Titled in ink on verso. Amongst Bill Brandt's best known portraits is one showing Francis Bacon at night, lit by old street lamps, on Primrose Hill in North London. The...
Amongst Bill Brandt's best known portraits is one showing Francis Bacon at night, lit by old street lamps, on Primrose Hill in North London. The present print, in contrast, is almost unknown and is the only known print. Undated, it dates from the beginning of the 1950s, judging by the subject's relative youthfulness. It was published in the American edition of Harpers Bazaar in 1952, but appears not to have been exhibited until its inclusion in Francis Bacon and Henry Moore: Terror and Beauty, Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada, 2014.
Another photograph by Brandt, with what appear to be the same pair of binoculars, Eaton Square still life, is dated circa 1948.
We are grateful to the Francis Bacon Foundation for their asistance in cataloguing this work.
Copyright The Bill Brandt Archive, London / Courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York / Zürich. 2018