Study for a Portrait of John Edwards

Study for a Portrait of John Edwards is a hand-signed colour lithograph by Francis Bacon, published in Paris in 1986, during the final decade of the artist’s career. It belongs to a small, concentrated group of late portraits of John Edwards, who became Bacon’s closest companion from the 1970s until the artist’s death in 1992, and who was ultimately named the sole beneficiary of his estate.

As in Bacon’s paintings, the lithograph resists straightforward likeness. Edwards’ features appear compressed and shifted, as though several moments of perception have been gathered into a single image, yet the sitter remains unmistakably present. This tension between distortion and recognition runs through Bacon’s late portraiture, where his aim was less to record a face than to convey the psychological presence of the person behind it.

Printed by Arts Litho and published by Éditions de la Différence, Paris, the lithograph was issued in a signed edition of 180; this impression is numbered 96/180. It is documented in Bruno Sabatier’s catalogue of Bacon’s graphic work.

“I want a very ordered image, but I want it to come about by chance.”

— Francis Bacon