The British painters in the London Calling Tate/Getty exhibition did not spring from nowhere. There had been a great tradition of figurative painting prior to their collective. These earlier painters had not only focused on the body however, but also drew from more unusual sources of under represented groups, or the more intimate, in some cases, darker side of life.

Walter Sickert, Stanley Spencer, David Bomberg, Graham Sutherland as well as the usual suspects like Picasso and Matisse were all influential.

Walter Sickert, German-born but a long time resident of Britain, here represented by La Hollondaise, 1906, was a painter who captured reflective nudes in domestic interiors as well as a series on Jack the Ripper and who also worked from photographs. At the time he was quite well known and though Bacon later claimed only a scant connection, in his earlier student days he had been an admirer. The use of photographs was something Bacon would come to rely on almost exclusively.

One hates to generalize, but the London Calling 'group' in becoming fast friends and inspirations for each other, also voraciously consumed both the well known artists of the previous generations and the more obscure nooks and crannies of everyday life which was then a hodge podge of post war strife and new growth.