L’ HOMME AU LAVABO, 1978

  • Francis Bacon, L'Homme au Lavabo, 1978

    L'Homme au Lavabo, 1978

    Etching & aquatint in colours on arches paper. 

    67.5 x 52cm 

    ©The Estate of Francis Bacon 

    L’Homme au Lavabo (1978), translates to Man at a Washbasin, is one of Francis Bacon’s later works, created during a period when his paintings became more introspective. The composition depicts a solitary male figure bending over a sink, his body twisted and distorted in a manner typical of Bacon's style. The surrounding space is sparse and clinical, evoking both privacy and exposure, as a man alone in a moment of vulnerability is caught between the physical act of cleansing and a deeper sense of existential unease.
     
    This subject links to Bacon’s long-standing fascination with the human body in confined settings, bathrooms, beds, and basins, often serving as stages for isolation and introspection. In L’Homme au Lavabo, the subdued palette and restrained composition mark a shift from the violence of his earlier imagery toward a quieter but equally unsettling tension. The work’s ambiguity, part ritual, part reflection, captures Bacon’s ongoing preoccupation with mortality, identity, and the inescapable solitude of the human condition.
     
    Interested in buying or selling? 
    Enquire

  • “We are meat, we are potential carcasses. If I go into a butcher’s shop I always think it’s surprising that I am not hanging there too.”

     

    – Francis Bacon

    For Bacon, interiors were not backdrops but extensions of the psyche. The physical boundaries of these rooms mirrored his fascination with human limitation, the body, desire, and the inevitability of decay. Works like L’Homme au Lavabo capture that tension perfectly: a man alone, surrounded by silence, trapped within a space that offers no real escape.