Francis Bacon : Triptych, May–June 1973

Triptych, May–June 1973 is a triptych completed in 1973 by the Irish-born artist Francis Bacon (1909–1992). The oil-on-canvas was painted in memory of Bacon's lover George Dyer who committed suicide on the eve of the artist's retrospective at Paris's Grand Palais, on 24 October 1971. The triptych is a portrait of the moments before Dyer's death from an overdose of pills in their hotel room.[1] Bacon was preoccupied by Dyer's loss in his last twenty years,[2] and painted many works on the event and its aftermath. He admitted to friends that he never fully recovered from the event, and described painting the triptych as an exorcism of his feelings of loss and guilt.[3]

The work is stylistically more static and monumental than Bacon's earlier triptychs of Greek figures and friends heads. It has been described as one of his "supreme achievements" and is generally viewed as his most intense and tragic canvas.[3] Of the three "Black triptychs" Bacon painted when confronting Dyer's death, Triptych, May–June 1973 is generally regarded as the most accomplished.[4] In 2006, The Daily Telegraph's art critic Sarah Crompton wrote that "emotion seeps into each panel of this giant canvas ... the sheer power and control of Bacon's brushwork take the breath away".[5] Triptych, May–June 1973 was purchased at auction in 1989 by Esther Grether for $6.3 million, then a record for a Bacon painting.