The gilded gutter life of Francis Bacon

Daniel Farson

This biography of Francis Bacon was written by the man who was his confidant for more than forty years. Through this personal, gossip-filled, and thoroughly readable narrative, Daniel Farson takes the reader into the colorful, eccentric, and often decadent behind-the-scenes world of Bacon, moving from London's Bohemian Soho to Berlin, Paris, and the Tangiers of William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Paul Bowles. This remarkable artist, who died in 1992 at the age of eighty-two, is considered by many to have been the greatest English painter since Turner. Growing up in Dublin - where his father ran a racing stable - Bacon was said to have been subjected to a sexual education from his father's stable boys at an early age, but almost no formal education except for tutorials from the parish priest. Though he never attended art school, he began painting and was soon championed by Graham Sutherland. Bacon's drinking, petty thievery, escapades with the rough trade, and his running of a gambling casino from the former studio of Sir John Millais - with his loyal old nanny acting as the hatcheck girl - are all part of the life of the man whom Lucian Freud would say was the "wildest and the wisest" he had ever met. Bacon was also known for his savage wit, Edwardian manner, and extravagant generosity. The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon brilliantly reveals his enormous talent as well as his grand style and dark despair. For anyone interested in Francis Bacon the man and the painter, this is a book not to be missed.