Francis Bacon lived and worked at 7 Reece Mews in South Kensington, London, from 1961 until his death in 1992. One of a short row of converted coach houses on a quiet cobble-stoned lane, it was a modest dwelling and consisted of a kitchen-cum-bathroom, a bedroom and a studio. In contrast to the rather spartan quality of the bedroom and kitchen, the studio was chaotic (Fig.4). Bacon himself said of this cluttered space: 'I feel at home here in this chaos because chaos suggests images to me."' The artist rarely painted from life and the heaps of torn photographs, fragments of illustrations, books, catalogues, magazines and newspapers found in the studio provided nearly all of his visual sources. When the Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin, received the donation of the entire contents of Bacon's studio in August 1998, the subsequent cataloguing of every single item, amounting to 7,500 entries, proved extremely rewarding and a number of im- portant revelations have been made about the artist's life, inspiration, unusual techniques and working methods.

Forty years ago Eunice Smith Beyersdorf published an article in this Magazine on the early portrait of Manuel Godoy by a virtually unknown Portuguese artist, newly visible thanks to X-rays beneath Goya's portrait of Alberto Foraster (Figs. 21 and 22). At the time, there had as yet been no other studies - although they have since proliferated - of Goya's use of re-cycled canvases, whether of his own works or those by others, at different moments and for diverse reasons throughout his career. Among the subsequent X-ray revelations of underlying paintings have been those of Godoy by Goya beneath the artist's huge equestrian portrait of the Duke of Wellington (1812; GW 896), as well as his small El garrochista (c.1794/1808; GW 255), initially an oil sketch for a large- scale work. In these instances the original paintings had become worthless in the artist's studio following the disgrace and expatriation of the royal favourite in 1808, but Goya managed to put the supports to good use. Yet another case of Goya's re-use ofa canvas on which Godoy's portrait had been painted came to light in 2000 when at the Museo del Prado X-rays were carried out on the newly acquired Condesa de Chinchon (1800; GW 793). The films disclosed not one but two standing male portraits: an earlier and less finished one of the Duke of Alba, who died in 1796, and a somewhat later, more finished figure of the countess's husband, Manuel Godoy (c.1798).

William Hogarth completed the six paintings which make up Marriage A-la-Mode early in 1743; the engravings after them by Baron, Scotin and Ravenet were published in 1745. No preliminary drawings for them are known. Hogarth included the series in the mortifying auction which he himself conducted in June 1745, when they went to the higher of only two bidders, John Lane, who kept the paintings at his house in Hillingdon, Middlesex, until his death in 1791.' The series was purchased byJohn Julius Angerstein at Christie's in 1797 and, in the year after his death in 1823, entered the National Gallery as part of the founding purchase of works from Angerstein's collection.

A unique boon of Delacroix's journey to Morocco in 1832 was the suite of eighteen signed water-colours that he made as a memento for Count de Mornay, a diplomat sent by Louis-Philippe to treat with the Sultan at Meknes. Delacroix was invited to join the mission as a travelling companion to the Count. Known as the Mornay Album, the sheets were of diverse sizes, ranging between a height of 14 to 26 cm., a width of 12 to 27 cm., and comprised a miscellany of exotic subjects, including portraits of native officials associated with the mission; a scene of the encampment at El-Ksar- el-Kebir en route to Meknes from Tangier; dramatic spectacles that Delacroix and Mornay had witnessed together - a Fantasia and the so-called Fanatics of Tangier, a frenzied procession of Aissaouas, adherents of a religious sect founded by Mohammed ben Alssa; indigenous entertainments, Blacks dancing in a street in Tangier (Fig. 27), probably inspired by 'Les negres qui sont venus danser au consulat et par la ville' noted in one of the North African sketch-books in April, after the return from Meknes, and Travelling players; some more domestic scenes rich in local colour, An Arab woman and her servant on the banks of a river and An Arab man and woman on their terrace.

The presence of two figures, often a man and a woman, in a shared predicament is a common theme in the work of Max Beckmann. The linked fate of the couple in Aerial acrobats (1928; Fig.37) anticipates the airborne man and woman holding masks in Joumey on the fish (1934; G 403). Gravity as an endangering, but possibly also as a liberating force is another recurring motif in Beckmann's art. He painted his most celebrated image on this theme, Falling man (1950; G 809), in the final year of his life. Barbara and Erhard Gopel, in their catalogue raisonne of the artist's work, record Beckmann painting Aerial acrobats between 20th June and 18th November 1928. A topical reason for including a balloon in a painting from the autumn of 1928 might be the commissioning in September of that year of the Graf Zeppelin (identification number LZ 127). The airship successfully crossed the Atlantic on its first trip in October 1928, in spite of serious damage to its yaw rudder caused by a thunderstorm. Its flight generated considerable press response in Germany and across the world. This article proposes more specific visual and biographical sources for Aerial acrobats through which the artist examined his personal and professional circumstances in the late 1920s.