从60年代中期开始到70年代初，培根主要的作品是他朋友们的小型头部肖像。他经常在访谈里说他所能看见的图像是“连续的”。在其艺术生涯中，每一段时期培根都会专注于一个主题（包括其受难系列、教皇肖像和后来的单联及三联的头部肖像系列），其中《教皇》肖像是受到西班牙画家委拉斯盖兹同样主题的作品影响而创作。培根于40年代中开始以耶稣受难为主题进行各样创作，随后转移到半人半兽的肖像，最好的例子是1949年的作品《Heads in a Room》系列。随着1971年培根第二位爱人乔治·戴尔（George Dyer）的自杀，培根的艺术创作变得更私人，更集中于创作者的感受，同时也变得更内向、黑暗与矛盾；死亡和腐朽变成了重要的主题。晚期培根的创作顶点是1982年的《Study for Self-Portrait》，和其最著名的杰作《自画像习作－三联画，1985－86（英语：Study for a Self Portrait -Triptych, 1985-86）》。乔治·戴尔死前培根是一名存在主义者，尽情享乐，经常和卢西安·弗洛伊德、约翰·迪金（英语：John Deakin）、丹尼尔·法尔森（英语：Daniel Farson）、杰弗瑞·伯纳德（英语：Jeffrey Bernard）、穆里尔·贝尔切尔（英语：Muriel Belcher）、亨利塔·莫瑞斯（英语：Henrietta Moraes）和其他人在伦敦红灯区苏活酗酒赌博。乔治·戴尔死后培根渐渐淡出这种生活，也减少了寻花问柳的次数，最终与约翰·爱德华兹（John Edwards）建立了他人生的最后一段恋爱关系。
'I was told by a homosexual friend of Francis' that he'd once admitted that his father, the dreaded and failed horse trainer, had arranged that his small son spend his childhood being systematically and viciously horsewhipped by his Irish grooms.' - Caroline Blackwood in Francis Bacon (1909–1992) for The New York Review of Books Volume 39, Number 15 · 24 September 1992.
"I went to Berlin. I wasn't in Berlin very long, but I did see Berlin about 1927–28, which was, one of the, what is called, the great [decadent years, they say, of Berlin. And I went with a, somebody, who had picked me up, whatever you like to say, and we went and stayed at the Hotel Adlon, which is the most wonderful hotel, because I always remember, the wheeling the breakfast in the morning, with these wonderful trollies with enormous swans necks coming out of the four corners. And then, the night life of Berlin at that time, to go down the Kurfürstendamm and that kind of thing was really very exciting in those times because I had never seen anything from coming from a very puritanical country, in a way, like Ireland, going to a city which at that time was wide open, was very exciting for me."—from an interview with David Sylvester (March 1984) in Francis Bacon: The Brutality of Fact dir. Michael Blackwood, for the BBC, broadcast 16 November 1984 (used in interview 9, Interviews with Francis Bacon David Sylvester).
