RCEWA – Rug by Francis Bacon (lot 50)
Statement of the Expert Adviser to the Secretary of State that the rug meets Waverley criteria two and three.
Further Information
The ‘Applicant’s statement’ and the ‘Note of Case History’ are available on the Arts Council Website: www.artscouncil.org.uk/reviewing-committee-case-hearings
Please note that images and appendices referenced are not reproduced.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1. Brief Description of item
A hand-knotted rug in wool with linen weft, designed by Francis Bacon (1909-1992), produced by Royal Wilton, Wiltshire, as part of their ‘Wessex’ range, 1929-30. The rug is of a rich brown colour with a floating centralised geometric design, which is made up of overlapping elongated rectangles and semicircles. There are areas of contrasting spots and mottled weave in the outermost rectangles. ‘Francis Bacon’ in upper case letters is woven into the bottom right corner. Measurements: 212.5 h. x 124.70 w. cm. Approx. 7’ h. x 4’ w.
Condition: the rug is structurally sound but with light soiling, some stains and some fading. The side edges appear to have been repaired.
2. Context
This hand-knotted rug forms an important and little-known part of the first artistic output of Francis Bacon, one of the most important and widely recognised of all modern British artists. It was made in about 1929-1930 when he worked as a furniture and interior designer in London, as well as pursuing his ambitions in painting. Bacon offered his rugs for sale at the first exhibition of his work which took place in his South Kensington studio in November 1930. The exhibition also included paintings and a print, in an edition of three, by him. We can assume that the rugs were displayed there on the wall judging by the images published in The Studio magazine in August 1930 where they hang like pictures, prominently displaying Bacon’s full name or initials in large letters at the bottom. A record of the exhibition states that he charged 22 guineas for rugs (10% of the average annual male wage in 1920). Bacon was largely unknown at the time, yet his designs were made by the Royal Wilton Carpet Factory which, innovatively, was beginning to produce carpets by leading modern designers. We do not know if the rugs were commissioned by the firm, by Bacon or by a supporter of Bacon’s. Indeed, this phase of his work is little known, as Bacon went on to dedicate himself exclusively to fine art, shaping the narrative of his own career by ignoring or destroying examples of his work that he felt did not fit his chosen story.
Provenance of the three rugs
Acquired directly from Bacon by Eric Allden (1886-1949) in about 1929-1930 but certainly by 1932. Acquired by Francis Elek in the 1940s, until consigned to Christie’s in 2018 by David Elek and Sharon Elek-Cohen (Sale 15485, lot 50).
Key References
‘The 1930 Look in British Decoration’ The Studio (August 1930), pp. 140-141 (see appendix A)
Ronald Alley, Francis Bacon (London 1964)
David Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon (London 1980), pp. 68-71
Richard Shone, ‘Francis Bacon in 1930: An Early Exhibition Rediscovered’, The Burlington Magazine (April 1996), pp. 253-255. The first recovery of Bacon’s 1930 studio exhibition.
Susan Day, Art Deco and Modernist Carpets (London 2002) Tate Britain Spotlight display, 2009, ‘Francis Bacon: Early Work’
Clive Rogers and Jean Manuel de Noronha, ‘Rugs of the Young Francis Bacon’, Hali (162, Winter 2009), pp. 28-31. Concentrating mainly on a group of disputed rugs but also offering opinions on the present examples.
James Norton, ‘Bacon’s beginnings’, The Burlington Magazine (January 2016), pp. 19-25. An especially useful article drawing upon Eric Allden’s diaries.
Martin Harrison, Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, (London 2016)
‘A portrait of Francis Bacon as a young man’, Christie’s London, 1 October 2018, Post War and Contemporary Art (auction preview article), https://www.christies.com/features/Early- works-by-Francis-Bacon-9362-1.aspx
3. Waverley criteria
The object meets criterion 2. The rug in question is of outstanding aesthetic importance in the history of British art and design. It is among the finest modernist carpets ever produced in Britain, designed by one of Britain’s greatest and best-known modern artists. The rug was hand-knotted at Wilton as part of their ‘Wessex’ range of highest-quality carpet weavings which was initiated in 1929. The rug shows Bacon working in a mode similar to his contemporary paintings, albeit in an especially abstract mode. It can also be studied for information on the artist’s early inspiration.
The object meets criterion 3. Bacon’s rugs are of great importance to his early work and require more research to be fully understood in the wider context of his life’s work. Study of the object itself is key to such research. Until very recently, scholarship has not focused on this period in Bacon’s life and both Bacon himself—as he became a successful fine artist— and certain scholars chose to ignore this work, preferring to adhere to the image Bacon fashioned for himself which focused solely on his painting. In addition, very little is known about the Wessex range of rugs that the Royal Wilton Carpet Factory (active since 1834 and given its royal title in 1904) produced around 1929. There is, remarkably, no published history of Wilton and their business archive needs further investigation. The subject can only be studied through surviving carpets and related documents, in particular the relationship between hand and machine production from the late 19th century until 1959, when hand production ceased, and the role and significance of in-house designers versus independent, externally commissioned fine artists. DETAILED CASE
Francis Bacon had no formal artistic training yet designed his first rugs at the age of 19 after spending 1927-28 in Paris. Following their weaving by Wilton, Bacon showed his rugs in a small exhibition, which also included his painting and a print, in his South Kensington studio (with two other artists) in 1930. At this time Bacon advertised himself in the Kensington Directory: ‘Francis Bacon: Modern decoration, furniture in metal, glass and wood; rugs and lights’.
Like much British Modernism, the rug looks to continental models for inspiration. Clearly Bacon was impressed by Cubism, Surrealism and Italian Metaphysical painting but also by the form of Modernism that we now call Art Deco, especially the rugs of Ivan da Silva Bruhns (1881-1980) and Evelyn Wyld (1882-1973). The furnishings Bacon created were some of the most modern examples being produced in London at the time and illustrate Bacon’s wide- ranging artistic inspirations within European Modernism.
Until recently, this rug rarely received more than a mention in publications on Bacon (Alley, 1964 was an exception). Its existence was known owing to a largely overlooked article in The Studio in 1930 and also a series of paintings by Bacon’s studio colleague and mentor Roy (or Roi) de Maistre (1894-1968) who carefully recorded the interior of his protégé’s tidy mews studio in South Kensington in a series of paintings (see appendix B). In addition, recently discovered diaries and photographs of Eric Allden, who was Bacon’s close friend from 1929 - 1932, form the basis of a very recent Burlington Magazine article (Norton) in which Allden’s recollections of the production of Bacon’s furniture and rugs are cited. The article, which like an earlier Burlington note (Shone), contradicts previous information on Bacon’s early life and work and builds a picture of the London scene that the rug was designed for. The Norton article includes a hitherto unpublished photograph of Allden with two Bacon rugs, the rug in question in the foreground (see Appendix C). These rugs may have escaped Bacon’s purges because they became part of Eric Allden’s possessions and their friendship was relatively short lived.
Overall, however, the numerous publications on Bacon focus on the artist’s life and work as a painter, generally from 1944 onwards, and very rarely address his earlier design work. Bacon was a relentless self-fashioner who did not care to preserve what he considered his less successful work, including early output. He attempted to manage the narrative of his work and his designs did not fit into that narrative nor into the hierarchies of the art world once Bacon became successful.
Both catalogues raisonnés of Bacon’s oeuvre study destroyed works, and in 1964 Alley stated that ‘these have included some of his finest pictures’ (p. 257). Both also acknowledge the close relationship between Bacon’s earliest artworks (watercolour or gouache) and his rugs, though the latter do not have catalogue entries. Alley notes their pictorial character and their method of display in Bacon’s studio (p. 9). This rug certainly offers a window onto Bacon’s artistic development and the movements, artists or designers who influenced his work. That this work appears to contrast so dramatically with his later work only adds to the fascination of Bacon as an artist, as does comparison between his early, meticulously arranged studio and his later, famously chaotic working environment.
Encouraging the perception of the rug as work of art through the prominent display of a signature was an important strategy of Modernist rug designers or producers. This reflects the increasing status and importance of design as a discipline in the years of high Modernism and the rise in status of the professional designer. By the positioning of the signature, a unidirectional viewing of the object as a work of art is implied. The composition of the design also encourages this response, in contrast to a more traditional, often symmetrical overall pattern on a rug, designed to be seen from multiple vantage points.
That Bacon was practising as both a designer and a fine artist was typical of inter-war Modernism, the wider context for Bacon’s practice. Leading European designers and artists had polemicized for the breaking down of boundaries between disciplines but the economic circumstances of those years and the need to earn a living also strongly encouraged such fluid practice. In Britain, Paul Nash, Rex Whistler, and William and Ben Nicholson designed textiles during the 1930s as did Graham Sutherland and Henry Moore in the post-war period. While the inter-disciplinary work of these artists has been included in the discourse on British Modernism, that of Bacon’s has not.
Nine extant rugs designed by Bacon are known: one in the collection of the V&A (T.218- 1986) (see appendix D); the rug in question here; five rugs sold at auction, one each in 2011, 2013 and 2016 and two further ones in 2018 (see appendix E); and, possibly, two narrower rugs (not made by Wilton) also bearing the signature of Francis Bacon (see Hali article). A further seven rugs—not known to have survived—can be identified in images, including paintings of Bacon’s studio by Roy (or Roi) de Maistre, the Eric Allden photograph and the article in The Studio magazine. Given the short length of time (1929 – probably 1933) that Bacon spent as a designer, it is unlikely that there are many more. It might be assumed that the signature would by now have brought additional rugs to the attention of the market. As the rugs were hand woven and made to order, we cannot be sure precisely how many of each rug was made. However, it would appear from the extant examples that Wilton produced only one version of this design during this production run and that the design was later re-woven. The reliable provenance and Wilton production make this rug essential to further study.
Within the context of British carpet production, this rug is extremely important as a key example of a modernist carpet designed and also made in Britain. By the late 1920s Royal Wilton had evidently initiated the production of modern rugs. At this time the business included four rural satellites involved in the production of hand-knotted carpets. What little is known of the resulting ‘Wessex’ range— which included carpets by Marion Dorn (1896- 1964), E. McKnight Kauffer (1890-1954) and Serge Chermayeff (1900-1996)—offers a tantalising glimpse of a pioneering though short-lived business enterprise in the decorative arts in Britain around 1929 and into the 1930s. The Wessex range did not continue after World War II, and Royal Wilton ceased to weave hand-knotted carpets in 1959.
While Bacon’s reputation and the price at which his paintings have sold may well have encouraged this rug to market in 2018, the beauty of its materials and its advanced design are other markers of its excellence in the hierarchy of contemporary textiles. Royal Wilton – as its royal recognition suggests – was one of the premier centres of carpet manufacturing in Britain, involved by the second half of the 19th century in the production of both hand-knotted and machine-knotted products, the former being much more labour intensive to produce and open to individual expression than the latter, and potentially distinguished by variable or non- standard dimensions (Bacon’s rugs have different dimensions although most are designed to a standard rug size). The firm’s production required the successful management of a range of design, craft and manufacturing skills, and traditional and innovative technology. The process of translating an artist’s two-dimensional concept on paper into a three-dimensional textile product, the conversation between artist and ‘translator’, surely deserve further investigation in the case of Bacon’s and other comparable and contrasting carpets.
The rug under consideration is one of the most important examples of Modernist British carpet design ever produced. It is the work of one of the greatest and best-known British artists. Bacon’s work as a designer is ripe for study and re-evaluation and the original objects are key to this. While Bacon’s furniture and interior decoration fit comfortably within the context of inter-war Modernism, it is the rugs which deserve particular recognition for their excellence in design and also making. Unlike contemporary artists whose textile (including carpet) designs have been researched in an integrated way with their fine art practice, Bacon scholarship has focussed solely on his painting. Such is the power and impact of Bacon’s mature art, as well as the rigid hierarchies of both art scholarship and the art market that his early output has undeservedly suffered neglect. At the same time, the Wessex range of Wilton carpets is under-researched. At the time of writing, our knowledge of all the designers who worked for Wilton is incomplete and the nature of the business model for the Wessex range is unknown. There is much more work to be done both on Bacon work as a designer and the carpet firm he designed for.