Francis Bacon was born in Dublin. His father was a racehorse trainer and his mother was an heiress to a fortune created from the coal mines and steel business. Francis was cared for by a family nurse because he was a child who had to have the full attention of a caring adult. Francis had asthma as well as allergies to horses and dogs. During his attacks, Francis was given morphine which may explain some of his chosen works of creative expression later in life.

Francis and his family moved a lot. This alone may explain some of the displacement that Francis Bacon felt. The displacement would be credited to the fact that he moved back and forth between homes in Ireland and England numerous times throughout his youth. His sense of belonging never seemed to exist.

Francis Bacon’s art was considered horrific by some. He didn’t have formal training and his extraordinary work typically captured something generally considered unsettling. From headless bodies to designs bordering the appalling, Bacon’s art was a creative art movement in and of itself.

His Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion created a stir when he displayed it in London in 1945. During the 1950s, the painter developed the gloomy style that would remain with him throughout his creative life. He seemed to enjoy capturing the evils of art rather than the medieval period for which his artwork showed his true underlying creative interests.

When Fancis Bacon died of a heart attack in 1992, he left his entire fortune to John Edwards. Bacon had met Edwards in 1974 and the two formed a lasting relationship that eventually earned the young man a lucrative inheritance. John Edwards donated many pieces of Francis Bacon art to the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin.