1950
Eric Hall is no longer registered as living at 7 Cromwell Place, but he continues to support Bacon.
Bacon participates in two exhibitions at the Hanover Gallery (4 July – 11 August and 14 September – 21 October).
September – December: Bacon takes over his painter friend John Minton’s class at the Royal College of Art for a term. While there, he paints in the artist Rodrigo Moynihan’s studio.
1951
On 4 January, in Southampton, Bacon takes ship on the Pretoria Castle, bound for Cape Town. On arrival, he goes to Salisbury (present-day Harare) in Rhodesia to visit his mother. He spends four months with his mother and sisters. During his stay, he discovers Kruger National Park. He is fascinated by the movement and behaviour of wild animals. On his way home in April, he stops in Cairo and is enthralled by ancient Egyptian art.
On 30 April, Jessie Lightfoot dies. Bacon is devastated. He sells 7 Cromwell Place to the artist Robert Buhler.
Rodrigo Moynihan arranges for Bacon to have a studio at the Royal College of Art until 1953. The French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson is to photograph Bacon in this studio about 1952, and later, in 1971, in his studio at 7 Reece Mews, London.
On 9 May, Cecil Beaton immortalises Bacon at Reddish House, the photographer’s home, in Broad Chalke, Wiltshire.
A solo exhibition of Bacon’s work is held at the Hanover Gallery from 11 December 1951 to 12 February 1952.
1952
Bacon meets Peter Lacy, a former RAF pilot. They begin a passionate and destructive affair. Lacy is to be the great love of his life. In January, the Magazine of Art publishes an article by Sam Hunter entitled ‘Francis Bacon: The Anatomy of Horror’, with photographs showing documents used by the painter in his work.
In February, Bacon stays at 30 Sumner Place, South Kensington, London.
In the spring, Bacon and Lacy go to South Africa.
In May, Bacon is living in 26 Beaufort Gardens, London.
In October, Bacon travels to Marseille and Aix-en-Provence with Denis Wirth-Miller.
9 December 1952 – 2 January 1953: Bacon shows landscapes inspired by Africa and the South of France at the Hanover Gallery.
1953
Bacon paints his first small triptych of portraits, Three Studies of the Human Head (1953), and Two Figures (1953).
In June, he stays in Monaco.
In late summer, he rents a cottage in Hurst, Berkshire, not far from Peter Lacy’s cottage.
Eric Hall donates Three Studies of Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944) to the Tate Gallery, London.
October – November: Bacon’s first solo exhibition in the United States is held at the Durlacher Brothers Gallery, New York, but the artist does not go to see it.
12 November – 9 December: Bacon shows his work at the Beaux Arts Gallery, London, directed by Helen Lessore, who considered both Bacon and Walter Sickert to be geniuses.
Towards the end of the year, Bacon stays for a few weeks in John Minton’s former house at 9 Apollo Place, Chelsea, sharing it with art critic David Sylvester.
1954
In February, Bacon rents a room at 19 Cromwell Road, South Kensington.
In March he moves to the Imperial Hotel, then to 9 Market Place, Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, where he begins his famous ‘Man in Blue’ series.
In June, Bacon stays in Wivenhoe, Essex, with his artist friends Denis Wirth-Miller and Richard Chopping.
June – July: Bacon’s work is exhibited at the Hanover Gallery.
19 June – 17 October: Bacon represents Great Britain at the Venice Biennale, alongside Lucian Freud, Reg Butler and Ben Nicholson.
In November, he travels to Ostia and Rome with Peter Lacy. After a quarrel, Lacy leaves the Italian capital. Bacon stays on alone in Rome until January; he is later to claim that he spends most of his time at Saint Peter’s, deliberately avoiding going to see Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X (c. 1650) at the Galleria Doria-Pamphilj. He travels to Naples for a few days.
1955
20 January – 19 February: A first small Bacon retrospective is organised at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Dover Street, London.
On 24 January, Peter Lacy sets up home in Tangier, Morocco.
In January, Bacon begins his series on William Blake, inspired by a commission from composer Gerard Schurmann to illustrate the cover of his score for Six Songs of William Blake.
Bacon is commissioned to paint portraits of Robert and Lisa Sainsbury, who are to become important patrons for him.
10 May – 7 August: Four paintings by Bacon are shown at the exhibition ‘The New Decade: Twenty-Two European Painters and Sculptors’ at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
28 June – 29 July: Bacon shows his works at the Hanover Gallery.
In September, Bacon is in Monaco. He also spends time in Cannes, at the Hotel Martinez (the hotel manager sends him a postcard in London in December 1955).
In the autumn, at the request of Bacon’s picture-framer, Alfred Hecht, Paul Danquah and Peter Pollock offer the artist a room and workspace in their flat at 9 Overstrand Mansions, Prince of Wales Drive, Battersea.
1956
In February, Bacon meets Peter Watson, an art collector and one of the founders of the literary magazine Horizon.
In May and June, Bacon participates in two group exhibitions in Oslo and Copenhagen.
In the summer, he makes his first trip to Tangier (via Madrid and Gibraltar), where he visits Peter Lacy. He is regularly to travel there until 1963. In Tangier, he meets the artist Ahmed Yacoubi and the writers William Burroughs, Paul Bowles and Allen Ginsberg.
October – December: Six works by Bacon are shown in the exhibition ‘Masters of British Painting, 1800 – 1950’ at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The exhibition includes the work of thirty other artists and subsequently travels to Saint Louis and San Francisco.
1957
At the beginning of the year, Bacon visits Peter Lacy on the Côte d’Azur for five days.
12 February – 10 March: Bacon has his first solo exhibition in Paris at the Galerie Rive Droite. Roland Penrose writes the catalogue introduction. Bacon does not attend the private view.
21 March – 26 April: Bacon shows his ‘Van Gogh’ series, inspired by the Dutch artist’s Painter on the Road to Tarascon (1888), at the Hanover Gallery.
May – September: Bacon stays at the Hotel Cecil in Tangier.
In October, he participates in a group exhibition at the Galerie Raymond Creuze, Paris and visits Aix-en-Provence and Monaco.
1958
In January and February, Bacon is at the Clos Garibondy, in the La Bocca neighbourhood, in Cannes, with Peter Lacy.
He then goes to Tangier and stays at the Hotel Cecil until August.
23 January – 10 February: Bacon has his first Italian solo exhibition at the Galleria Galatea, Turin. The exhibition then travels to the Galleria dell’Ariete, Milan, and the Galleria L’Obelisco, Rome.
On 27 August he is interviewed by Daniel Farson for an episode of the television series The Art Game.
In October, he abruptly quits the Hanover Gallery to join Marlborough Fine Art, which is to represent him for the rest of his life.
Starting in November, he stays with Peter Lacy at the Clos Garibondy, La Bocca, Cannes, until February 1959.
1959
In the summer, Bacon is in Tangier.
11 July – 1 October: Artworks by Bacon are presented at Documenta II in Kassel, Germany.
In September, Bacon rents a studio at 3 Porthmeor Studios, St. Ives, Cornwall.
In September and October, Bacon represents Great Britain at the São Paulo Biennale in Brazil, alongside Barbara Hepworth and Stanley William Hayter.
30 September – 29 November: Bacon’s work is shown in the exhibition ‘New Images of Man’ at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
