Bacon did not become an artist through any traditional route: he didn’t attend art school, for example, or serve a conventional apprenticeship. In early professional life, he worked in interior design, but decided to abandon this and take up painting after seeing an exhibition of Picasso’s at Paul Rosenberg’s Paris gallery in the late 20s. Picasso’s representations of the body as bone-like, biomorphic structures revealed to Bacon the ‘possibilities of painting’. He later acknowledged Picasso as a key influence and reference point.

"I’ve had a desire to do forms, as when I originally did three forms at the base of the crucifixion. They were influenced by the Picasso things which were done at the end of the ‘twenties. And I think there’s a whole area there suggested by Picasso, which in a way has been unexplored, of organic form that relates to the human image but is a complete distortion of it."