Francis Bacon : Head I (1948)

Head I was shown at the Summer Exhibition at the Redfern gallery from July to September 1948. By the end of that year Erica Brausen, who had advanced Bacon money for works, left the Redfern Gallery. She had found private capital to start her own gallery in Mayfair. In the following spring, Bacon's Head I was displayed at her new Hanover Gallery (and was noted by Wyndham Lewis, as a preview of the main show, in an exhibition review of 12 May 1949). Held between 8 November and 10 December 1949 at the Hanover Gallery, Francis Bacon: Paintings; Robert Ironside: Coloured Drawings, was his first professional one-man show (Robert Ironside's watercolours were on an upper floor). A series of six paintings Head I to Head VI, with Study from the Human Body (1949) and Study for Portrait (1949) formed the core of the exhibition with four other of his paintings.