AIC's 44th Annual Meeting

Francis Bacon’s seminal work, Painting 1946, has suffered from inherent material vulnerabilities since it was made in London in early 1946. The painting's condition issues, related to the fragile, faded, and flaking pastel background, have been addressed at least three times since the painting entered MoMA’s collection in 1948. Dissatisfied with the painting’s material issues, Bacon proposed scraping down and repainting the background on two occasions, though the proposals were never realized. In 1971 the painting was treated at MoMA, prior to its travel to Paris for Bacon’s retrospective at the Grand Palais. Though at the time, Bacon viewed the treatment as a magnificent restoration, fifteen years later the extensive areas of retouching had faded substantially. In 2015, the pastel areas were cleaned and consolidated, the faded retouching reduced and redone. The treatment methodology, the impact of the painting’s history and Bacon’s own artistic philosophies as they relate to that methodology, and an interpretation of the painting's compositional development as revealed by x-radiography are discussed here.