Edition of 150
1 work
Francis Bacon Hommage à Van Gogh , after Hommage à Van Gogh 1985 For Sale
Francis Bacon
Hommage à Van Gogh , after Hommage à Van Gogh 1985, 1989
Offset lithograph on Fabriano paper
37 1/8 x 27 3/4 in 94 x 70.5 cm
Edition
Edition of 100
About this work
Francis Bacon’s Hommage a Van Gogh confronts the viewer with a raw, visceral depiction of the artist at his most existentially vulnerable. Far from a traditional homage, Bacon’s rendering strips away the romanticised image of Van Gogh the tortured genius and replaces it with a disfigured, emotionally fraught figure—part historical subject, part psychological projection. The result is a haunting and deeply personal meditation not only on Van Gogh’s suffering but on the fragility of the human condition itself.In Bacon’s interpretation, Van Gogh appears with a grotesquely distorted face, a pipe clenched in his mouth, and a heavy overcoat draped over his shoulders. His cocked hat sits awkwardly atop his head, while a stark white bandage wraps around his head and neck, covering the infamous wound he inflicted upon himself after a psychological crisis in Arles in December 1888. The incident, one of the most dramatic in modern art history, followed a heated confrontation with Paul Gauguin—after which Van Gogh, in a fugue of mental anguish, sliced off part of his left ear, wrapped it in newspaper, and gave it to a prostitute at a nearby brothel.Bacon does not seek to recreate this moment literally, but instead captures its lingering trauma. The figure he paints is not simply Van Gogh as a historical personage, but Van Gogh as a symbol of inner torment, emotional rupture, and existential isolation. The composition’s palette is dominated by complementary reds and greens, which heighten the emotional tension through chromatic contrast. Flashes of white and subtle traces of blue in the fur hat provide minor tonal relief, yet the overall atmosphere remains stark and unsettling.The treatment of Van Gogh’s face is especially striking. Bacon’s brushwork is thick, textured, almost sculptural—transforming the visage into a grotesque mass that resembles butchered meat. It quivers with motion, as if the image were caught mid-transformation, like a blurred photograph or a distorted memory. The Cubist-like deconstruction of facial features destabilizes the figure’s identity. What remains is not a likeness, but an impression—an embodiment of disfigurement and psychic dislocation. The effect is simultaneously horrific and absurd, like a nightmare balanced on the edge of comedy.The portrait is framed in an unusual way: the figure is pushed toward the lower right corner of the canvas, and the background is divided into an upper, shadowy half and a lower, lighter section. This dual-toned background creates a visual divide between consciousness and oblivion, further isolating the figure within a picture-within-a-picture. The skewed placement and reflective quality of the composition evoke the atmosphere of a self-portrait viewed in a mirror—intimate, yet disorienting. This spatial framing allows the viewer to feel as though they are intruding on a deeply personal moment of reckoning.Bacon’s series of Van Gogh portraits, developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s, were heavily influenced by two key sources: Van Gogh’s lost painting *The Painter on the Road to Tarascon* (1888), which showed the artist walking with his painting gear, and *Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear* (1889), painted shortly after the mutilation incident. In these tributes, Bacon reinterprets the motif not with reverence, but with confrontation—emphasising Van Gogh’s psychic torment and casting him as a kindred spirit in suffering and artistic extremity.The connection Bacon felt with Van Gogh was more than aesthetic. Both artists shared a sense of alienation from the mainstream, an obsessive devotion to their practice, and a refusal to compromise their vision, no matter the personal cost. For Bacon, Van Gogh was not only a historical figure but a mirror—a reflection of his own inner chaos. In this way, the portrait becomes as much a self-portrait as it is a depiction of Van Gogh. The disfigured face, the solitary figure adrift in an abstracted space, the psychological torment veiled in painterly bravado—all echo the themes that define Bacon’s oeuvre.And yet, the portrait transcends biographical homage. Van Gogh here becomes a symbol of humankind’s existential vulnerability—wounded, misunderstood, and alone. His bandage is not merely a record of physical injury, but a marker of the psychic scars borne by anyone who has lived through despair. Bacon’s interpretation strips away heroism and replaces it with brutal honesty. This is not Van Gogh as martyr or legend, but as a human being confronted by the absurdity of existence.In the end, Bacon’s *Portrait of Van Gogh* is not a static image but a dynamic psychological study—of Van Gogh, of Bacon himself, and of humanity writ large. It confronts the viewer with a visual language that is at once grotesque and poignant, inviting us to see not just the pain of one man, but the silent wounds carried by many. Through violent brushwork, compositional unease, and emotional depth, Bacon transforms myth into metaphor and offers one of the most searing tributes to the emotional extremes of creative life in modern art.For more information on Francis Bacon’s Hommage a Van Gogh or to buy Francis Bacon’s Hommage a Van Gogh contact our galleries using the form below.
Price on Application
Auction History
Portrait of a Dwarf · Francis Bacon · Sotheby's · 2025-10 · $23,632,180
”Portrait of George Dyer Riding a Bicycle 1966” (Small) · Francis Bacon · Grisebach · 2025-09 · $3,428
Three studies for a Self-Portrait · Francis Bacon · Christie's · 2025-09 · $32,160
Figure Writing Reflected in a Mirror · Francis Bacon · Christie's · 2025-09 · $16,080
Study for a Portrait of John Edwards (Sabatier 22) · Francis Bacon · Bonhams · 2025-06 · $12,891
More from this series
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after Triptych (1981) inspired by the Oresteia of Aeschylus, 1981
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1984
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1975
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1990
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1984
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1990
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1992
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1980
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More series by Francis Bacon
About the Prints & Editions Series
Series Performance & Market Position
Francis Bacon's prints and editions represent one of the most significant opportunities in the post-war European art market for collectors seeking authenticated Bacon material at price points below his major canvases, which have regularly achieved $50–140 million at auction. Bacon's print output was deliberately limited — he was famously resistant to reproductive processes — making each authenticated edition work of considerable rarity and historical significance.
At Guy Hepner, Bacon works have attracted the most serious collectors in our programme, buyers building institutional-quality post-war European holdings. Authenticated Bacon prints typically achieve £30,000–£150,000 at major auction houses, with rare examples and works with strong exhibition provenance exceeding these benchmarks.
Technical & Historical Context
Bacon produced relatively few prints during his career, making each edition a significant addition to his documented output. His print works — primarily lithographs and etchings produced in collaboration with specialist publishers — translate his painterly concerns into the print medium: the distorted figure, the compressed spatial environment, the psychological intensity that characterises all his work.
Bacon's resistance to printmaking as a primary medium means that his editions carry the weight of works produced under deliberate constraint rather than commercial convenience. The Francis Bacon Estate and the Estate of Francis Bacon maintain rigorous authentication standards for all attributed works.
Individual Works & Collector Preferences
Works depicting the human figure — Bacon's central subject — command the strongest prices within his print output. Works with clear documentation connecting them to his major painting periods are particularly sought by institutional buyers and serious private collectors.
Edition works from his most active decades — the 1960s through the 1980s — are preferred for their relationship to his canonical painting practice.
Authentication & Condition Considerations
All Bacon works require authentication through the Estate of Francis Bacon. Without this, market credibility and resale potential are substantially compromised. Given Bacon's limited print output and his historical value, works without full documentation should be approached with great caution.
Condition is paramount: Bacon's print works on paper require careful storage and framing to maintain integrity.
Investment Analysis & 2026 Acquisition Strategy
Francis Bacon's position among the most valuable post-war European artists is fully established. His print works represent one of the few remaining entry points into his market at accessible levels. Supply is structurally constrained and will not increase; demand from institutional and private collectors continues to grow.
Contact Guy Hepner at 177 10th Avenue, New York to discuss Francis Bacon print availability. Works at this level require careful authentication and provenance verification — our team provides full acquisition support.
About Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon (1909–1992) is among the most important figurative painters of the twentieth century, an artist whose raw, visceral canvases locate the human body in conditions of extreme psychological tension and transform painterly convention into a vehicle for existential confrontation. Born in Dublin to English parents, Bacon was largely self-taught — he received no formal art education and came to painting in his late twenties after years of drifting through London and Europe. His breakthrough came with the 1944 triptych Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, which shocked a wartime London audience with its images of distorted, screaming hybrid creatures and established his reputation as an artist of unsettling and uncompromising vision.
Bacon's mature practice was built around a small number of recurrent subjects and formal devices. His Screaming Popes — a long series of works derived from Velázquez's portrait of Pope Innocent X — dissolve the authority of the Renaissance original into images of anguish and constraint, the figure screaming behind glass or pinned within a geometric cage. His portraits of his intimate circle — Lucian Freud, George Dyer, Isabel Rawsthorne, Peter Lacy — are among the most psychologically penetrating likenesses in the history of art, the faces smeared and turned and displaced in ways that feel both violently distorted and deeply faithful to the sitter's interior life. His self-portraits are equally compulsive: self-scrutiny carried to the point of self-laceration. Through all these works runs a consistent formal vocabulary: figures isolated in shallow, airless spaces; geometric frameworks of lines and bars that imprison or frame; meat-like surfaces of dragged and flung paint; glass and velvet chosen as ground materials to intensify the sense of both exposure and entrapment.
Bacon's market stands among the highest of any twentieth-century figurative artist. Three Studies of Lucian Freud (1969) achieved $142,400,000 at Christie's New York in 2013 — the world auction record at the time — while Triptych, 1976 reached $86,000,000 at Sotheby's New York in 2014, and Triptych Inspired by the Oresteia of Aeschylus (1981) achieved $84,600,000 at Sotheby's in 2020. Works on paper, prints, lithographs, and screenprints derived from his iconic paintings represent more accessible entry points to his market and are actively sought by collectors worldwide.
Bacon's work is held at Tate Modern, the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Centre Pompidou, the Museo Nacional del Prado, and Museum Ludwig, among other major institutions globally.
Guy Hepner offers expert guidance on Francis Bacon prints, editions, and works on paper from our gallery at 177 Tenth Avenue, New York. Given the seriousness of the Bacon market and the importance of authentication, we approach every transaction with the utmost rigour. We offer free, confidential valuations for works in private collections and connections to qualified buyers worldwide.