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Francis Bacon: king of the self-made myth

13 February 2021

9:00 AM

13 February 2021

9:00 AM

Francis Bacon: Revelations Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan

William Collins, pp.800, 30

In 1953, Francis Bacon’s friends Lucian Freud and Caroline Blackwood were concerned about the painter’s health. His liver was in bad shape, he drank inordinately, his lover had recently thrown him out of a first-floor window in the course of a drunken row, he was taking too many amphetamines and his heart was ‘in tatters’, ‘not a ventricle working’.

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