7 Reece Mews: Francis Bacon's Studio

I am very influenced by places by the atmosphere of a room ... I just know from the very moment that I came here that I would be able to work here.' FRANCIS BACON Francis Bacon moved into 7 Reece Mews in London's South Kensington in 1961. It was to remain his principal home and studio until his death in 1992. Prior to the removal of the studio to the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art in Dublin in 1998, access was granted to photographer Perry Ogden to produce this record of the house and its contents. He captured every part of the small building's hidden and untouched interior. In the studio itself, thirty years of artistic endeavour had accumulated unchecked: the slashed, discarded canvases scattered across the floor; the brushes, rags and tins encrusted with paint the doors and walls used as impromptu palettes; the piles of photographs of friends and models; the crumpled and torn pages of magazines and books that served as visual stimulus for his work; the notes, sketches and ideas jotted down and then cast aside; the last unfinished painting on the easel. For some of those close to Bacon in his lifetime, the studio was an heroic statement, a work of art in its own right, created over many years to distil and give form to his aesthetic intentions. Now in this astonishing book we are invited to take a privileged look around his private space, to become intimate witnesses to the amazing conditions in which he lived and worked, to gain unrivalled insights into how, why and what he painted.