Brooklyn Museum: Contemporary Art: Personnage

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Personnage

With its male figure seated on a schematic throne, Personnage is likely related to Bacon’s paintings from the early 1950s inspired by Diego Velázquez’s mid-seventeenthcentury portrait of Pope Innocent X. This canvas, which shows traces of an earlier image through the thickly applied pigment, appears to be one of many that Bacon abandoned before completion. A 1982 letter from the artist to the Brooklyn Museum reveals that Bacon discarded the painting in 1956–57, considering it a failure. He gave it to an artist friend, who apparently did not follow through on his intention to obliterate the image and paint on the other side. Here, as in Bacon’s many other unfinished canvases, the power of the artist’s vision still makes itself felt.

Artist: Francis Bacon, English, 1909-1992
Medium: Oil on canvas
Place Made: England
Dates: 1955-1956
Dimensions: 77 1/8 x 55 1/8 in. (195.9 x 140 cm)
Signature: Unsigned
Collections: Contemporary Art
Museum Location: This item is on view in Contemporary Art Galleries, 4th Floor
Accession Number: 81.306
Credit Line: Gift of Olga H. Knoepke
Image: Overall, 81.306_SL1.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph