Francis Bacon

Study for Chimpanzee

March 1957

Although Francis Bacon is best known for his alienated and often hideously distorted human figures, animals are the subject of at least a dozen of his canvases. He rarely worked from nature, preferring photographs. Intrigued by the disconcerting affinities between simians and human beings, he first compared them in 1949. Like his human subjects, Bacon’s animals are shown in formal portraits or candid snapshots in which they are passive, shrieking, or twisted in physical contortions. The chimpanzee in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection work is depicted with relative benevolence, though the blurring of the image, reflecting Bacon’s interest in frozen motion and the effects of photography and film, makes it difficult to interpret the pose or expression. In composition and treatment, it is close to paintings of simians executed in the 1950s by Graham Sutherland, with whom Bacon became friendly in 1946. The faint, schematic framing enabled Bacon to “see” the subject better, while the monochrome background provides a starkly contrasting field that helps to define form.

On view

Artist Francis Bacon
Date March 1957
Medium Oil and pastel on canvas
Dimensions 152.4 x 117 cm
Credit line Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York)
Accession 76.2553 PG 172
Collection Peggy Guggenheim Collection
Type Painting

Copy caption

On view


Other artworks

El Lissitzky

Untitled

ca. 1919–20

On view