7 Reece Mews: Bacon’s Studio

7 Reece Mews, South Kensington, was Bacon’s home and studio for over thirty years. After he died in 1992, access was granted to award-winning photographer Perry Ogden to work undisturbed for days on end to produce this riveting record of the house and its contents. He captured every part of the small building’s hidden interior: the rickety wooden staircase; the kitchen with its ‘gallery’ of Bacon works in reproduction; the bedsitting room with its bookcases piled high.

In the studio itself, thirty years of inspired artistic endeavour had accumulated unchecked: the slashed, discarded canvases scattered across the floor; the brushes, rags and tins encrusted with layer upon layer of paint; the surfaces used as impromptu palettes; the last unfinished self-portrait on the easel.

For some, Bacon’s studio was an heroic statement, a work of art in its own right, constructed to distil and give form to his aesthetic intentions. In this astonishing book we are invited to take an intimate and privileged look around his private space, and to gain unrivalled insights into how, why and what he painted.

John Edwards was a close friend of Francis Bacon’s for the last twenty years of the artist’s life.