Bacon said that chance played a significant role in his work , and that he often approached a canvas without having a clear idea of what might emerge . This was especially the case in the mid to late 1940s , a period when he was drinking heavily and spending most nights in Soho casinos and poker rooms . The following morning he would often approach his canvas " in a bad mood of drinking ... under tremendous hangovers and drink ; I sometimes hardly knew what I was doing . " He incorporated his appetite for chance into his work : an image often would morph mid @-@ way through into something quite different from what he had first intended . He actively sought out this freedom and felt it crucial to his progression as an artist . To him , lifestyle and art were intertwined ; he said that " perhaps the drink helped me to be a bit freer . " This is very evident in the 1949 series , which began as a rather morbid study of a collapsed head , but evolved over the six surviving panels into a reworking of Velázquez masterpieces , and arrived at an image that was to preoccupy Bacon for the subsequent 20 years .