Isabel Rawsthorne by Francis Bacon	Muriel Blecher by Francis Bacon	Henrietta Moraes by Francis Bacon

photo by John Deakin


• MURIEL BELCHER: (Started the Colony Room in 1948):
  
  

MURIEL BELCHER, "A handsome, Jewish dyke," as one Colony Room club member recalls, started the club, also called 'Muriel's by the older clientele, in 1948 and ran it till her death in 1979. "Muriel was a benevolent witch, who managed to draw in all London's talent up those filthy stairs. She was like a great cook, working with the ingredients of people and drink. And she loved money." (Melly) She attracted many gay men to the club - a lot of them brought in by her Jamaican girlfriend, Carmel. Belcher had good antennae for interesting people, gave Bacon free drinks in return for new custom and established the Colony's close-knit member profile. She also established a cult of rudeness. Belcher's favourite word was "cunt", delivered in ringing tones, and a hierarchy of insults ensued. "'Cunt' was a term of abuse, 'Cunty' was meant affectionately," says the Chairman. "And if she called you 'Mary', you were really in." Men would be called "she". "Muriel made everything sound good, even when it wasn't exactly a Wildeanepigram," says Melly. "She was camp, and the very delivery of camp makes your sentences sound witty." The Colony thus became a kind of anti-Cheers, where everyone may have known your name but instead called you "cunty."

Licor-ish: by Oliver Bennett
Guardian Unlimited, Saturday January 16, 1999

above: Muriel Belcher & daughter (Belcher's name for Francis Bacon) at Wheeler's Resturant, photograph by Peter Stark



FRANCIS BACON
Head of a Woman (Muriel Belcher), 1960
oil on canvas   (artnet.com)
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FRANCIS BACON
Muriel Belcher (Sphinx), 1979
oil on canvas

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photo by John Deakin


• HENRIETTA MORAES:
  
  
  • Francis Bacon: Three Studies of Henrietta Moraes, 1963, oil
    
    
  • Henrietta Moraes

    "Henrietta Moraes became the celebrated muse of Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud in 1950s Soho Bohemia. Drinking buddy of Marianne Faithfull and the Stones, lover of Lucian Freud, Henrietta Moraes published her memories in Henrietta, a social history of London and a honest account of 40 years of alcoholism. Henrietta Moraes died in 1999."   � Henrietta Moraes
    
    

  • Life on a broad canvas by Tim Hilton (January 8, 1999) Henrietta Moraes, who has died at the age of 67, was one of those people whose life was divided into two periods: the first devoted to drink or drugs (both, in her case), while the second half was clean and sober. Her autobiography Henrietta, published i...
    Also: "My spirited model," by Maggi Hambling
    
    
  • Still Life by Elisabeth Mahoney (August 9, 2000) Henrietta Moraes, model and muse for Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud, was christened Audrey. This duality between suburban ordinariness and bohemian excess structures this engaging one-woman show about her life and wild times as part of the Soho drinking ...
    
    
  • Maggi Hambling: Henrietta Moraes   Marlborough Fine Art, London, October/November, 2001
    

    Henrietta began to pose for Maggi Hambling at the end of May 1998. "I became her subject, rather than she mine. She seized power as ruthlessly as a Borgia. Her death in January 1999 left me with 'unfinished business' and her confrontational presence continued to fill the studio. The bronzes began after she died, and several of the paintings, which had been unsuccessfully attempted during her life, only became possible after it. . . She inhabits me still, and I hope this exhibition is a celebration of her undefeated spirit."

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JOHN DEAKIN: photo of Rawsthorne, c. 1952
FRANCIS BACON: painting of Rawsthorne, c. 1965

• ISABEL RAWSTHORNE: (1912-1992):
  
  
  • Bacon: Three Studies of Isabel Rawsthorne,   1967, oil
    
    
  • NGP Image: Alan Rawsthorne, 1966, oil oncanvas
    
    In 1954 Alan Rawsthorne married Isabel Lambert, widow of the composer Constant Lambert. Well known as the model for major paintings by Francis Bacon, she was herself a painter and stage designer of some distinction.
    
    
  • More than a face to remember
    by Martin Gayford Daily Telegraph (July 25, 1998)
    "There are careers which are Napoleonic without being military. One such was that of the painter Isabel Rawsthorne; her milieu was not the battlefield, but artistic bohemia, and there she conquered the commanding heights as model and muse to not merely one great artist, but several. . ."
    
    
  • Prodigal riches thrown carelessly away by Nicholas Dromgoole, Electronc Telegraph, November 15, 1997
    

    ". . . She had an astonishing life. In the 1930s she was sculpted by Jacob Epstein, then in Paris she was painted by Derain, by Picasso, sculpted by Giacometti, and as if that were not enough, back in London in the 1960s, Francis Bacon got his horribly skilful hands at work on portraits of her. . .She liked to drink, and she liked men who liked to drink. She married three of them: Sefton Delmer, a foreign correspondent; Constant Lambert, distinguished conductor, composer and one of the leading lights in the founding of what is now the Royal Ballet, who died of delirium tremens; and then the composer Alan Rawsthorne . . ."

  • Francis Bacon - Retratos
  
  
  
  
  FRANCIS BACON
  Study for a Portrait, 1964
  oil on canvas
  
  
  FRANCIS BACON
  Portrait of Isabel Rawsthrone
  Standing in a Street in Soho, 1967
  oil on canvas
  (photograph by John Deakin)

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INDEX

Stage design
by
Isabel Lambert (Rawsthorne)
(image source)

INDEX