Francis Bacon was born on October 28, 1909 in Dublin, Ireland, and died on April 18, 1992. As a child, Francis often had fights with his irritable and strict father who was major in the British army. Due to having a military father/husband, The bacon family moved around quite a bit. Resulting in Francis not having a formal education. After having altercations over his sexuality, he was forced to leave home at the age of sixteen after his father caught him trying on his mother's clothes. He lived in Berlin with an uncle for a couple years. .
At age 19, Francis moved to Paris and decided to become an artist after seeing Picasso's work. After living in Paris for only a year, Francis moved to South Kensington and set up an art studio. His painting Crucifixion was published in Herbert Read's book Art Now, and was purchased by Michael Sadler. The following year Francis made his own art exhibition which was rejected for not being surrealist enough. Francis later destroyed all but 15 of his works by 1943.
He later tried to join the armed forces for World War 2, but was denied due to his asthma. He was accepted into the Air Raid Precaution sector, which consisted of search and rescue, only to later be kicked out due to being ill from the dust and rubble. Francis once said "If I hadn't been asthmatic, I might never have gone onto painting at all." After the war, he took up painting with a recovered passion, the Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944) as the true beginning of his work. The long necks, open mouths and disfigured bodies of the paintings expressed pain and horror, a forceful look into the aftermath of the war. Francis modeled the figures after photos of animals in motion. Movement of the body became an interest of theme in his later paintings. During its exhibition at Lefevre Gallery critics were shocked by the imagery, but the countless reviews made Francis well known.