Bruce Bernard first met Francis Bacon around 1948, when Bacon was already established as a controversial artist, following the exhibition of his painting ‘Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion’. This photograph shows the artist at the age of seventy-five, in his studio in Reece Mews, Kensington, London. Bacon worked in this studio from 1961 until his death in 1992. The chaotic studio was vital to the artist’s working process, as piles of photographs, newspapers, catalogues and magazines provided visual inspiration. Instead of using a palette, Bacon mixed paint on any surface he could find, including the walls and door of his studio, as can be seen here. After Bacon’s death his studio was reconstructed at the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin, the city of Bacon’s birth.