從60年代中期開始到70年代初，培根主要的作品是他朋友們的小型頭部肖像。他經常在訪談里說他所能看見的圖像是「連續的」。在其藝術生涯中，每一段時期培根都會專注於一個主題（包括其受難系列、教皇肖像和後來的單聯及三聯的頭部肖像系列），其中《教皇》肖像是受到西班牙畫家委拉斯蓋茲同樣主題的作品影響而創作。培根於40年代中開始以耶穌受難為主題進行各樣創作，隨後轉移到半人半獸的肖像，最好的例子是1949年的作品《Heads in a Room》系列。隨着1971年培根第二位愛人喬治·戴爾（George Dyer）的自殺，培根的藝術創作變得更私人，更集中於創作者的感受，同時也變得更內向、黑暗與矛盾；死亡和腐朽變成了重要的主題。晚期培根的創作頂點是1982年的《Study for Self-Portrait》，和其最著名的傑作《自畫像習作－三聯畫，1985－86（英語：Study for a Self Portrait -Triptych, 1985-86）》。喬治·戴爾死前培根是一名存在主義者，盡情享樂，經常和盧西安·弗洛伊德、約翰·迪金（英語：John Deakin）、丹尼爾·法爾森（英語：Daniel Farson）、傑弗瑞·伯納德（英語：Jeffrey Bernard）、穆里爾·貝爾切爾（英語：Muriel Belcher）、亨利塔·莫瑞斯（英語：Henrietta Moraes）和其他人在倫敦紅燈區蘇活酗酒賭博。喬治·戴爾死後培根漸漸淡出這種生活，也減少了尋花問柳的次數，最終與約翰·愛德華茲（John Edwards）建立了他人生的最後一段戀愛關係。
'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).
