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Reece Mews Windows
Reece Mews Windows
2000
The 'Reece Mews Windows' are three stained glass works by Brian Clarke, created for the Francis Bacon Estate and installed at the artist’s former studio in Reece Mews, Kensington, London. The windows feature screen-printed photographs of Bacon’s studio, his bedroom and a close-up of his paintbrushes. These images are set against blue, orange and green backgrounds, respectively.
Francis Bacon lived and worked at 7 Reece Mews in South Kensington from 1961 until his death in 1992. His studio, which also served as his home, was a cluttered two-room space where he produced some of his finest work. Since he rarely painted from life, the space was covered on its floors and furniture with photographs, newspapers, books, catalogues and magazines, which he used as visual sources. About this environment, he remarked: "I feel at home here in this chaos because chaos suggests images to me."
Clarke and Bacon shared a longstanding friendship. After Bacon’s passing, Clarke was appointed executor of the artist’s estate. This is how he described the experience of returning to 7 Reece Mews: “The floor was covered deep in important looking photographs and books. Brushes in butter bean cans and rags, boxes, tubes of paint, bits of cloths, magazines. The smell was strange but sweet, a mix of linseed oil, paint, turpentine, dust and old dry paper. At first appearance it was a frenzy of chaotic and indiscriminate hoarding. It was very dense. The densest room I had known. It was violently intense and belligerent. It sucked the breath from your lungs. It was exhilarating and repulsive. It was Francis Bacon’s studio and I was a trespasser in it…I made tentative pokes into the piles on the floor, unsure about disturbing the mess and still half expecting a very disapproving Bacon to storm in on me arms flailing in anger at the trespass. I still feel this.”
In 1998, it was decided to preserve Bacon’s studio by relocating it to The Dublin City Gallery. A team of art historians, conservators, and archaeologists carefully dismantled the space, documenting the exact position of each item. Since May 2001, the reconstructed room has been on public display in a purpose-built compound.