The Project
John Edwards, heir to the estate of artist Francis Bacon (1909-92), has bequeath the artist's studio at Reece Mews, London, and its contents to the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art in Dublin. Hugh Lane conservator Mary McGrath, directed the relocation of the studio, which had remained unaltered since the time of the artist's death, to Dublin. A multidisciplinary team recorded and catalogued the studio's contents and transported them to Dublin. Margaret Gowen & Co. was responsible for recording the layout and location of the studio and its contents.

The Artist

Francis Bacon was born in Dublin's Lower Baggot Street in 1909. The son of a retired British army officer who came to Ireland to train racehorses, Bacon had an unhappy and sick childhood and a particularly poor relationship with his father. He left Ireland in 1926 and travelled to London, Berlin and Paris, working occasionally as an interior decorator. It was at this time he began to paint. In 1929, Bacon returned to London, where he devoted himself to painting and gradually gave up interior decorating. However, his exhibitions were not publicly acclaimed, and between 1930 and 1940, he became disheartened by his lack of success, spent less time painting and began to gamble. Due to recurrent bad asthma, Bacon was declared unfit for service at the outbreak of the Second World War and was assigned to the Civil Defence Corps. Towards the end of the war, he began to paint again and exhibited throughout the world. In 1961, he settled in Reece Mews, South Kensington, where he lived and painted until his death, of a heart attack, during a trip to Madrid in 1992. Bacon painted voraciously throughout his life. He was very critical of his own work and destroyed many of his paintings that he considered poor. From the early 1970's to his death, he was finally acknowledged as one of the most important artists of his time.

The Archaeological Survey

The archaeological survey of the studio was carried out to record the layout of the room and to enable its reconstruction in Dublin. Standard archaeological techniques of excavating and recording a site layer by layer provided an effective means of copying the chaotic contents of the studio down to the smallest detail. These techniques included the use of horizontal and vertical grids, photography, the generation of a features database and scaled drawing.

Interestingly, the survey also revealed patterns of Bacon's painting activities and showed how the careful archiving and analysis of the studio can contribute to further art historical research on the artist and the space in which he painted for the last 30 years of his life. Surveyors from Margaret Gowen & Co. Ltd. also conducted a 3-D survey of the room, and two professional Irish-based photographers photographed the interior. Neil Warner used 360° imaging; Perry Ogden took a series of still photographs.

Excerpted from the lecture Bringing home the Bacon: an archaeological survey and excavation of a 20th century artist's studio, given by Edmond O'Donovan, senior archaeologist at Margaret Gowen & Co. Ltd., to the Irish Association of Professional Archaeologists