Painting 1946

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Painting 1946, also known as Painting or Painting (1946), is an oil-on-linen work by Francis Bacon, created in 1946. It measures 198 cm by 132 cm and is housed in the Museum of Modern Art, New York (accession 229.1948).

Bacon originally planned to depict a chimpanzee in long grass, but then shifted to a bird of prey landing in a field. He described the painting as his most unconscious work, with its figures forming without his deliberate intention.

The piece may echo motifs from Poussin’s The Adoration of the Golden Calf, with garlands, a calf (now slaughtered) and an encampment, transformed here into an umbrella-like shape.

Graham Sutherland saw Painting 1946 in Bacon’s Cromwell Place studio and urged Erica Brausen of the Redfern Gallery to buy it. She purchased the work for £200 in autumn 1946. It was shown in several group exhibitions, including the British section of Exposition internationale d'art moderne in Paris (November 18– December 28, 1946).

After selling Painting 1946 to the Hanover Gallery, Bacon moved from London to Monte Carlo, staying in hotels and then at a villa, La Frontalière. He spent much of the next few years there, with letters to Sutherland and Brausen indicating he did paint, though no works from that period survive.

In 1948, Painting 1946 was sold to Alfred Barr for the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Bacon asked Sutherland to apply fixative to pastel patches before shipping the work to New York. Today the painting is too fragile to be moved for exhibition elsewhere.

In 2007, Damien Hirst, a noted Bacon admirer, created a vitrine installation inspired by Painting 1946, featuring sides of beef, birds, a chair and an umbrella within the display.