Francis Bacon (28 October 1909 – 28 April 1992)

Crucifixion, 1933

" I think one of the things is that, if you are going to be a painter, you have got to decide that you are not going to be afraid of making a fool of yourself.
I think another thing is to be able to find subjects which really absorb you to try and do.
I feel that with out a subject you automatically go back into decoration because you haven't got the subject which is always eating into you to bring it back - and the greatest art always returns you to the vulnerability of the human situation ".

Francis Bacon

Crucifixion (1933)

Douglas Cooper, then curator (and part owner/co-director with Fred Mayor) of the Mayor Gallery, in Cork Street, arranged for one of Bacon's paintings, Women in the Sunlight (destroyed without trace), to be included a group show in April 1933.

It was also thanks to Cooper that Bacon's Crucifixion (1933) was reproduced in Herbert Read's book Art Now(opposite a 1929 Baigneuse by Picasso — plates 60/61). The publication was accompanied by an exhibition of the works, in October, at the Mayor Gallery, where Crucifixion (1933) was shown as Composition. 1933.

Crucifixion (1933) (oil on canvas) was subsequently purchased by Sir Michael Sadler (who, other than friends or relations, was the first to buy a painting), and who also commissioned a second version, Crucifixion (1933) (chalk, gouache and pencil), and sent Bacon an x-ray photograph of his own skull, with a request that he paint a portrait from it. Bacon duly incorporated the x-ray directly into The Crucifixion (1933).