This book was published on the occasion of Francis Bacon: Late Paintings at Gagosian, 980 Madison Avenue, New York. The exhibition gathered over twenty key works that Bacon made in London and Paris over the final two decades of his life. During this period, the artist concentrated on paintings of heads, portraits, studies of truncated bodies on pedestals, and landscapes, along with canvases inspired by those of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and reinterpretations of his own earlier work. Refining themes that had long obsessed him, Bacon reworked subjects to strip them to their bare essentials, distilling figures that oscillate between dark shadows and riotous color.

The publication features new essays by Richard Calvocoressi, Richard Francis, Mark Stevens, and Colm Tóibín and an interview with Martin Harrison by Calvocoressi. It also includes reprinted texts by Eddy Batache, Bruce Bernard, and Jeffrey Bernard; never-before-published documentary photographs by Edward Quinn; and an appendix of existing interviews conducted during Bacon’s late career selected by book editor Michael Cary.