Bruce Bernard

Bruce Bernard was a prominent British picture editor, writer, and photographer. Born into a creative family, he briefly attended St Martin's School of Art before becoming a staple of London's bohemian Soho scene. He worked as Picture Editor for the Sunday Times Magazine in the 1970s.

Bernard first met Francis Bacon around 1948. Bernard – who counted many "School of London" painters among his friends – recalled Bacon as a "magical" presence with "extraordinary energy and intelligence". Their lifelong friendship led Bernard to capture some of the most intimate, revealing portraits of the artist in his Reece Mews studio in 1984.

In Bruce Bernard's own words:

I had been telling some anecdote (to a friend) – it must have been in the sixties or early seventies – about Francis Bacon being outrageous or funny but probably both, and I generally did so, it seems, in a way which betrayed my fascinated affection for the painter who I had always (since 1949) found a pleasure to know, and during the dominance of the British neo-romantics a source of enlightenment. 

I took my photographs simply because he was who he was and I felt obliged to use a camera which had been given to me as a present... 

Having been Picture Editor of the Sunday Times Magazine, I tried to imagine how some of the photographers I had commissioned would have gone about it, while concentrating on the man rather than doing things with backgrounds or props, etc. I must have thought of Deakin’s (John Deakin) inimitable directness.

The bravura colours on the wall naturally stimulated my interest and I have seen no other photographs which take quite such note (unforced, I hope) of them. 

It would be interesting to know how much more than a palette they were to him – when he started the habit – and how much he looked at them. They must have given him some satisfaction, but one which he might not have cared to specify’ 

Anyway I think that the pictures show how Francis Bacon looked and felt for a lot of the time around 1984. I am glad they they exist as I think they do him no dishonour as he is seen entering his last decade - as well as being perhaps the best account of his work as a mural painter. 

Bruce Bernard, 12 Photographs of Francis Bacon, published by the British Council, 1998.

Francis Bacon, though he had lived in London throughout the war and exhibited the triptych that established him as an artist at the Lefevre Gallery in 1945, hit Soho like a welcome and highly stimulating whirlwind in 1948. He seemed quite unique to me at twenty – magical – his extraordinary energy and intelligence (which needed no conventional demonstration) allowing him a marvelous overflow of frivolity that came from far too interesting a person to be regarded simply as 'camp'. Lucian Freud, who had known him in London before the end of the war, later described him as being at this time the 'wisest and wildest' person he had ever known. 

He could, though, be coldly dismissive and really funnily and mercilessly bitchy when he wasn't seeming actually to radiate sweetness and light. He had no trace whatever of social snobbery, though he was, he said, stimulated in a sexual kind of way by the very rich. But money for him was an imperative fuel of which, at this time and from then on he made sure that any shortage was only very temporary, and in the late forties this was a liberating thought, even vicariously. 

From Painter Friends, Scottish Museum of Modern Art, Edinburgh, 1995.

The painter Virginia Verran, who represents the photographer Bruce Bernard’s estate, notes: “The link between painting and photography was a vital one throughout his life.” The same could be said of Bacon himself, who painted Bernard in Three Studies for Portraits (including Self-Portrait), 1969. Perhaps this was a key element of their enduring friendship.

From Catalogue Raisonné Focus: ‘Street Scene (with Car in Distance)’, 1984.

Further information on Bruce Bernard and his work can be found on the Estate of Bruce Bernard's website: brucebernardestate.com