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Life
1909-1992; b. 28 Oct., 63 Lwr. Baggot St., Dublin; son of English parents; his mother, Winifred Margaret née Supple, was wealthy from Yorkshire steel, his father an army captain, kept stables at Cannycourt Hse., nr. Kilcullen, Co. Kildare, and later at Straffan Lodge; discovered his homosexuality with stable boys at 15; banished from by his father when he discovered trying on his mother’s clothes at 16; a grandmother who had settled at Farmleigh House, nr. Abbeyleix, provided shelter; left Ireland shortly after and embarked on career as modernist painter;
subject of “Breaking Images”, a BBC3 radio programme (Sept. 2008; reiss. May 2009).
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Criticism
Margarita Cappock, Francis Bacon's Studio (Merrell 2005), 240pp.; Michael Peppiatt, Francis Bacon in the 1950s (Yale UP 2009), 224pp.
See also Colm Tóibín, Love in a Dark Time: Gay Lives from Wilde to Almodovár (London: Picador) [incls. Thomas Mann, Francis Bacon, Elizabeth Bishop, James Baldwin, Thom Gunn, Mark Doty and the title personages].
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Notes
Irish Bacon? Bacon remarked to the author and film-maker Michel Archimbaud: ‘You can’t really say that I’m Irish. It is true that I was born in Ireland and that there are some things that I like about Ireland, especially the way the people construct their sentences […]. Also, I suppose I’ve always cherished certain memories of the time when I lived in Ireland as a child. But my parents were English and I spent my childhood between England and Ireland.’ [undated newspaper, cutting.]
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