On view in the Francis Bacon display cases.
Reproductions of Francis Bacon’s own paintings lined the wall of his kitchen at 7 Reece Mews and many reproductions of his work including torn leaves from books, magazines and catalogues, as well as photographs were found among the items in his studio.
As well as offering the opportunity for continuously looking at previous compositions and subjects as important sources of inspiration, Bacon also on occasion over-painted these reproductions of his own finished paintings as another way of exploring and developing new compositional and pictorial ideas in his work.
A selection of similar material from Bacon’s Studio Archive at Hugh Lane Gallery is currently on loan to a major exhibition at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia (7 December 2014 – 8 March 2015). The exhibition, entitled Francis Bacon and the Art of the Past, is the first exhibition of Bacon’s work in Russia since 1988 and presents twenty paintings by Bacon placed in the context of masterpieces from the State Hermitage collection: Egyptian mummy masks, Roman and Renaissance sculpture, including Michelangelo’s Crouching Boy, and a number of the museum’s most famous works including portraits by Rembrandt and Velázquez. It also includes works by Ingres, Matisse, Van Gogh and Degas’s pastel of a woman after her toilette. The selection of material from the Hugh Lane forms a bridge between the old and the new, the real and the reproduction and offers a unique opportunity to explore Bacon’s relationship with his rich artistic heritage.
