovers, artist’s supplies, brief handwritten notes, scraps of garments and other objects. He had a visceral relationship with his source images, which were starting-points for his work, acting as ‘triggers of ideas’. A wide range of source material from his studios is now in the MB Art Collection and is invaluable to those studying the artist’s creative process.