‘Study for a Portrait of John Edwards’, c. 1984

Bacon consistently deprecated the modernist furniture he had designed in 1929-1932, saying it was ‘derivative of Le Corbusier’. Yet among the original inflexions he brought to his designs was the application of areas of pink paint. Besides its cosmetic implications it may also have referred to the ‘signature’ pink hues of Marie Laurencin, whose paintings Bacon had no doubt encountered in Paris. Francis Bacon: Catalogue Raisonné, 2016, p. 1296.