Study from the Human Body after Muybridge, 1988

Despite Bacon’s adverting to Muybridge in the title, the man’s posture does not replicate any single Muybridge image. The manner in which Bacon bent the man’s arm suggests he is about to land a punch, and indeed the closest correspondences can be found in Muybridge’s various plates of ‘Pugilists.Boxing’. Francis Bacon: Catalogue Raisonné, 2016, p. 1350.