If Bacon was more wounded by [his first, early exhibition in 1934]'s failure than he would openly admit, it was because he was sufficiently self-critical to realise that he had not yet managed to make the artistic breakthrough he wanted. His vision was too extreme to find expression easily; it required a specific language, and Bacon was still too much under the influence of Picasso to be fully conscious of his own needs. He had become closest perhaps in the third and last Crucifixion of 1933, where the massive forms and rich colouring hint at the later characteristic mood of vitality shot through with horror and despair.

[…] He had been encouraged by his immediate early success, then cast down by the failure of the show[….] In 1935, he gave up painting altogether and abandoned himself with a vengeance to drifting, from bar to bar, from person to person. His sense of life's fundamental futility was already keenly developed, and by taking it to extremes he began to turn it into a paradoxically grand style of existence. There was a furiousness in his frivolity that showed itself in the amount he would drink, the extent of his promiscuity and the recklessness of his gambling.

Peppiatt, Francis Bacon: The Anatomy of an Enigma