24 by 18in. (61 by 45.7cm)

Title: IMAGE OF FRANCIS BACON (16), 1979
Note: Louis le Brocquy first met Francis Bacon when he moved to London in the late 1940s. They remained friends up to Bacon's death. In 1966 Bacon wrote this introduction to his friend's Retrospective: "Louis le Brocquy belongs to a category of artists who have always existed - obsessed by figuration outside and on the other side of illustration - who are aware of the vast and potent possibilities of inventing ways by which fact and appearance can be reconjugated."1. Surprisingly it was not until 1979 that le Brocquy created an image of Bacon, one of the few portraits of people he actually knew personally - others in that category were Samuel Beckett, Seamus Heaney and Bono.Bacon initially wrote to le Brocquy that he was '…very flattered you have included me amongst your portraits' 2. However, it is said that Bacon, on being confronted with le Brocquy's own probing images of him, remained resolutely silent, perhaps unable to come to terms with the piercing quality of his own portrait which is somewhat ironic in respect of the psychoanalytical nature of his own oeuvre.1 Quoted in the exhibition catalogue, 'Louis le Brocquy, A Retrospective Selection of Oil Paintings 1939-1966', The Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin, 8 November 66 - 11 December 66, p. 2.2 Quoted in Louis le Brocquy Portrait Heads, exhibition.catalogue, National Gallery of Ireland, 4 November 2006 - 14 January 2007, p.64

watercolour

signed with initials and dated lower right; signed, titled, dated and numbered [W477] on reverse