Everything seemed to be going so well at the National Portrait Gallery, London. In the five years since he was appointed its director, Nicholas Cullinan has overseen some significant acquisitions, notably Thomas Lawrence’s unfinished Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (1829), and has maintained a tradition of imaginative commissions with such works
In 1996 the Centre Pompidou, Paris, presented a very successful exhibition of eight-eight paintings by Francis Bacon.(1) Bacon by the Book (Bacon en toutes lettres), the first major survey of the artist in France since then, proceeds from two main propositions.(2) The first is that ‘late’ Bacon represents a valid, if overlooked, subdivision of the artist’s oeuvre. Until quite