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Head I

Francis Bacon British, born Ireland
1947–48
Not on view
Head I is the earliest of the six portrait-format works included in Bacon’s first exhibition at Erica Brausen’s Hanover Gallery, London, in 1949. The artist’s use of white lines to create a box or interior frame within the composition would characterize his work for the next forty years. Bacon here reduces the human form to a snarling mouth with fangs. The heavy impasto creates a texture that has been compared to rhinoceros skin—or, as critic Robert Melville wrote at the time, it has the "color of wet, black snakes lightly powdered with dust."

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Head I
  • Artist: Francis Bacon (British (born Ireland), Dublin 1909–1992 Madrid)
  • Date: 1947–48
  • Medium: Oil and tempera on board
  • Dimensions: 39 1/2 × 29 1/2 in. (100.3 × 74.9 cm)
  • Classification: Paintings
  • Credit Line: Bequest of Richard S. Zeisler, 2007
  • Object Number: 2007.247.1
  • Rights and Reproduction: © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
  • Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art

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Three Studies for Self-Portrait
Francis Bacon
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Untitled Self-Portrait, Eileen Agar British, born Argentina, Oil on board
Untitled Self-Portrait
Eileen Agar
ca. 1949
Two Trees, Peter Doig British, Oil on canvas
Two Trees
Peter Doig
2017
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Night Journey
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1969–70

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