The truth behind Francis Bacon’s ‘toxic’ love affair

Is there more nuance to Francis Bacon’s relationship with his lover and muse George Dyer than history suggests? The much-mythologised eight-year romance ended tragically in 1971. Dyer was found dead at the age of 36 in the couple’s Paris hotel room from an overdose. It was the night before a career retrospective of Bacon’s art at the Grand Palais. Most famously depicted in the 1998 film Love is the Devil starring Derek Jacobi and Daniel Craig, the pair’s relationship has since been characterised as deeply troubled. We hear of violence, control, addiction, Bacon’s penchant for sadomasochism and a toxic codependency. With his new play Buggers, opening at the Edinburgh Fringe this week, Alistair Hall suggests there were happier moments too. Hall, a Rada graduate whose queer coming-of-age monologue Declan was a Fringe hit in 2023, stars as Bacon alongside actor Peter Clements as Dyer. It gives an updated perspective. Hall has been granted rare access by the Francis Bacon estate to unseen archive material pertaining to the pair’s relationship – photographs, correspondence, diaries – that offer a gentler, more intimate interpretation. “All the toxicity is in the play, and we know that it ends tragically, so we can’t sugarcoat that,” Hall says. “But I’ve seen the nice moments. I’ve seen so many photos of this couple together on holiday, gardening. I’ve read letters from George to Bacon. There was a lot of tenderness. They really, really loved each other. I was interested in dismantling this couple from art history and making something more raw and real. We are playing the essence of these men, not caricatures.” Alistair Hall as Francis Bacon and Peter Clements as George Dyer in Buggers (Photo: Hazel Gaskin) Hall is speaking from rehearsals in Hackney, east London, early one morning just two weeks before opening night. He has been a longtime fan of Bacon’s art, renowned for its viscerally distorted, raw and macabre take on the human form. “When I look at his work, time stands still,” Hall says. “What he puts on canvas just evokes big, big feelings for me. If you’ve ever felt misunderstood, you can see that in Bacon’s work.” Hall initially conceived a one man show about Bacon, but was inspired by a visit to the National Portrait Gallery’s 2024 Bacon show Human Presence. It featured Bacon’s many paintings of Dyer, from 1963’s Three Studies for Portrait of George Dyer to The Black Triptychs (1972-74), Bacon’s powerful outpouring of grief in the wake of Dyer’s death. “I was like, I’ve got to write about [Bacon] and it had to be [about] George,” he says. “Those paintings to me are so potent.” Born in 1909 in Dublin to a wealthy Anglo-Irish family, Bacon survived a traumatic childhood, with alleged beatings by the family servants and his own strict father, who kicked him out aged 16 after he caught Bacon dressed in his mother’s clothes. Inspired by Picasso and rejecting the abstract expressionism of the era, Bacon had become a world-renowned painter and vivacious, eccentric, caustically witty Soho socialite by the time he met Dyer in 1963 in a Soho pub. (Not, as legend has it, when Dyer fell through the roof of Bacon’s flat during a burglary.) But Dyer was indeed a small-time criminal and semi-associate of the Krays, uneducated and from the East End working class – albeit handsome and impeccably dressed. “The class divide was huge,” Hall says. It didn’t help the volatility of the relationship, itself a victim of the era’s prevailing homophobia. Bacon, a complex and troubled man, enjoyed and took advantage of the power dynamic, says Hall. Dyer, meanwhile, was out of his depth in Bacon’s rarefied, arty social circle – and this deepened his struggles with depression and addiction. “I don’t know how he would be expected to keep up.” ‘Study for Head of George Dyer’ (1967) by Francis Bacon (Photo: Leon Neal/AFP) Dyer wasn’t even keen on Bacon’s portraits. “He’d say, ‘You paint me really horrible,’” Hall says. “He never liked them.” The spiral of toxicity, spurred on by drink and pills, always seemed destined for a tragic conclusion, echoing Bacon’s previous relationship with Peter Lacey. His courtship with the former pilot was equally destructive and sexually violent and, with jarring symmetry, also ended with Lacey’s death from alcoholism the day before a Bacon retrospective. (This time at the Tate, in 1962.) Hall attempted several times to contact Bacon’s estate, who are famously guarded about the artist’s private affairs and selective regarding how his work is repurposed. They eventually replied and invited him to a meeting to pitch Buggers. “I thought they would shoot me down,” Hall says. But they were instead receptive to the idea. “I think they recognised that I felt a big connection to the story and wanted to tell it in a new way. They were very generous. And immediately, I began to see Bacon as a human being.” The estate is housed in Bacon’s old home studio in South Kensington, where he lived for over 30 years – a place that felt alive with history, says Hall. “When you’re there, you’re in the place where he lived and painted, the place he painted George, where they have had sex, had rows, all of it. There are paintings there that haven’t been seen. I felt like I’d been allowed into this world, and I feel very grateful for that.” Across three afternoon visits, Hall talked about the artist with head of the estate Sophie Pretorius (“she knows everything about Bacon”) and was shown photographs unseen by the wider public. “There were photos of them in more relaxed domestic moments, which were a huge gateway for me. Because they look calm and they look happy.” There were letters, too. “They’re less letters and they’re more notes. There’s a note from George to Bacon just saying that I just popped out, gone to see a movie. And it’s just such a casual, loving note. And to know that they used the word love was really important.” Francis Bacon at the opening of his exhibition in Paris during January 1984 (Photo: Ulf Andersen/Getty) Hall also had access to Bacon’s private diaries. “He rarely wrote in his diaries, but when he did, and it was about George, it packed quite a punch,” he says. He also discovered that Dyer struggled to read, as well as more mundane but nonetheless telling details about Bacon. “I didn’t know that Bacon was a huge Edith Piaf fan. He loved Maria Callas. To know what music he listened to, how he wrote, what he ate for breakfast, is really helpful.” Nonetheless, he had to make up some things himself. “I just had to give myself artistic permission because I knew I was imagining moments,” Hall says. “I wanted to imagine the morning after their first night together, for example. So I had to just really let myself do it and see them both as humans. Especially Bacon. I couldn’t write about him as this iconic painter.” Of course, the couple’s dark side couldn’t be ignored. “Both men were alcoholics. It’s not necessarily a play about addiction, but I wanted to look at how a couple are when they enable each other.” And then there is Bacon’s controlling behaviour – and his cruelty. He famously didn’t cancel the Grand Palais retrospective the day after Dyer died, which, depending on your viewpoint, is either an act of stoicism – they had actually been estranged for months before it – or one final display of uncaring indifference. “I struggle with that side of Bacon,” Hall says. “But there’s footage of him at the opening, and he looks absolutely devastated. I’ve heard some more sympathetic views, that Bacon maybe felt he had to carry on because Dyer’s behaviour in that hotel for the days leading up to it had been so outrageous and volatile. But then an anonymous person I interviewed said that Bacon knew full well, and to him it was a great story, it gave him this tragic narrative to paint.” Ultimately, Hall views Buggers as an abstract kitchen sink drama. “I want the audience to be a fly on the wall for George and Francis in a domestic setting. I like to put private behaviour on stage, the behaviour we reserve for when that front door is closed. I really wanted to do that with Bacon and Dyer to show how they really are.” ‘Buggers’ runs at the Edinburgh Fringe Upstairs at Pleasance Courtyard from 5 to 30 August