Painting based on a photograph of Bacon's lover Peter Lacy

During the 1960's, Bacon's treatment of the head often synthesized a very free, 'painterly' handeling of the medium with distortions or reconstructions of the form that seems extreamly indebted to typical Picasso heads of the 1930's and '40's. This work, from a series of four, was one of the first in which Bacon successfully consummated this difficult synthesis. The are two paticular works by picasso, both painted in October 1939, which seem espically relevant: Portrait de Marie-Therese Walter and Sabertrs as Spanish Grandee