“What modern man needs is a kind of shorthand - an intelligible compressed language to deal with the complexity of modern reality (which includes the presence of the art of the past)”

—Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon’s monumental triptych Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, on which the present lot Deuxième version du triptyque is based, was first painted in April 1944, slightly more than a year before the end of the Second World War. This iconic oil painting depicts the mythological figures of Furies – three goddesses of vengeance responsible for punishing crimes and restoring justice in ancient Greek mythology. Portrayed as monstrous hybrids of part man and part beast, these distorted, menacing creatures roar in profound silence while struggling in helpless futility. By highlighting their contorted bodies, grotesquely elongated necks, and snarling mouths, the triptych closely mirrors the tumultuous society of its time, powerfully conveying the atrocious brutality of war, the appalling horror of the Holocaust, and the looming threat of nuclear destruction. 

Alongside its format, the triptych also contains visual allusions to the Christian faith, most notably seen in the incorporation of a pedestal in the central panel. Bacon’s appropriation of this loaded Christian iconography only serves to reveal the widespread disillusionment with faith and the growing unattainability of salvation felt in England amidst the Second World War.

In Bacon’s later reiteration of the subject, the spatially ambiguous, painterly background of cadmium orange transforms into an increasingly structured surrounding dominated by saturated areas of blood red. As more space is created around these tormented creatures, thereby plunging them into a deeper void, the palpable anguish of the earlier version gives way to a more chilling and everlasting impression of isolation and imprisonment. While characterized by a greater sense of compositional clarity with the use of stronger lines and smoother textures, Deuxième version du triptyque nevertheless poignantly speaks to the perpetual and shared human condition of existential angst, even within the seemingly orderly modern world.