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Lot 176
BACON (FRANCIS) Autograph letter signed to "Getty Museum Group" concerning Peter Beard, 3 pages, undated
10 – 20 March 2025, 12:00 GMT
Online, London, Knightsbridge£4,000 - £6,000
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BACON (FRANCIS)
Autograph letter signed ("Francis Bacon") to "Getty Museum Group", praising and supporting the work of Peter Beard, stating that his "remarkable diaries and photographs to record a unique and remarkable life I believe... has enormous value and interest to a wide range of people especially to artists, a compost from which they could draw vast types of inspiration...", referring to the fire that destroyed many of Beard's diaries, and confirming "how valuable and interesting Peter Beard has been to me...", 3 pages (recto only), ink on blue paper, 4to, 7 Reece Mews, London, SW7, undated
Footnotes
"I THINK IT IS NOW A TIME TO REDEFINE PHOTOGRAPHY IN RELATION TO OUR EXISTENCE - I BELIEVE PETER BEARD'S WORKS ARE ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT..." - Francis Bacon writes to the Getty Foundation in support of Peter Beard (1938-2020).
"Peter Pan, Lord Byron, Tarzan, Casanova, Saint-Exupéry's Petit Prince, Ernest Hemingway: All have been invoked to describe Beard... he was a participatory artist, using his own blood sometimes, a touch of the visceral that linked him to his hero and friend the Irish painter Francis Bacon" (Stacey Stowe, 'The Legend of Peter Beard', in Vanity Fair, 20 Sept. 2020). Bacon first met Beard in the 1960s, striking up an immediate friendship which lasted for the rest of their lives. Bacon painted nine portraits of Beard, and on his death some 200 of Beard's photographs were found in Bacon's studio.
The letter was written by Bacon at the request of Beard, who was looking to getting funding from the Getty Foundation for his "Computer Dissolve" project. Beard asked his then partner Marella Oppenheim to visit Bacon at his Reece Mews studio, close to her home in Bolton Gardens. She remembers that after Bacon wrote the letter, "he went to the fridge and popped open a bottle of champagne which we drank over a few hours whilst discussing art, the honours list and criminals". Marella then faxed a copy to Peter in New York, keeping the original. Later, Bacon had his gallery draw up an official letter along the same lines to the Getty Foundation.
Provenance: Marella Oppenheim, who was present when the letter was written. Oppenheim was throughout 1984 in a relationship with Beard, accompanying him in on a journey to Arles to trace Van Gogh's footsteps, and staying with him in Paris and Cassis. One of her portrait photographs of Beard was used as the cover image to Graham Boynton's Wild: The Life of Peter Beard: Photographer, Adventurer, Lover, 2022.