TRIPTYCH - IN MEMORY OF GEORGE DYER (LEFT PANEL), 1975

  • Image of the left panel of Francis Bacons Triptych - In Memory of George Dyer (left panel)
    Triptych - In Memory of George Dyer (left panel), 1975
    Lithograph in colours, on wove paper, signed in felt-tip pen. Edition of 200. 
    86cm x 61cm 
    ©The Estate of Francis Bacon 
    Triptych – In Memory of George Dyer (Left Panel) 1975, is one of Francis Bacon’s most affecting works, created in the years following the death of his partner, George Dyer. The painting depicts Dyer’s distorted body stretched across a narrow beam, set against a stark expanse of fleshy pink. The warmth of the tones contrasts with the fragility of the form, giving the work a haunting calm that belies its emotional weight.
     
    Unlike many of Bacon’s earlier figures, Dyer’s face here is not violently obscured; his eyes remain visible, fixed outward as if meeting the artist’s own. This quiet, devastating detail transforms the work from an image of loss into one of confrontation, a final moment of recognition between the painter and his subject. The panel captures Bacon’s struggle to reconcile love, guilt, and remembrance, standing as both tribute and confession within one of the most personal series of his career.
     
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  • I would like my picture to look as if a human being had passed between them, like a snail leaving its trail of the human presence... as a snail leaves its slime.

     
    - Francis Bacon
    George Dyer was Francis Bacon’s most significant muse and one of the defining figures in his personal and artistic life. Born in London’s East End in 1933, Dyer grew up in a working-class family surrounded by crime and instability, spending much of his youth between petty theft and brief prison sentences. He met Bacon in 1963, a meeting often mythologised as beginning with an attempted burglary, though the truth is likely more ordinary. Dyer, in his early thirties, was instantly drawn to Bacon’s confidence and sophistication, while Bacon was captivated by Dyer’s physicality and vulnerability.