Francis Bacon's final painting to go on show for first time in Royal Academy exhibition about his fascination with animals

Francis Bacon’s final painting will be shown publicly for the first time in the UK at a blockbuster new exhibition on the artist at the Royal Academy.

The work, Study of a Bull, was painted in 1991, the year before his death, but not discovered until 2016 in a private collection in London, and will conclude the show of 45 paintings that opens in January next year.

Francis Bacon: Man and Beast will be the first exhibition to chart the development of the artist’s work from the perspective of his fascination with animals and their impact on his treatment of the human figure.

The final work, interpreted as a bull backing into a black void or stepping into a heavenly white light, finished when the artist was 82, is said by critics to be the British figurative painter contemplating his own death.

Other highlights of the show include a trio of two metre high paintings of bullfights, all painted in 1969, that will also be displayed together for the first time.

The paintings of the “corrida” are said to highlight the fragility of man’s supposed superiority over animals and “the fine lines between flesh and meat, violence and eroticism, life and death.”

A spokesperson for the gallery said: “In Bacon’s paintings, man is never far from beast. That humankind is fundamentally an animal was a truth that lay at the heart of his imagery. From the biomorphic creatures of his earliest work, to the distorted nudes that define the latter part of his career, Bacon remained convinced that, beneath the veneer of civilisation, humans are animals like any other.

“Throughout his life, the artist was captivated by the movement of animals, tracking them on trips to South Africa and amassing a vast collection of wildlife books. By observing their uninhibited behaviour, he believed he could get closer to the core of humanity.”

The exhibition, co-curated by Michael Peppiatt, writer and friend of Bacon, will span the career of the painter, who spent much of his life in London and whose studio was in South Kensington, and was known for his raw, unsettling imagery.

Francis Bacon: Man and Beast will run January 30–April 18 2021 at the Royal Academy of Arts, royalacademy.org.uk