Isabel Rawsthorne was an artist and friend of Bacon and they had known each other since the late 1940s. Rawsthorne attended Liverpool Art School and won a scholarship to the Royal Academy Schools. In London, she met Jacob Epstein, entered his household as a studio assistant and modelled for him. Determined to be an artist in her own right, she left London for Paris. In 1935, she met Alberto Giacometti and they became close friends, resulting in the first sculpture bust of her made in 1936. [1] Isabel’s remarkable beauty was both an asset and a distraction from her own quest to become an artist and she frequently gained the attention of other artists who wished to paint her, notably Andre Derain and Pablo Picasso who both painted multiple portraits of her in 1936. During the Second World War she worked in intelligence and black propaganda for a clandestine department of the British government.

After the war, she briefly returned to Paris before settling in London and subsequently met Bacon and they became friends. [2] They may well have met at the famous private members club The Gargoyle which was still popular with artists and writers in post-war London. Or perhaps they were introduced to each other by Erica Brausen of the Hanover Gallery, where both artists showed in the late 1940s.

This painting is the second of fourteen portraits of Rawsthorne that Bacon painted. It is the first triptych, of which he went on to produce five (three including this one in 1965). This is also the year of Alberto Giacometti’s fist Tate gallery exhibition and Bacon and Giacometti met on several occasions with their mutual friend Rawsthorne. [3] However, Bacon used photographs taken by John Deakin as source material rather than working from life. He commented to David Sylvester that, ‘I find it easier to work than actually having their presence in the room’. [4]

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