| Head III | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | Francis Bacon |
| Year | 1949 |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 81 cm × 66 cm (32 in × 26 in) |
| Location | Private collection |
Head III is an oil painting by Francis Bacon, one of series of works made in 1949 for his first one-man exhibition at the Hanover Gallery, in London. As with the other six paintings in the series, it focuses on the disembodied head of male figure, who looks out with a penetrating gaze, but is fixed against an isolating, flat, nondescript background, while also enfolded by hazy horizontal foreground curtain-like folds which seems to function like a surrounding cage.[1]
Head III was first exhibited in November 1949 at the Hanover in a showing commissioned by one of the artist's early champions, Erica Brausen.[2] The six head paintings were painted during a short period of time, when Bacon was under pressure to provide works for the Hanover exhibition. Of the series, Head I, Head II, and Head VI are today seen as artistically successful, with Head VI as ground breaking, and a direct precursor to Bacon's seminal 1950s many representations of Popes. Head III is important in the development in that it is the first of the series in which Bacon masters the effect of the horizontal folds, and the ambiguous facial expression of the subject nears that of his Diego Velázquez's Portrait of Innocent X; his primary source for these paintings.[1]
The painting is in a private collection, having been sold at auction at Sotheby's in 2013 for £10,442,500.[3][4]
- ^ a b Davies; Yard, 19
- ^ Zweite, 74
- ^ Francis Bacon, Head III, Sotheby's, 26 June 2013
- ^ Dex, Robert (25 July 2013). "Francis Bacon paint brushes expected to fetch £25,000 at auction". The Independent. Archived from the original on 9 May 2022. Retrieved 7 May 2017.