Henrietta Moraes (born Audrey Wendy Abbott; and in February 2012 Bacon's 1963 Portrait of Henrietta Moraes sold for £21.3 million. Lucian Freud, with whom she had an affair, painted Moraes at least three times, including a celebrated 1953 portrait entitled Girl in a Blanket.

In 1950, she met her first husband, film-maker Michael Law, who bestowed the name Henrietta on her. They set up home in an attic in Dean Street. Her second husband was bodybuilder and actor Norman Bowler. They had two children, Joshua (born 1955) and Caroline, although Joshua was later revealed to be the biological son of Colin Tennant, 3rd Baron Glenconner. This marriage ended in 1956. Later in 1956, she met the 18-year-old Indian poet Dom Moraes. They married in 1961, and they amicably divorced by the mid-1960s.

Into the hippie and drug scenes in the 1960s

Moraes was notoriously free-spirited and led a generally hedonistic lifestyle. In the early 1960s, Moraes began to take drugs in addition to her large intake of alcohol. After her death, Tim Hilton speculated that this was the result of sitting through the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem in 1961 together with her journalist husband Dom Moraes, who had been sent there by The Times of India. She left only a handful of possessions and a large pile of unpaid bills.

References

  • Museum of Modern Art: "Three Studies for the Portrait of Henrietta Moraes", Francis Bacon, 1963
  • https://www.rte.ie/radio/doconone/647308-radio-documentary-podcast-portrait-of-henrietta-moraes-francis-bacon-lucien-freud-marianne-faithfull-roundwood-house-laois RTE Radio One – Oiled: A Portrait of Henrietta] Documentary on One