Figure in a Landscape

A faceless figure sits dissolving into a bleak landscape, the suit empty where a head should be, a smear and what looks like a microphone or barrier nearby, the whole scene blurred and menacing. Francis Bacon based Figure in a Landscape loosely on a snapshot of a friend dozing in a park, then drained it of identity and ease. Now in the Tate, it is an early statement of his enduring themes - the human presence destabilized and effaced, anxiety made visible, the individual reduced to a vague, threatening absence within an indifferent, washed-out world.