A private collection of photographs and studio remnants offers new insight into the life and creative environment of Irish-born painter Francis Bacon. The assemblage, gathered over two decades by photography dealer Michael Hoppen, will be displayed next week at the Independent 20th Century art fair at Sotheby’s New York.
Bacon’s workspace, located at 7 Reece Mews in South Kensington, London, was both his home and creative hub from 1961 until his death in 1992. The modest two-room apartment above a garage, with a galley kitchen that included a bathtub opposite the oven, reflected the artist’s preference for disorder. Known for embracing chaos, Bacon’s studio floor was famously cluttered with painting materials, scraps of canvas, torn photographs, and various detritus. Hoppen describes this environment as one where chance played a key role in sparking Bacon’s imagery; found objects and collages from magazines or friends were recycled or reconsidered for his paintings.
In addition to studio debris, the collection features portraits of Bacon and figures from his close-knit and often untidy social circle. These include photographs of artist contemporaries such as Lucian Freud and Frank Auerbach, as well as images of Soho’s bohemian nightlife where Bacon spent much of his time. Soho, a vibrant but gritty area north of Piccadilly Circus, was a longstanding cultural hub characterized by drinking dens, strip clubs, and the undercurrents of London’s artistic and social fringes. Hoppen, who was introduced to the neighborhood in the late 1970s, reflects that it has since been significantly altered by gentrification.
Among the exhibited photographs are well-known images such as a 1963 group portrait of Bacon alongside Freud and Auerbach at Wheeler’s Restaurant in Soho, as well as less familiar shots like an anonymous 1971 photo of Bacon leaving court. Several portraits by John Deakin of prominent women in Bacon’s orbit—Juanita Forbes and Muriel Belcher, the proprietor of the Colony Room club—also feature.
Bacon’s personal history intertwined with the seamy and sometimes volatile aspects of his milieu. Raised in privilege but drawn to the bohemian and the criminal underworld, his London life included episodes such as police raids, gambling parties, and a turbulent relationship with George Dyer, a petty criminal whose involvement with the artist has become part of his mythos.
The material in Hoppen’s collection originated largely from Bacon’s studio detritus. Regular clearouts intended to keep the space manageable inadvertently preserved fragments of artistic process and personal mementos. An electrician who participated in these cleanings later sold six bin bags filled with diaries, photographs, contact sheets, and damaged canvases at a Surrey farm auction in 2007—a sale Hoppen recalls as unusual due to its eclectic mix of items, where Bacon ephemera was sold alongside livestock equipment.
The exhibition emerges as a vivid document not only of Bacon’s working life but also of the broader bohemian culture of mid-20th-century London. Hoppen observes that while Soho’s physical landscape has changed drastically, the creative energy and social chemistry that defined the area during Bacon’s era remain difficult to replicate.
The collection will be on display at Sotheby’s The Breuer, New York, from September 24 to 27 as part of the Independent 20th Century fair.