Drunk Artist Round-Up

Francis Bacon by John Deakin, early 1950s.

There’s Francis Bacon in all his sinister pomp, as photographed by his friend John Deakin in the 1950s. Deakin was a very talented photographer, contracted to Vogue no less, but also a shabby, unpleasant drunk. He was so careless with his archive that by the time of his death his surviving prints and negatives were largely trashed. This was a pity as he was a Soho insider and his portraits of the principals of fifties Soho are very fine – although, in some cases, the fact that the prints are damaged gives the images an additional power: an authenticity borne of nihilistic carelessness on the part of the artist.

Like his some time friend and artistic rival Lucian Freud, Bacon used London lowlife as the raw material for his art and made it universal. But, naturally, the Soho scene of the forties and fifties was full of artists who failed to be anything other than local curiosities, ‘characters’ even, their art failing to transcend their immediate environment, and whose fate is to be remembered as footnotes in memoirs of the time. But some of them were talented, whilst others deserve to be remembered precisely because they were such specific products of the milieu. John Minton fits both categories. He was a teacher at the Royal College of Art and a prolific book illustrator but also a painter of real ambition. (He was also a man of means, as he was an heir to the Minton china dynasty.) A conspicuous fixture at The Gargoyle Club, to which he also contributed a mural to offset the works by Matisse, he would enter with a motley entourage of rough trade and proceed to dance extravagantly to favourite tunes like I’m Going To Sit Right Down And Write Myself A Letter. But for Minton The Gargoyle was more than just a place to dance: it was one of the few places where he could be openly gay without fear of being adversely judged.

John Minton: Self-Portrait, 1953.

The poet Ruthven Todd recalled Minton at The Gargoyle, ‘… his long sad clown’s face, lashed by breakers of dark hair, as he danced a frenetic solo on the otherwise unoccupied dance floor. His arms and legs were flying this way and that … Clapping and encouraging him was a ringside audience of the faceless nonentities whom he gathered as an entourage as a magnet does rusty filings.’ Minton felt marooned by the shift away from figurative painting and towards abstraction that happened in the later fifties – and the soaring success of his friend Francis Bacon, fleshy embodiment of the zeitgeist, probably didn’t do much for his morale either. His work was seen as decorative, illustrative, lightweight. One week of his appointment diary is blank except for one word scrawled across both pages: ‘DRUNK’. He killed himself in 1957, at the age of just 40.

Similarly, the tragic story of the demented, kilt-wearing, Scottish painters Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun, universally known in Soho as ‘The Two Roberts’, is a cautionary tale of the fickle nature of artistic success. They were lovers, and shared a studio and an energetic social life in all the usual Soho and Fitzrovia hang- outs, as well as hosting parties at their studio in Kensington. But whereas John Minton inspired protective affection, the Two Roberts could be a social nightmare. In their cups they were fearsome, dancing the Highland Fling one minute, performing Scottish folk songs or reciting ballads, then abruptly threatening fellow punters to buy them a drink, or offering a handshake whilst concealing broken glass in an outstretched hand. As for the art itself, it didn’t really survive the period: both worked in a sort of sub-sub-Picasso idiom (that link is to a Colquhoun canvas, here’s one to a MacBryde) that was eclipsed by the passing fad of the ‘Kitchen Sink’ school of the fifties, and then the more durable fashion for abstract art. In addition to artistic redundancy, a succession of misfortunes overtook the pair. A retrospective exhibition was destroyed by vandals who broke into the studio on the eve of the private view; and Colquhoun expired at his easel, just 47, in 1962. MacBryde carried on as best he could, only to die a few years later in a bizarre traffic accident in Ireland, hit by a car as he was dancing a jig in the street outside a pub.

The Two Roberts: Robert MacBryde, left, and Robert Colquhoun. Picture Post, 1949.

Without wishing to sound callous, it is doubtful that posterity would remember MacBryde or Colquhoun at all if it weren’t for the ghastly vividness of their social lives and their impact on others within their circle. By contrast, Minton, has become more appreciated in recent years due to the numerous book jackets and illustrations that he executed with such fluency and skill. He might have been a ‘minor’ painter but his attractive and atmospheric book designs have helped to define our image of cultural life in fifties Britain. As for John Deakin, the surviving photographs are testament to a powerful, forensic talent for portraiture: a sort of guttersnipe Bill Brandt. His work seems to anticipate some of the bolder experiments of Richard Avedon, and its rediscovery offers a valuable record of the period. But Deakin the man is perhaps best remembered not at all: remembrances of him by acquaintances indicate a thoroughly repellent personality, a cadging drunk who turned out to be a wealthy miser. He was commissioned by Bacon to do a session of nude photographs of Soho scenester Henrietta Moraes, photos intended for use as the basis of a painting, and Henrietta discovered that Deakin had been selling additional prints to sailors in pubs. After Deakin’s sudden death, Francis Bacon found himself tasked with making formal identification of Deakin’s body and noted that in death Deakin was able to do one thing that he was never able to do in life: keep his mouth shut. And there are other artists who outstayed their welcome. Gerald Wilde was another ‘mad artist’ of the period, another fixture at the Wheatsheaf, the Caves De France, etc., a pioneer of Abstract Expressionism in the forties whose work was highly rated but whose drunken persona would try anyone’s patience. According to Daniel Farson, Bacon once held him in high regard but later on regarded him as ‘a dreadful bore’ who had once turned up at his studio at four a.m. demanding money for drink. As for himself, Bacon knew that he was lucky, hitting a raw nerve of the century and surviving to occupy Greatest Living Artist status. But his patience and good manners had limits. There’s a nice story about him at the Colony Room, politely refusing a rather insistent young artist’s repeated invitations to visit him at his studio, until Bacon finally had enough and said ‘I don’t need to see your paintings, I’ve seen your tie.’

See also:
Francis Bacon In The Colony Room
Spies and Queens at The Gargoyle Club
Rathbone Street Pubs

Francis Bacon in The Colony Room

Francis Bacon and Ian Board (right) in The Colony Room, 14 September 1983. Photo by Angus Forbes.

A Day in the Life

by Angus Forbes

September 1983: the book publisher Malcolm McGregor is organizing A Day in the Life of London and the commissioning photographer Red Saunders wants me in. I tell Red I’ll cover legal London in the morning and the West End drinking clubs, of which at that time I was a frequenter, in the afternoon. On the day (Friday the 14th) I roll up at the Colony Room in Dean Street soon after opening, about half three. The lowering sun is reflecting off the buildings opposite and streaming through the first floor window; a lovely light. I’m a Colony member, so I tell the irascible owner Ian Board what I’m doing and would it be ok if I took some casual non-flash pictures. Ian’s in a mellowish state today and says yes.

It’s early for the Colony and people are just beginning to drift in. I take some pictures, nothing special, and am thinking of moving on when Ian says don’t go, Francis will be here in a minute. Francis Bacon. Of course I wait. By the time Bacon, John Edwards and team arrive, the drinkers are used to my Nikon-wielding antics and I ask Bacon if I can take some shots of him too. He does not demur. My scoop in hand I head for The Little House, another painters’ hangout in Shepherd Market, and sitting at the bar is Patrick Caulfield.

The next day Saturday I’m in my darkroom viewing the contact sheets. It occurs to me that by simple photocomposition I could combine my images of Bacon and Caulfield and drop Bacon into The Little House (which I know he uses as that’s where I first met him). A double-scoop. But before I take it even one step further, fresh permissions from all depicted parties must be sought.

I get to the Colony about 7. Ian and his barman Michael Wojas are the only people there and drink has already been well taken. I have with me three photographic prints: one is the shot of Bacon and Board in the Colony, another shows Caulfield at The Little House and the third is a mockup of the proposed photocomp. I show Ian the first shot and he likes it; Francis’ champagne glass is at the right angle, and Ian, his arm in a sling from some rough, looks suitably mad. Next shot, indifference. But when Ian Board sees the mockup of his Francis in a rival hostelry, all hell breaks loose.

So incensed is Ian by the image I’ve just shown him that he pitches forward on his stool and topples onto the cigarette-scorched, booze-sodden carpet of the notorious green boite with an almighty, clattering thump. When Michael and I manage to heave him back onto his throne, Ian’s right index finger is dripping blood. He grabs the mockup and starts jabbing at it, daubing it with dollops of his own gore. ‘It’s a disgrace! It’s an insult!’ shrieks Ian, lunging for the phone. He gets Bacon on the line. ‘Know what that cunt photographer wanker’s gone and done?’ Ian bellows, ‘He’s only put you in that fat Jamaican whore’s place with someone called Cauliflower or something!’ Ian thrusts the receiver to me, ‘Francis wants to speak to you!’ ‘The negatives must be destroyed!’ Bacon booms. He’s drunk as well and I’m gulping down the vodka like there’s no Sunday – this photocomp’s not such a good idea after all (if indeed it ever was). ‘Francis, I wouldn’t dream of publishing without your say-so. I just thought that as Patrick and you use the same place’ ‘Who?’, he interrupts. ‘Patrick Caulfield’ I say. ‘Never heard of him!’ Bacon thunders.

Later I relate the story to Gerry Clancy. He tells me that not long ago Bacon had turned up at an opening at Fischer Fine Art where Caulfield was showing miniatures. Francis had proceeded to walk around the gallery, waving derisorily at the works and muttering ‘Postage stamps! Postage stamps!’ Some time after the affair had subsided I see Patrick in the Zanzibar with John Hoyland. I repeat the Colony tale to them, including Bacon’s last remark to me. Patrick Caulfield bursts into tears.

Red Saunders uses my shot of Bacon, Edwards and Board in the Colony over a double-page spread in A Day in the Life of London. A decade later and all has supposedly been forgiven. Francis has been dead for three years and a framed print of my shot of him with Ian has been hanging in pride of place behind the Colony bar since it was taken. Board is on his usual perch and I’m on the next stool knocking back the tonic water. We’re having a desultory conversation about nothing in particular, no animosity, when Ian suddenly reaches behind him, seizes the framed print from the wall and smashes it over my head. A rivulet of blood runs down my nose and splashes onto the palm of my hand. I turn to Ian in astonishment.page36image3840288

‘Cunt!’ says Ian Board.

Quite.

Angus Forbes with his picture of Bacon, Dellasposa Gallery, 15 September 2020. Photo by The Drinker.

Photo and text © Angus Forbes. Angus’s photo is on display at The Dellasposa Gallery as part of Tales From The Colony Room, which also includes work by Francis Bacon, Patrick Caulfield, Lucian Freud, John Minton, R. B. Kitaj, F. N. Souza, Frank Auerbach, John Deakin, Daniel Farson, Bruce Bernard, Nina Hamnett, Isabel Rawsthorne, Sir Peter Blake, Eduardo Paolozzi, David Bailey, Sarah Lucas, etc.. The show accompanies the publication of Darren Coffield’s book and runs until 20 December. Highly recommended.