Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion
Encyclopedia
Triptych
A triptych , from tri-= "three" + ptysso= "to fold") is a work of art which is divided into three sections, or three carved panels which are hinged together and can be folded shut or displayed open. It is therefore a type of polyptych, the term for all multi-panel works...
painted by the Irish-born artist Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon (painter)
Francis Bacon , was an Irish-born British figurative painter known for his bold, austere, graphic and emotionally raw imagery. Bacon's painterly but abstract figures typically appear isolated in glass or steel geometrical cages set against flat, nondescript backgrounds...
. The work is based on the Eumenides
Erinyes
In Greek mythology the Erinyes from Greek ἐρίνειν " pursue, persecute"--sometimes referred to as "infernal goddesses" -- were female chthonic deities of vengeance. A formulaic oath in the Iliad invokes them as "those who beneath the earth punish whosoever has sworn a false oath"...
—or Furies—of Aeschylus
Aeschylus
Aeschylus was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived, the others being Sophocles and Euripides, and is often described as the father of tragedy. His name derives from the Greek word aiskhos , meaning "shame"...
' The Oresteia
The Oresteia
The Oresteia is a trilogy of Greek tragedies written by Aeschylus which concerns the end of the curse on the House of Atreus. When originally performed it was accompanied by Proteus, a satyr play that would have been performed following the trilogy; it has not survived...
, and depicts three writhing anthropomorphic creatures set against a flat burnt orange background. Three Studies was executed in oil paint
Oil paint
Oil paint is a type of slow-drying paint that consists of particles of pigment suspended in a drying oil, commonly linseed oil. The viscosity of the paint may be modified by the addition of a solvent such as turpentine or white spirit, and varnish may be added to increase the glossiness of the...
and pastel
Oil pastel
Oil pastel is a painting and drawing medium with characteristics similar to pastels and wax crayons. Unlike "soft" or "French" pastel sticks, which are made with a gum or methyl cellulose binder, oil pastels consist of pigment mixed with a non-drying oil and wax binder...
on Sundeala fibre board and completed within the space of two weeks.
The triptych summarises themes explored in Bacon's previous paintings, including his examination of Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
's biomorphs
Biomorphism
Biomorphism is an art movement that began in the 20th century. It patterns artistic design elements on naturally occurring patterns or shapes reminiscent of nature. Taken to its extreme it attempts to force naturally occurring shapes onto functional devices, often with mixed results.-History:The...
and his interpretations of the Crucifixion
Crucifixion
Crucifixion is an ancient method of painful execution in which the condemned person is tied or nailed to a large wooden cross and left to hang until dead...
and the Greek Furies. Bacon did not realise his original intention to paint a large crucifixion scene and place the figures at the foot of the cross.
The Three Studies triptych is generally considered Bacon's first mature piece; he regarded his works before the triptych as irrelevant, and throughout his life tried to suppress their appearance on the art market. When the painting was first exhibited in 1945, it caused a sensation, and helped to establish him as one of the foremost post-war painters. Commenting on the cultural significance of Three Studies, the critic John Russell
John Russell (art critic)
John Russell CBE was a British American art critic.-Life and career:John Russell was born in Fleet, Hampshire, England, in 1919. He attended St Paul's School and then Magdalen College, Oxford....
observed in 1971 that "there was painting in England before the Three Studies, and painting after them, and no one ... can confuse the two."
Background
As an artist, Francis Bacon was a late starter. He painted sporadically and without commitment during the late 1920s and early 1930s, when he worked as an interior decorator and designer of furniture and rugs. He later admitted that his career was delayed because he had spent so long looking for a subject that would sustain his interest. He began to paint images based on the CrucifixionCrucifixion
Crucifixion is an ancient method of painful execution in which the condemned person is tied or nailed to a large wooden cross and left to hang until dead...
in 1933, when his then-patron Eric Hall commissioned a series of three paintings based on the subject. These abstract figurations contain formal elements typical of their time, including diaphanous forms, flat backgrounds, and surrealist
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
props such as flowers and umbrellas. The art critic Wieland Schmied noted that while the early works are "aesthetically pleasing", they lack "a sense of urgency or inner necessity; they are beautiful, but lifeless." The sentiment is echoed by Hugh Davies, who wrote that Bacon's 1933 paintings "suggest an artist concentrating more on formal than on expressive concerns." Bacon admitted that his early works were not successful; they were merely decorative and lacking in substance. He was often harshly self-critical during this period, and would abandon or destroy canvasses before they were completed. He abandoned the Crucifixion theme, then largely withdrew from painting in frustration, instead immersing himself in love affairs, drinking and gambling.
When he returned to the topic of the Crucifixion eleven years later, he retained some of the stylistic elements he had developed earlier, such as the elongated and dislocated organic forms that he now based on The Oresteia. He continued to incorporate the spatial device he was to use many times throughout his career—three lines radiating from this central figure, which was first seen in Crucifixion, 1933. Three Studies was painted over the course of two weeks in 1944, when, Bacon recalled, "I was in a bad mood of drinking, and I did it under tremendous hangovers and drink; I sometimes hardly knew what I was doing. I think perhaps the drink helped me to be a bit freer." The painting was executed in a ground-floor flat at 7 Cromwell Place, South Kensington
South Kensington
South Kensington is a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London. It is a built-up area located 2.4 miles west south-west of Charing Cross....
in London. A large back room in the building had been converted into a billiard room by its previous occupant, artist John Everett Millais
John Everett Millais
Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Baronet, PRA was an English painter and illustrator and one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.-Early life:...
. It was Bacon's studio by day; at night, abetted by Eric Hall and Bacon's childhood nanny Jessie Lightfoot, it functioned as an illicit casino.
Although he had been painting for almost twenty years, Bacon steadfastly insisted that Three Studies was the fons et origo
Fons et origo
Fons et origo is a latin term meaning "source and origin". Typical usage of the term describes Athens as the fons et origo of democracy, or Italy as the fons et origo of classical music. Lancelot Ware , the founder of Mensa, was awarded the honorary title Fons et Origo by the society in 1987....
of his career. He destroyed many of his earlier canvasses, and tried to suppress those that had left his studio. Bacon was emphatic that no pre-1944 images be admitted into his canon, and most of the early art critics agreed with this position. The early publications of John Russell and David Sylvester open with the 1944 triptych, and Bacon insisted to his death that no retrospective should feature paintings pre-dating 1944.
The triptych
The panels of Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion are painted on light Sundeala boards, a material Bacon was using at the time as an inexpensive alternative to canvasCanvas
Canvas is an extremely heavy-duty plain-woven fabric used for making sails, tents, marquees, backpacks, and other items for which sturdiness is required. It is also popularly used by artists as a painting surface, typically stretched across a wooden frame...
. Each bears a single taut sculptural form pitched against a harsh orange background. The orange hue displays inconsistently across the canvasses, due in part to the low level of oil in the paint, which resulted in varying rates of absorption into the board. The pallid flesh tones of the figures were achieved by overlaying grey and white brushstrokes, while the figures' props were coloured using a variety of yellow, green, white, and purple tones.
The art critic Hugh Davies has suggested that of the three figures, that on the left most closely resembles a human form, and that it might represent a mourner at the cross. Seated on a table-like structure, this limbless creature has an elongated neck, heavily rounded shoulders, and a thick mop of dark hair. Like its sister objects, the left-hand figure is portrayed with layers of white and grey paint. The central figure's mouth is positioned directly on its neck, rather than on a distinct face. It bares its teeth as if in a snarl, and is blindfolded by a drooping cloth bandage—a device likely drawn from Matthias Grünewald
Matthias Grünewald
Matthias Grünewald or "Mathis" , "Gothart" or "Neithardt" , , was a German Renaissance painter of religious works, who ignored Renaissance classicism to continue the expressive and intense style of late medieval Central European art into the 16th century.Only ten paintings—several consisting...
's Mocking of Christ. This creature faces the viewer directly and is centralised by a series of converging lines radiating from the base of the pedestal.
Situated on an isolated patch of grass, the right-hand figure's toothed mouth is stretched open as if screaming, although David Sylvester has suggested that it may be yawning. Its mouth is open to a degree impossible for a human skull. The orange background of this panel is brighter than the hues rendered in the other frames, and the figure's neck opens up into a row of teeth, while a protruding ear juts out from behind its lower jaw. This panel closely resembles an earlier painting by Bacon, Untitled, c. 1943, which was thought destroyed until it re-emerged in 1997.
Inspection under infrared
Infrared
Infrared light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength longer than that of visible light, measured from the nominal edge of visible red light at 0.74 micrometres , and extending conventionally to 300 µm...
has revealed that the panels were heavily reworked during a number of revisions. The legs of the central figure are surrounded by small magenta horseshoe shapes, which infrared shows to have been first drafted as flowers. The area below the head is thickly coated with white and orange paint, while the inspection exposes a series of underlying curved brushstrokes used to compose a landscape, and a small distant reclining figure. When the canvas is unframed, a number of measuring marks are visible on the outer margin of board, indicating that the composition was carefully conceived.
Bacon said in a 1959 letter that the figures in Three Studies were "intended to [be] use[d] at the base of a large Crucifixion which I may still do." By this, Bacon implied that the figures were conceived as a predella
Predella
A predella is the platform or step on which an altar stands . In painting, the predella is the painting or sculpture along the frame at the bottom of an altarpiece...
to a larger altarpiece
Altarpiece
An altarpiece is a picture or relief representing a religious subject and suspended in a frame behind the altar of a church. The altarpiece is often made up of two or more separate panels created using a technique known as panel painting. It is then called a diptych, triptych or polyptych for two,...
. The biographer Michael Peppiatt
Michael Peppiatt
Michael Peppiatt is an art critic, author and art historian.Peppiatt graduated from Cambridge University in 1964, and joined The Observer as art critic. He then went to Paris to take up an editorial job at Réalités magazine, where he remained until 1969, when he was appointed arts editor at Le Monde...
has suggested that the panels may have emerged as single works, and that the idea of combining them as a triptych came later. There is little in the themes or styles of the three panels to suggest that they were originally conceived as a whole. Though they share the same orange background, Bacon had already used this colour in two prior pieces; moreover, his oeuvre can be characterized by periods that are dominated by a single background colour. From the beginning of his career, Bacon preferred to work in series and found that his imagination was stimulated by sequences; as he put it, "images breed other images in me."
The Crucifixion itself is conspicuously absent, and there is no trace or shadow of its presence in the panels. Writing in 1996, Wieland Schmied noted that the three Furies have replaced Christ and the two thieves crucified on either side of him. The form of the Furies is borrowed directly from Picasso's late 1920s and mid-1930s pictures of biomorphs on beaches, in particular from the Spanish artist's The Bathers (1937). However, the eroticism and comedy of Picasso's figures have been replaced by a sense of menace and terror derived in part from Matthias Grünewald
Matthias Grünewald
Matthias Grünewald or "Mathis" , "Gothart" or "Neithardt" , , was a German Renaissance painter of religious works, who ignored Renaissance classicism to continue the expressive and intense style of late medieval Central European art into the 16th century.Only ten paintings—several consisting...
's Mocking of Christ.
Themes and style
Although Bacon stated that he modelled the creatures on the Furies, the visual link to the sources is barely perceptible in his finished work. The mood and tone of the painting, however, is consistent with the agonized spirit of the Furies' legend. They are traditionally depicted as ancient chthonic
Chthonic
Chthonic designates, or pertains to, deities or spirits of the underworld, especially in relation to Greek religion. The Greek word khthon is one of several for "earth"; it typically refers to the interior of the soil, rather than the living surface of the land or the land as territory...
deities preoccupied with avenging patricide and matricide by hunting down and killing violent criminals. In Aeschylus' The Oresteia
The Oresteia
The Oresteia is a trilogy of Greek tragedies written by Aeschylus which concerns the end of the curse on the House of Atreus. When originally performed it was accompanied by Proteus, a satyr play that would have been performed following the trilogy; it has not survived...
, the titular character is pursued by the Furies in revenge for the murder of his mother Clytemnestra
Clytemnestra
Clytemnestra or Clytaemnestra , in ancient Greek legend, was the wife of Agamemnon, king of the Ancient Greek kingdom of Mycenae or Argos. In the Oresteia by Aeschylus, she was a femme fatale who murdered her husband, Agamemnon – said by Euripides to be her second husband – and the Trojan princess...
. The saga tells the story of the decimation of the line of Atreus
Atreus
In Greek mythology, Atreus was a king of Mycenae, the son of Pelops and Hippodamia, and the father of Agamemnon and Menelaus. Collectively, his descendants are known as Atreidai or Atreidae....
; Clytemnestra had hacked to death her husband Agamemnon
Agamemnon
In Greek mythology, Agamemnon was the son of King Atreus and Queen Aerope of Mycenae, the brother of Menelaus, the husband of Clytemnestra, and the father of Electra and Orestes. Mythical legends make him the king of Mycenae or Argos, thought to be different names for the same area...
, and later slew Cassandra
Cassandra
In Greek mythology, Cassandra was the daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy. Her beauty caused Apollo to grant her the gift of prophecy...
, who had foreseen the murders and declared: "Drunken, drunken with blood / To make them dare the more, a reveling rout / Is in the rooms which no man shall cast out, of sister Furies."
Bacon did not seek to illustrate the narrative of the tale, however. He told the French art critic Michel Leiris
Michel Leiris
Julien Michel Leiris was a French surrealist writer and ethnographer.-Biography:...
, "I could not paint Agamemnon, Clytemnestra or Cassandra, as that would have been merely another kind of historical painting…Therefore I tried to create an image of the effect it produced inside me." Aeschylus' phrase "the reek of human blood smiles out at me" in particular haunted Bacon, and his treatments of the mouth in the triptych and many subsequent paintings were attempts to visualise the sentiment. In 1985, he observed that Aeschylus' phrase brought up in him "the most exciting images, and I often read it…the violence of it brings up the images in me, 'the reek of human blood smiles out at me', well what could be more amazing than that."
Bacon was introduced to Aeschylus through T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
's 1939 play The Family Reunion
The Family Reunion
The Family Reunion is a play by T. S. Eliot. Written mostly in blank verse, it incorporates elements from Greek drama and mid-twentieth-century detective plays to portray the hero's journey from guilt to redemption. The play was unsuccessful when first presented in 1939, and was later regarded as...
, in which the protagonist Harry is haunted by "the sleepless hunters / that will not let me sleep". In Eliot's play, the Furies serve as embodiments of the remorse and guilt felt by Harry, who harbours a dark family secret, shared only with his sister. Bacon was captivated by Aeschylus' play, and keen to learn more about Greek tragedy, although he said many times that he regretted being unable to read the original in Greek. In 1942, he read the Irish scholar William Bedell Stanford
William Bedell Stanford
William Bedell Stanford was an Irish classical scholar and senator. He was Regius Professor of Greek at Trinity College, Dublin between 1940 and 1980 and served as the twenty-second Chancellor of the University between 1982 and 1984.He was born in Belfast, the son of a Dublin-born Church of...
's Aeschylus in his Style, and found the theme of obsessive guilt in The Oresteia to be highly resonant. In 1984, Bacon told Sylvester that although his painting's subject matter did not have a direct relationship with the poet's work, for him Eliot's work "opened the valves of sensation".
The mouth of the triptych's central figure was also inspired by the nurse's scream in film director Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein , né Eizenshtein, was a pioneering Soviet Russian film director and film theorist, often considered to be the "Father of Montage"...
's Odessa Steps massacre sequence in The Battleship Potemkin
The Battleship Potemkin
The Battleship Potemkin , sometimes rendered as The Battleship Potyomkin, is a 1925 silent film directed by Sergei Eisenstein and produced by Mosfilm...
(1925). In 1984, the broadcaster Melvyn Bragg
Melvyn Bragg
Melvyn Bragg, Baron Bragg FRSL FRTS FBA, FRS FRSA is an English broadcaster and author best known for his work with the BBC and for presenting the The South Bank Show...
confronted Bacon with a reproduction of the centre panel during the filming of a South Bank Show documentary, and observed that in his earlier career the artist seemed preoccupied with the physicality of the human mouth. Bacon replied, "I had always thought that I would be able to make the mouth with all the beauty of a Monet landscape though I never succeeded in doing so." When Bragg asked why he thought he had failed, Bacon admitted, "It should be all much more colour, should have got more of the interior of the mouth, with all the colours of the interior of the mouth, but I didn't happen to get it."
Other than in Picasso's exploration of the theme, the Crucifixion did not figure prominently in twentieth-century painting. The Surrealists exploited its shock value, and it was used as a vehicle for blasphemy in isolated instances. Bacon often expressed his admiration for the manner in which old masters such as Cimabue
Cimabue
Cimabue , also known as Bencivieni di Pepo or in modern Italian, Benvenuto di Giuseppe, was an Italian painter and creator of mosaics from Florence....
treated the Crucifixion; however, as with Picasso, he was more interested in tackling the subject from a non-religious point of view. For Three Studies, Bacon did not approach the Crucifixion as a Christian image per se, but rather found that the scene reflected a particular view of humanity he held. As he told David Sylvester: "it was just an act of man's behaviour, a way of behaviour to another."
The Passion
Passion (Christianity)
The Passion is the Christian theological term used for the events and suffering – physical, spiritual, and mental – of Jesus in the hours before and including his trial and execution by crucifixion...
of Christ
Christ
Christ is the English term for the Greek meaning "the anointed one". It is a translation of the Hebrew , usually transliterated into English as Messiah or Mashiach...
became a central concern during the early development of Bacon's work, and he returned to the subject throughout his career. When asked by critic Jean Clair why his Crucifixion scenes tended to comprise mainly "slaughter, butchery, mutilated meat and flesh", Bacon replied, "that's all the Crucifixion was, isn't it?…Actually, you can't think of anything more barbaric than the Crucifixion, and that particular way of killing somebody." While Three Studies may have begun as an attempt to directly represent the Crucifixion scene, his explorations led him towards "something completely different". Bacon came to regard the scene as an armature
Armature (sculpture)
In sculpture, an armature is a framework around which the sculpture is built. This framework provides structure and stability, especially when a plastic material such as wax or clay is being used as the medium...
for exploring new ways of representing human behaviours and emotions. For him it amounted to a kind of self-portraiture; a vehicle for working on "all sorts of very private feelings about behaviour and about the way life is".
Coming in 1944, the triptych is likely informed by the Second World War
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. However, art critic Ziva Amishai-Maisseles observes that the canvas reflects Bacon's own confusion and ambivalence "towards manifestations of violence and power, both of which attracted and repulsed him simultaneously."
Critical reaction
Three Studies was first shown at a joint exhibition at the Lefevre Gallery, London, in April 1945, alongside work by Henry MooreHenry Moore
Henry Spencer Moore OM CH FBA was an English sculptor and artist. He was best known for his semi-abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art....
and Graham Sutherland
Graham Sutherland
Graham Vivien Sutherland OM was an English artist.-Early life:He was born in Streatham, attending Homefield Preparatory School, Sutton. He was then educated at Epsom College, Surrey before going up to Goldsmiths, University of London...
. Bacon was then unknown and it is likely that his painting was included at the request of Sutherland, a close friend of Bacon's at the time. The show opened just two months after the end of the Second World War, and John Russell has observed that the immediate post-war period in British history was marked by an atmosphere of nostalgia and optimism—a sense that "everything was going to be alright, and visitors went into the Lefevre in a spirit of thanksgiving for perils honourably surmounted."
Apollo (magazine)
Apollo is a British fine and decorative arts magazine. Founded in 1925 and based in London, it features a mixture of exhibition reviews, art-world news, profiles of collectors, and articles by scholars....
magazine, Herbert Furst recalled, "I, I must confess, was so shocked and disturbed by the Surrealism of Francis Bacon that I was glad to escape from this exhibition. Perhaps it was the red [sic] background that made me think of entrails, of an anatomy or a vivisection and feel squeamish. The triptych caused a sensation, and overnight turned Bacon into the most controversial painter in the country.
Reviewing for the New Statesman and Nation, Raymond Mortimer wrote that the triptych "seems served from Picasso's Crucifixion [1930], but further distorted, with ostrich necks and button heads protruding from bags—the whole effect gloomily phallic, like Bosch without the humour. These objects are perched on stools, and depicted as if they were sculpture, as in the Picassos of 1930. I have no doubt of Mr. Bacon's uncommon gifts, but these pictures expressing his sense of the atrocious world into which we have survived seems [to me] symbols of outrage rather than works of art. If peace redresses him, he may delight as he now dismays." Reflecting on the reaction of critics and the public, Bacon offered, "I've never known why my paintings are known as horrible. I'm always labelled with horror, but I never think about horror. Pleasure is such a diverse thing. And horror is too. Can you call the famous Isenheim altar a horror piece? Its one of the greatest paintings of the Crucifixion, with the body studded with thorns like nails, but oddly enough the form is so grand it takes away from the horror. But that is the horror in the sense that it is so vitalising; isn't that how people came out of the great tragedies? People came out as though purged into happiness, into a fuller reality of existence."
In 2000 the Irish author Colm Tóibín
Colm Tóibín
Colm Tóibín is a multi-award-winning Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, journalist, critic, and, most recently, poet.Tóibín is Leonard Milberg Lecturer in Irish Letters at Princeton University in New Jersey and succeeded Martin Amis as professor of creative writing at the...
noted that the triptych has retained its "genuinely startling" impact. Matthew Kieran wrote, in his 2005 essay on the painting, that "these frightened, blind, raging figures are visceral in their impact, jolting one into sensations of fright, horror, isolation and angst. We react to them as self-conscious creatures, their postures and expressions revealing feelings of petrified isolation, searing horror, pain and blind confusion." As of 2007, Three Studies is part of the Tate Gallery
Tate
-Places:*Tate, Georgia, a town in the United States*Tate County, Mississippi, a county in the United States*Táté, the Hungarian name for Totoi village, Sântimbru Commune, Alba County, Romania*Tate, Filipino word for States...
's permanent collection, having been donated by Bacon's lover Eric Hall in 1953.
Second Version of Triptych 1944 (1988)
- See Second Version of Triptych 1944Second Version of Triptych 1944Second Version of Triptych 1944 is a 1988 triptych painted by the Irish-born artist Francis Bacon. It is a reworking of Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, 1944, Bacon's most widely known triptych, and the one which established his reputation as England's foremost post-war...
Bacon often created second versions of his major paintings. In 1988, he completed a near-copy of the original Three Studies. At 78 × 58 inches (198 × 147 cm), this second version
Second Version of Triptych 1944
Second Version of Triptych 1944 is a 1988 triptych painted by the Irish-born artist Francis Bacon. It is a reworking of Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, 1944, Bacon's most widely known triptych, and the one which established his reputation as England's foremost post-war...
is more than twice the size of the original, and the orange background has been replaced by a blood-red hue. The figures occupy a smaller proportion of the canvas than those of the 1944 version, a device which, according to the Tate Gallery's catalogue, "plung[es] them into a deep void".
Critical opinion was mixed; the 1988 triptych drew criticism from those who felt that its more refined painting technique robbed the image of much of its power. Denis Farr suggested that while the second version's larger scale gave it "a majestic quality which is highly effective", its svelte presentation lessened its shock value. Critic Jonathan Meades felt that while the 1988 triptych was a more polished and painterly work, it lacked the rawness of the original.
Reflecting on Bacon's tendency to revisit subject matter, Meades observed that "Bacon's auto-plagiarism in areas other than portraiture had less deleterious consequences. Nonetheless the 1988 version (or near copy) of the great 1944 Crucifixion Triptych is the lesser work: it is slicker, more polished and it evinces a greater ease with paint. The backgrounds are now elaborated, defined and bereft of the garish, grating poison orange of 1944." The art critic James Demetrion found that despite these differences, the second version still achieves the power and impact of the first.
External links
- Concise entry at Tate Online
- Full catalogue entry at Tate Online
- Full catalogue entry of the 1988 version at Tate Online
- Images of the individual panels at Tate Online: left, centre, right.
