Underrated Paintings by Francis Bacon You Should Know

Feature image: Francis Bacon, Triptych May–June 1973 © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved. DACS 2018 via francis-bacon.com

Francis Bacon’s name is almost always linked to his screaming Popes, his tormented triptychs, and his twisted portraits of friends and lovers. These iconic works defined postwar existentialism and redefined figurative painting. But outside of these celebrated pieces, Bacon left behind a vast collection of paintings that hold just as much psychological weight and formal innovation. This article highlights some of his most underrated works, offering a deeper look into the painter’s vision beyond the expected masterpieces.

Isabel Rawsthorne was one of Bacon’s most painted subjects. In this full-body composition, she stands confidently in the middle of a busy London street. Her figure appears to oscillate in space, captured with swirling brushwork and ghostly distortions. The painting reflects Bacon’s fascination with movement and presence, and it also marks one of his rare attempts to integrate a subject into a recognizable urban environment. It is striking for its sense of glamour and psychological presence without resorting to grotesque distortion.

This haunting painting transforms William Blake’s life mask into a nearly spiritual vision. Bacon isolates the white mask against a dark void, allowing it to glow with spectral intensity. The work merges Bacon’s interest in British history with his tendency toward isolated forms suspended in darkness. It is not as violent or bodily as many of his better-known paintings, but it achieves a chilling stillness. The use of a historical artifact rather than a living sitter gives the piece an unusual weight and solemnity.

Though often overshadowed by his Popes, Figure with Meat is one of the most visually unsettling works in Bacon’s early career. Here, a seated Pope is flanked by two halves of a slaughtered cow, lifted directly from Rembrandt’s Carcass of Beef. The meat’s slick surface and heavy texture mirror the fleshy intensity of the Pope’s face. This piece demonstrates Bacon’s ability to draw on art history while creating something entirely brutal and contemporary. The composition is claustrophobic, and the scale of the meat overwhelms the human figure, making a powerful statement about mortality and authority.

While Bacon’s 1973 triptych of George Dyer’s suicide often garners the most attention, the Triptych August 1972 offers a more internalized, mournful meditation on loss. Painted shortly after Dyer’s death, the three panels depict contorted bodies in muted tones, with voids and shadowed corners pressing in. Rather than scream, the figures appear to fold inward, consumed by grief and memory. This triptych quietly captures the devastation Bacon felt and reflects a shift in tone within his late work. The absence of saturated reds and violent motion gives the piece a heavy silence that is rare in his practice.

Part of Bacon’s early “Head” series, Head IV is rarely discussed compared to his more dramatic images. It presents a blurred face within a glass box, framed by thin architectural lines and translucent curtains. The eyes are reduced to shadows, and the mouth is partially obscured. The atmosphere recalls early surveillance, psychological containment, and the postwar trauma Bacon returned to again and again. Its lack of color and detail allows the form to dissolve into something entirely spectral. This work sets the stage for many of his later experiments with containment and isolation.

Bacon rarely painted traditional landscapes, which makes this canvas all the more intriguing. Created during his time in Morocco, Landscape near Malabata pulses with unexpected color and abstraction. The land is suggested more than rendered, with smears of green, violet, and rust evoking the intense heat and light of Tangier. This piece offers a rare glimpse into Bacon’s visual response to place. While he typically focused on the figure, here he experiments with gesture and atmosphere, revealing a different kind of tension, one between recognition and erasure.

This complex work features a central nude figure positioned between two ghostly forms, with a photographic portrait of George Dyer affixed to the backdrop. The canvas layers memory, eroticism, and grief into one fractured scene. The distorted bodies evoke both sensuality and suffering simultaneously, while the inclusion of a photographic image marks a shift in Bacon’s use of media. This painting blurs the boundaries between painting and photography, presence and absence. It also shows Bacon grappling with how to preserve memory in the aftermath of personal loss.

In Seated Figure, Francis Bacon presents a solitary male form perched within a shadowy, undefined space. The figure appears half-dissolved into its surroundings, with indistinct limbs and a blurred face. The chair beneath him seems flimsy, almost imagined, creating a sense of instability. Bacon’s brushwork here is loose and gestural, allowing the flesh to melt into abstraction. The background is reduced to vertical bands of muted color, which contrast with the exposed flesh tones of the figure. This painting is a powerful study in vulnerability. Without the theatricality of his triptychs or the violence of his Popes, Seated Figure captures a private moment of psychological unease. It is both quiet and devastating, revealing how much Bacon could express with restraint and minimal context.

Francis Bacon’s most iconic images have shaped how we see the human body, trauma, and violence in painting. But his lesser-known works reveal the same intensity, often with greater restraint or emotional complexity. These paintings are essential to understanding the whole arc of Bacon’s vision. They offer moments of silence, reflection, and formal experimentation that continue to challenge and move viewers. For those willing to look beyond the scream, a richer, more nuanced Bacon awaits.

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All archival images in this article are used under fair use for educational and non-commercial purposes. Proper credit has been given to photographers, archives, and original sources where known.