As a subject, animals interested Francis Bacon because of their proximity to raw, uncultivated sensation. Animals do not dissimulate: they are unaware of themselves; their behaviours are instinctual. The imagery of Dog, made in the late sixties, was taken from a contact negative made by the photographer Peter Beard. The source image shows a trotting boxer, heading away from the camera, with a muskrat hanging from its mouth. .
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Bacon began paintings of animals from photographic sources the previous decade. Study of a Dog (1952, Tate), for instance, used imagery from Eadweard Muybridge’s book Animals in Motion (1899). Bacon made several other large format paintings of dogs in the early fifties, and together they established the dog as a personally distinctive subject in Bacon’s oeuvre. In his monograph of 1971, John Russell evoked a category in Bacon’s work of the fifties. ‘Dogs and monkey are another thing; sphinxes, likewise.’ Of Man with Dog, Russell wrote: ‘it is a marvellously haunting splodge, complete with a suggestion of bone-structure and a hint of gait.’
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Francis Bacon (1909-1992)
Dog, c. 1967
Oil on canvas
30.5 x 35.6 cm
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News
InSight No. 180
Francis Bacon | Dog
November 14, 2025
In Francis Bacon’s outlook, humans were just another animal. From his pessimistic view of human nature there emerged a keen interest in non-human animals. InSight No. 180 Francis Bacon, Dog...
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