Irish painter Francis Bacon was BOTD in 1908. Born in Dublin to an upper-class family, he was a shy, effeminate child, and frequently brutalised by his father, and had his first sexual experiences with the estate grooms ordered to flog him. Expelled from the family home at 16 after being caught his mother’s underwear, he lived an indigent life in London and Berlin, living off wealthy older male lovers. In 1929 he settled in London and began painting, and had a series of abusive relationships with Eric Hall and Peter Lacy. He caused a sensation with his 1945 triptych Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, depicting three writhing creatures with bared teeth against a desolate background. The work was a sea change for British art, rejecting the formless style of Abstract Expressionism and tapping into post-World War Two existential horror over the Holocaust. Bacon became one of the most celebrated painters of his generation, continuing to alarm viewers with his Screaming Popes series and distorted portraits of his lovers and friends. Despite the bleakness of his work, Bacon was highly sociable, eating, drinking and gambling at the Colony Room Club in Soho, managed by his friend Muriel Belcher, who paid him a weekly retainer to attract customers. He became the centre of a louche social circle including John Deakin, Henrietta Moraes, Lucian Freud, George Melly, Isabel Rawsthorne, Jeffrey Barnard and Daniel Farson, spending money lavishly and famously quipping “Champagne for my real friends; real pain for my sham friends.” Openly and bitchily gay since forever, his most significant relationship was with George Dyer, a working-class man whom he met in 1963, reputedly after Dyer attempted to burgle his flat. Sexually submissive but emotionally sadistic, Bacon frequently humiliated Dyer in public, while painting him with extraordinary tenderness. In 1971, he was honoured with a retrospective at the Grand Palais in Paris. Dyer accompanied him, dying of a drug overdose in their hotel suite while Bacon negotiated the sale of Dyer’s portraits to wealthy patrons. Dyer’s death prompted Bacon’s most introspective works, notably his Black Triptychs. He settled into a platonic relationship with a 22 year-old bartender John Edwards, remaining together until his death in 1992 aged 82. Edwards became the sole heir to Bacon’s estate, donating the contents of his London studio to the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art in Dublin. Now recognised as one of the most important British artists of the 20th century, his 1969 triptych Three Studies of Lucian Freud sold for US$142 million in 2013, at the time the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction. He was portrayed by Derek Jacobi in John Maybury’s celebrated 1998 biopic Love is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon, focusing on his co-dependent relationship with Dyer.