Francis Bacon

When Roman Abramovich bought Francis Bacon's Triptych, 1976 in auction at Sotheby's for just shy of 50 million quid in 2008, it broke the record paid for any work by the artist.

While art can command some ridiculous prices, if anything can be worth that much money then Francis Bacon's work is, unquestionably. He's one of the most famous artists of the Twentieth Century and one of Britain's greatest painters of all time.

Born in Dublin in 1909 - he's a descendant of his famous philosopher namesake - he had a difficult childhood, reportedly whipped by his father. He moved to London in the late '20s and began to make his name as an artist.

Whilst all around him went abstract, minimal or conceptual, Bacon stuck rigorously to figurative painting, albeit in an often unrecognizable mutated fashion. His paintings are darkly symbolic and dense with literary allusion.

Influences upon his work include Freud, Nietzsche, Picasso, Aeschylus and Velazquez. Their formal and theoretical power combined with Bacon's own darkly troubled private life combined to produce art that is frequently staggering in terms of their aesthetic and psychological force.

Bacon was also co-founder of eccentric members' club and artist hang-out The Colony Room in Soho. He died in 1992.

Click here to read Tom's review of the 2008 Francis Bacon retrospective at Tate Britain.

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