After Portrait of Michel Leiris (1976) by Francis Bacon turns the face of one of his closest intellectual companions into a site of concentrated pressure — features displaced rather than described, identity present but unstable.

Michel Leiris was a French writer, ethnographer and surrealist whose work moved between autobiography, anthropology and poetry. His most significant project, the four-volume La Règle du jeu, was an extended attempt to examine his own life and consciousness with the same rigour he applied to fieldwork — treating the self as both subject and specimen. He was also the author of Miroir de la Tauromachie, an essay on bullfighting that read the corrida as a form of ritual confrontation with death, risk and beauty simultaneously.

Leiris and Bacon met in Paris and developed one of the most intellectually significant friendships of Bacon's later life. Where many of Bacon's close relationships were rooted in the drinking culture of Soho and Fitzrovia, the connection with Leiris operated on a different register — two men who shared an obsession with mortality, the body under pressure, and the limits of representation. Leiris wrote one of the earliest and most perceptive critical essays on Bacon's work, and Bacon returned to his face repeatedly as a subject across the 1970s and into the 1980s.

Leiris was not simply a sitter but an intellectual counterpart, whose writings on ritual, sacrifice, and bullfighting closely aligned with Bacon’s own concerns. This connection places the portrait within a broader dialogue.

Bacon’s portraits around this period had become more concentrated around the head, often isolated against dark or undefined grounds. This removal of context intensifies the figure, allowing the face to function as a site of pressure where features are displaced rather than described. Identity remains present, but unstable.

Bacon often used photographic references as aide-mémoire, which he distorted through mark-making. In print, working with Aldo Crommelynck, this translates into a balance between etched line and tonal field, preserving the sense of movement and contingency found in his paintings.

Amongst his portrait, figures like Leiris become both personal and intellectual encounters with a sense of both real and imagined sparring taking place. The image holds between recognition and disruption, where the figure is contained within the frame but never fully resolved, maintaining the tension that defines Bacon’s work. For more information or to buy After Portrait of Michel Leiris, contact our specialists using the enquiry button above.
Looking to buy Francis Bacon art or sell your Francis Bacon prints? Speak to our team today.