The year-old Bacon went to London with no clear idea of what he wanted to do. Instead the sexually voracious guardian took advantage of his charge, a turn-around Bacon later recounted with considerable mirth. He savoured its opulence, experienced at first hand in the Hotel Adlon, and its squalor, felt in the poverty of the surrounding streets. The erotic life of the city was startlingly uninhibited and artistically it thrived with new developments in architecture, painting and cinema.
Its full impact on the young man would not surface for several decades. The omnivorous guardian soon moved on, and the future artist remained in the city for two months, before departing for Paris. Despite his recollections of being painfully shy, Bacon had the peculiar knack of meeting people who could help him develop his talents.
One was Yvonne Bocquentin, a sophisticated connoisseur whom he met at an exhibition opening, a hint that he was already taking an interest in the visual arts. The Bocquentins offered Bacon a room in their house near Chantilly, where Bacon also took his first lessons in French. His three months in Chantilly left him with one indelible memory. Bacon seems to have considered becoming an artist only after attending an exhibition of drawings by Picasso at the Galerie Paul Rosenberg in the summer of Bacon began making drawings and watercolours himself, apparently without formal guidance.
Having moved to a bohemian hotel in Montparnasse, he had ample opportunity to visit exhibitions by Picabia, de Chirico and Soutine and to view the latest releases at the cinema.
Towards the end of , he had resolved to return to London and undertook a brief but surprising enterprise. Biography s.
