Francis Bacon is celebrated as one of the most important British artists of the twentieth century.

From the 1940s to his death in 1992 he worked consistently as a painter, ignoring other passing, fashionable trends in art. Throughout his career, the human figure was the dominant subject in his work: his paintings of men and women go far beyond a simple likeness and instead are portraits of complex psychological states.

Among his most intense works are his small-format portraits; this will be the first museum exhibition devoted to this fascinating aspect of his work and the first on Francis Bacon in Scotland.