 "Three Studies" was first shown at a joint exhibition at the Lefevre Gallery, London, in April 1945, alongside work by Henry Moore and Graham Sutherland.Bacon was then unknown and it is likely that his painting was included at the request of Sutherland, his close friend at the time.The Lefevre exhibition coincided with the final days of World War Two in Europe, and John Russell has observed that the immediate post-war period in British history was marked by an atmosphere of nostalgia and optimism—a sense that "everything was going to be alright, and visitors went into the Lefevre in a spirit of thanksgiving for perils honourably surmounted."