32: YOUNGER CROWDS

George could sit: Terry Danziger Miles, interview with Mark Stevens, March 20, 2014. Dyer was paid sixty pounds a month. Marlborough Gallery archives, note dated February 17, 1969.

“You simply can’t bring off”: John Russell, Francis Bacon (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1993), 105.

John Russell praised: Ibid. Rawsthorne was frequently around Soho in the 1960s, as she was doing a drawing project at the Royal Opera nearby. See Maev Kennedy, “Isabel Rawsthorne: Elusive Painter Who Led the Art World a Merry Dance,” The Guardian, March 26, 2013.

David Sylvester believed: Sylvester, quoted in Richard Cork, presenter, “A Man Without Illusions,” BBC archives, May 16, 1985.

The triptych was partly a sardonic: David Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1989), 46–7.

John Russell believed that: Russell, Francis Bacon, 165.

While some portraits: Ibid.

George Dyer, Russell added: Ibid.

George fancied braces: A photograph taken of Dyer and Bacon attending an opening of Isabel Rawsthorne’s in 1967 shows the two elegantly dressed in suits, with George looking a bit like a model. Photograph by John Deakin. © The Estate of Francis Bacon.

In 1960, Parliament passed: See “1960: Game on for British Betting Shops,” news.bbc.co.uk.

He liked Crockford’s: John Normile, interview with Annalyn Swan, Nov. 9, 2017.

“He thought the patterns”: Anne Dunn, interview with the authors, October 13, 2010.

He knew about the one-offs: Bacon himself was not immune to the odd quick pick-up, particularly in his later years. Jeremy Reed, a flamboyant poet and novelist who met Bacon in 1983, spoke of his quickie sexual encounters around Piccadilly Circus. Reed, interview with James Norton, September 28, 2011.

Dyer, said Terry Danziger Miles: Miles, interview with Stevens.

Bacon’s doctor, Paul Brass: Paul Brass, interview for Adam Low, Francis Bacon, Arena documentary, BBC4 archive, March 19, 2005.

He began to take elocution: Lee Dyer, interview forFrancis Bacon, Arena.

One of George’s brothers: Ibid.

George himself, said his brother: Dyer, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

His older brother Ronnie Dryden: Ronnie Dryden, interview with James Norton, May 26, 2009.

“I’m marking up the board”: Ibid.

They would always stress: Ibid. Also Lee Dyer, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena; and Rita Isaacs, interview with James Norton, May 22, 2009.

Bacon regularly accompanied: Lee Dyer, Ibid.

In 1962, Robert Fraser: Harriet Vyner, Groovy Bob: The Life and Times of Robert Fraser (London: Heni Publishing, 2017), 82–108.

Fraser loved: Clive Barker, interview with Annalyn Swan, June 27, 2016.

A few years later: Vyner, Groovy Bob, 114.

In Chelsea: Diana Melly, interviewed by Peter Stanford, “London: The Swinging Sixties,” The Independent, October 30, 2005, www.independent.co.uk; and for “And in 1963,” Harry Mount, “Why There’ll Always Be an Annabel’s,” The Telegraph, January 20, 2015, www.telegraph.co.uk.

“That period after the war”: Barker, interview with Swan.

He apologized to Sonia: Bacon, letter to Sonia Orwell dated June 26, 1968, in the Orwell Archive, University College London.

Gibbs was adept: Sam Roberts, “Christopher Gibbs, Avatar of ‘Swinging London,’ Dies at 80, New York Times, August 3, 2018, www.nytimes.com.

Bacon’s head would “swivel”: Christopher Gibbs, interview with the authors, October 12, 2013.

“Let’s get out”: Ibid.

“The thing was”: Barker, interview with Swan.

“Everybody came”: Ibid.

Portraiture was thought: Russell, Francis Bacon (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1993), 107.

The Sunday Times Magazine editor: Martin Gayford, Modernists and Mavericks: Bacon, Freud, Hockney and the London Painters (London: Thames & Hudson, 2008), 249. See also Paul Rousseau, “John Deakin: Wheeler’s Lunch,” Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation Monaco, www.mbartfoundation.com.

It wasn’t a real lunch: Auerbach, quoted in Gayford, Modernists and Mavericks, 249. Ibid.

And Wyndham’s story: Ibid.

They convened at Wheeler’s: Ibid.

At the end, Behrens: Ibid, 250.

A number of shows: Frank Auerbach, quoted in Michael Peppiatt, “Frank H. Auerbach: Going Against the Grain,” Art International, No. 1, Autumn, 1987.

There was no longer talk: “Reaching the nervous system directly” was one of the most-cited ambitions of the American abstract expressionist painters.

In 1967, they travelled to Paris: William Feaver, The Lives of Lucian Freud: The Restless Years, 1922–1968 (New York: Knopf, 2019), 574.

Moraes, a sometimes: Henrietta Moraes, Henrietta (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1994), 25.

“Soho was alive”: Ibid., 30–1.

“Lucian’s hypnotic eyes”: Ibid.

She had a fling: Ibid.

Upon meeting her: Daniel Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993), 53.

Early in 1963: Maraes, Henrietta, 71–3.

Moraes later told: Caroline Bowler, interview with Annalyn Swan, June 16, 2010.

She would eventually: In her memoir, Moraes described taking heroin and cocaine and becoming addicted to amphetamines. She also became addicted to methedrine, and finally, in 1966, began taking acid. Moraes, Henrietta, 76–93.

“Open up your arms”: Ibid., 71–3.

Moraes protested: Ibid.

“Francis said”: Ibid.

She submitted: Ibid.

Bacon called it: Bacon, quoted in Martin Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, vol. III (London: The Estate of Francis Bacon, 2016), 904.

Deakin “was furtively”: Moraes, Henrietta, 73.

He chain-smoked”: Peppiatt, Francis Bacon, 259.

In July 1964: Letter dated July 14, 1964, from David (Somerset) to Harry Fischer at the Marlborough Gallery describing the purchase. Marlborough Gallery archives.

The seller was: James Page-Roberts, “A Compressed Life,” Jim P-R’s Blog, February 28, 2019, webpageroberts.blogspot.com.

“I telephoned”: Ibid.

Page-Roberts then: Ibid.

Fourteen months later: Letter of October 15, 1965, from Theodore Goddard and Co., solicitors to Harry Fischer at the Marlborough Gallery. Marlborough Gallery archives.

In April 1964: Feaver, The Lives of Lucian Freud, 572.

In May 1965: Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonne, vol. I, 88. John Deakin dated his photographs as well.

Deakin himself: Deakin was stationed during the war in Malta, in the British Army’s Film and Photography unit. See thejohndeakinarchive.co.uk. Earlier, when he was the boyfriend of the rich collector (and later gallery owner) Arthur Jeffress, he had also spent time in the Mediterranean region.

Bacon, who feared the water: Bacon was decidedly not interested in swimming. He had learned to swim a bit while in Tangier but essentially disliked the sea. Bacon, letter to Denis Wirth-Miller, September 7, 1956, Courtesy of Jon Lys Turner. The authors are indebted to Turner for sharing the unpublished letters with them.

All that George and Bacon did: Daniel Farson reported that Bacon and Dyer were asked to leave the hotel in Chania because of their violent fights. Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life, 184.

Freud took weeks: Michael Wishart said that posing for Freud was like submitting to “delicate eye surgery,” as sitters were required to assume a pose for hours on end without moving. Wishart, quoted in Martin Gayford, Modernists and Mavericks, 114.

He told his biographer: Feaver, The Lives of Lucian Freud, 570.

He had a “hand-washing”: Ibid.

“George was the sort of person”: Ibid., 572.

“His face absolutely”: Ibid., 571.

In late October 1965: Ibid.

She was the 28th: For a good overview of Jane Willoughby’s family and estates, see “Handed On: Drummond Castle, Perthshire,” handedon.wordpress.com. Also see the National Portrait Gallery’s photographs of Willoughby, including one of her as a maid of honour at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth in 1953.

The trip was principally: Ibid. Lee Dyer, George’s brother, recalled that he stayed in Scotland around six weeks to dry out, and that he also went on other occasions to detox facilities—one for six weeks not long before his death in Paris in 1971. Lee Dyer, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

In Glenartney: Feaver, The Lives of Lucian Freud, 571.

From Scotland, George wrote: Dyer letter, quoted in 494 Dyer, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

“I like it here very much”: Ibid.

George had the time: Ibid.

“We get very good”: Ibid.

The couple went to Tangier: Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, vol. I, 89.

George especially liked France: John Rothenstein diary, December 21, 1964, Tate Archive, 8726/1.

They travelled to the Midi: Francis Bacon Letters to Michel Leiris, 1966–1989 (New York: Gagosian Gallery, 2006), 10.

Dunn and Michael Wishart: Michael Wishart, High Diver (London: Blond and Briggs, 1977), 145.

Moynihan and Dunn: Ibid.

“George was so sweet”: Ibid.

One evening: Ibid.

And so Bacon continually: Ibid.

Bacon first took Dyer: Jon Lys Turner, The Visitors’ Book (London: Constable, 2016), 262–3.

Dicky and Denis liked to concoct: Ibid. Also, interviews by the authors with Dan Chapman, co-executor, beneficiary, and longtime friend of Chopping and Wirth-Miller, February 12, 2011, and Celia Hirst and Pam Dan, local residents and friends of Chopping and Wirth-Miller, February 24, 2011.

Friends would drive: “Sometimes Dicky and Denis had really posh luncheons,” said Pam Dan. “A touch of the aristocracy. D&D knew Bloomsbury. These very up-market people came in elegant cars, Rolls Royces. And sometimes Denis would tell me who had been at the luncheon parties. They had quite a few. They did them brilliantly. And cars would come back and pick up the guests.” Hurst and Dan, interview with the authors.

The house frequently filled: Turner, The Visitors’ Book, 122–4, 219–22.

Denis was a brilliant: Chapman, interview with the authors.

Even the celebrity chef: Jan Richardson, interview with the authors, November 2010.

“I remember once”: David Wallace, interview with Mark Stevens, March 27, 2014.

Sometimes, Bacon holed up: Dan Chapman, interview with the authors.

To others, when Bacon: Wirth-Miller “kept records of [Bacon’s] sayings.” Rothenstein diary, July 23, 1960, unpublished diaries, Tate Archive.

In the late autumn of 1965: A letter of December 7, 1965, from Harry Fischer to Theodore Goddard and Co. said that Marlborough wanted to “buy the 97-year lease of this studio in the name of Marlborough Fine Art Ltd and rent it to Francis Bacon.” The amount the gallery agreed to offer was £7,500. Bacon wanted to be able to use the studio, said Fischer, by “the middle of January.” Marlborough Gallery archives.

Originally designed: See “South Kensington in Retrospect,” www.british-history.ac.uk.

Bacon’s particular flat: A report by Weatherall, Green and Smith on Bacon’s proposed flat prior to its purchase mentioned three skylights in the right-hand roof slope “which are likely to give constant trouble because they are old, partly constructed of timber and show damp stains through leaks or condensation.” Marlborough Gallery archives.

With Miss Beston’s: Various correspondence mentions grey velvet curtains being ordered, as well as a carpet dyed to match in “a beige-toned grey.” Ibid.

The studio, Bacon told Sylvester: Bacon, quoted in David Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon (London: Thames & Hudson, 1988), 191.

Bacon soon signed over: A letter of February 13, 1968, confirms the transfer of the “above Leasehold property” to George Dyer. Marlborough Gallery archives.

The flat had: Ianthe Knott, interviews with Mark Stevens, March 5 and 6, 2008.

A small flight of stairs: Flat C, Bacon’s flat, was described in an estate agent’s listing as comprising “a studio with gallery, bedroom, kitchenette and bathroom.” Marlborough Gallery archive.

He now ordered: The oval divan was purchased from London Bedding Centre. It cost £151. Ibid.

Not long after moving: Lee Dyer, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

(Lee was ten years younger): James Norton, interview notes with Lee Dyer for Francis Bacon, Arena.

They brought home: Ibid.

When Lee finally said: Ibid.

“Anyway”: Ibid.

33 ANCIENT RHYMES

The writer André Malraux: For a good overview of the career of André Malraux, see John Wightman, “Malraux: Behind the Mask,” New York Review of Books, October 6, 1966, www.nybooks.com.

Important figures: Sartre continued to write influential philosophical essays through the late 1980s; Beckett continued to write plays throughout the 1970s and into the early ’80s; Lacan gave public seminars and lectures throughout the ’70s.

The show would include: See “1966: Gigantic Picasso Show for Paris Grand Palais,” iht-retrospective.blogs.nytimes.com.

In 1966, Marlborough planned a show: In a letter to M. Jean Clay at the Galerie Maeght dated August 18, 1966, Valerie Beston said that the Marlborough would be sending “eight large paintings, two medium and four sets of three heads (studies for portraits).” Marlborough Gallery archives.

In 1965, when a retrospective: Daniel Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993), 173–5.

Bacon first took Giacometti: Ibid., 173–5.

At dinner Bacon fell into: Ibid. Leiris later described Giacometti and Bacon’s extended evening as a “Homeric discussion.” Michael Peppiatt, Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma (London: Constable & Robinson, 2008), 287.

Giacometti “shouted”: Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life, 173–5.

Bacon had previously met Leiris: Bacon said that Sonia Orwell had introduced the two in Paris in the 1960s. Michel Archimbaud, Francis Bacon: In Conversation with Michel Archimbaud (London: Phaidon Press, 1994), 122.

In the 1920s, Leiris: “Michel Leiris, 89, French Writer on Surrealism and Anthropology” (obituary), New York Times, October 3, 1990.

He had also been a contributor: Jeremy Biles, “Correspondence: Georges Bataille and Michel Leiris,” Rain Taxi Review of Books, www.raintaxi.com.

In 1931, he joined: Tim Watson, “The Horticulturalist of the Self,” Public Books website, December 22, 2017, www.publicbooks.org.

He was the mission’s: Ibid.

According to Kwame Anthony Appiah: Appiah, “Surreal Anthropology,” New York Review of Books, March 8, 2018, www.nybooks.com.

He had once studied: “Leiris, Julian Michel and Louise,” in “Index of Historic Collectors and Dealers of Cubism,” Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art at the Met, www.metmuseum.org.

The issue of Documents: It was published in November 1929 by Georges Bataille.

After his mission: “Index of Historic Collectors,” Leonard Lauder Research Center for Modern Art at the Met.

The scholar James Clifford called: James Adam Redfield, “The Surreal Effect of L’afrique fantome: A Preliminary Descriptive Analysis,” www.academia.edu.

The American poet: John Ashbery, interview with the authors, July 1, 2010.

The evenings she hosted: Michael Peppiatt, Francis Bacon in Your Blood: A Memoir (New York: Bloomsbury U.S.A., 2015), 64–8. Sonia Orwell gave a series of dinner parties in London that included the Leirises and Bacon and that cemented their new friendship.

Six months after: Bacon, letter to Michel Leiris dated January 25, 1966, in Valentina Castellani, Mark Francis, and Stefan Ratibor, eds., Francis Bacon: Letters to Michel Leiris 1966–89 (New York: Gagosian Gallery, 2006), 23.

His influence stemmed: See Leiris entry in “Index of Historic Collectors,” Leonard Lauder Research Center at the Met, in ibid.

Kahnweiler was modernist: See “Kahnweiler, Daniel-Henry (born Heinrich Kahnweiler, also Henry Kahnweiler) in ibid.

Since he had failed: Ibid.

During the Second World War: Ibid.

In 1944, for example: “Desire Caught by the Tail,” in “El Blog del Museu Picasso de Barcelona,” January 24, 2014, www.blogmuseupicassobcn.org.

Albert Camus directed: “Desire Caught by the Tail,” www.cocosse-journal.org.

Maeght exhibited: See “Jules Maeght Gallery,” www.julesmaeghtgallery.com.

In the year before: See “Derrière le Miroir.”

To mark: See “Bacon, Francis. “Derrière le Miroir,” No. 162, www.manhattanrarebooks.com.

“Michel,” he wrote: Bacon, letter of November 11, 1966, Letters to Michel Leiris, 9.

First, he went to gamble: Ibid. 7–8.

Sonia Orwell and Isabel Rawsthorne: David Plante, “Bacon’s Instinct,” The New Yorker, November 1, 1993.

Dyer, overshadowed: Ibid.

They planned to spend: Ibid.

The day after the opening: Ibid, 100

Two or three days later: All of the following information and quotations about the trip come from David Plante’s article in the New Yorker.

He would paint: There are seven self-portraits from the decade recorded in Martin Harrison, ed., vol. III Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné (London: Estate of Francis Bacon, 2016). Five are small heads and two are large paintings.

The crackdowns: Alan Cowell, “Overlooked No More: Alan Turing, Condemned Code Breaker and Computer Visionary,” New York Times, June 5, 2019. The result was the Conservative government’s Wolfenden Report. Parliamentary Papers, British Library, www.bl.uk. For more on the trials of Peter Wildeblood and Lord Montagu, see Peter Wildeblood, Against the Law (London: Phoenix, 1955).

An indication of how touchy: See “Wolfenden Report,” lgbthistoryuk.org.

After reading the Wolfenden Report: John Rothenstein diary, April 13, 1960, unpublished diaries, 1939–1990, Tate Archive, 8726/1.

Many years later: Plante, correspondence with the authors, May 2011.

Bacon also had life-affirming: Plante, “Bacon’s Instinct,” New Yorker.

Always a dutiful: Bacon’s mother wrote to her son frequently, and he wrote—and very occasionally called—less frequently, but enough to maintain a connection. Years after she moved to Africa, she still sent her son cakes through the mail every few weeks. Barbara Dawson, email to Annalyn Swan, July 6, 2011.

He felt guilty: Bacon, letter to Ianthe Knott dated June 19, 1962. The Estate of Francis Bacon Archive.

In 1967, Bacon wrote: Bacon, letter to his mother dated January 4, 1967. Ibid.

“He landed at the airport”: Harley Knott, interview with Mark Stevens, March 7, 2008.

By then, Winnie had outlived: Ianthe Knott, interviews with Mark Stevens, March 5 and 6, 2008.

“I enjoyed the few days”: Bacon, letter to Sonia Orwell dated March 16 and on “Edinburgh Castle” stationery, in the Orwell Archive, University College London.

His latest show at Marlborough: On March 15, 1967, Harry Fischer wrote to Sonia Orwell thanking her for translating the preface to the catalogue for Bacon’s show. “As you know, Francis’ exhibition is the greatest success imaginable—people are queuing in the street every day to get into the Gallery to see it.” Marlborough Gallery archive.

Leiris had written: Michael Peppiatt, Anatomy of an Enigma (London: Constable, 2008), 287.

After attending the opening: Frances Partridge, Frances Partridge, Everything to Lose: Diaries 1945–1960 (New York: Little, Brown, 1986), 524.

He gave Ianthe’s: Ianthe Knott, interviews with Stevens.

Ianthe told him: Ibid.

Ianthe and her husband: Ibid.

As a good host: Keith Knott, interview with Stevens.

“He enjoyed that”: Ianthe Knott, interview with Stevens.

Nor did subsequent efforts: George’s brother Lee recalled that George had a number of drying-out stays as the 1960s went on. Lee Dyer, interview for Adam Low, Francis Bacon, Arena documentary, BBC Four archive, March 19, 2005.

Bacon tried to persuade him: Bacon offered him “£20,000 … on condition that he live in Brighton,” recalled Daniel Farson. “Francis must have known this was a hopeless situation, for George was bound to come back.” Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life, 183.

To no avail: Valerie Beston sent payments in 1969 to George at the Hotel Metropole in Brighton. Marlborough Gallery archives.

“Of course”: Rita Isaacs, interview with James Norton, May 22, 2009.

He saw his mother: Ibid.

“He laid on the settee”: Isaacs, interview with Norton.

“It was awfully tragic, really”: Lucian Freud, quoted in William Feaver, The Lives of Lucian Freud: The Restless Years 1922–1968 (New York: Knopf, 2019), 572.

Bacon—who used: Once, when John Normile was doing repairs at Reece Mews—after leaving his job as barman at Wheeler’s he opened his own construction company—he offered to replace the cracked mirror. Bacon adamantly refused. John Normile, interview with Annalyn Swan, November 9, 2017.

Bacon, when he came home: Terry Miles, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

“And of course”: Ibid.

“He said, ‘Yeah, yeah’”: Ibid.

Bacon could open: Ibid.

About a week later: Clive Barker, interview with Annalyn Swan, June 27, 2016.

“Funny that you say”: Ibid.

When the thief saw Bacon: Bacon told a few friends that he suspected that Ron Belton was involved with the theft of the paintings. “He [Ron] stole some pictures,” Paul Danquah said later. “Don’t forget Ron was a sort of petty crook—Francis rather liked that sort of thing, and the Kray Twins lot.” Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life, 118. A few years earlier, Robert Fraser had stolen Potrait Head of 1959 “when he was on drugs,” as a letter at the Marlborough Gallery recorded. Marlborough Gallery archive.

Later, when a friend: Barker, interview with Swan.

Not only did the show in New York: Marlborough Gallery correspondence confirms the paintings included. Marlborough Gallery archives.

Lawrence Gowing, an influential: John Russell, “Sir Lawrence Gowing, a Painter, Writer, Curator and Teacher, 72” (obituary), New York Times, February 7, 1991.

“In London this year”: Lawrence Gowing, “The Irrefutable Image,” Francis Bacon: Recent Paintings, exhibition catalogue (Marlborough Gerson Gallery, N.Y., 1968), 7–18.

Miss Beston, aware of: She asked that the room be “away from the traffic side” of the hotel, Marlborough Gallery archives. See “About the Algonquin: The Ten-Year Lunch: The Wit and Legend of the Algonquin Round Table,” American Masters, PBS, www.pbs.org.

At a luncheon: John Richardson, interview with Mark Stevens, March 3, 2008.

Informed that McCoy: Ibid. Also Jason McCoy, conversation with the authors, April, 2008.

Meanwhile, America was erupting: See Clay Risen, “The Legacy of the 1968 Riots,” The Guardian, April 4, 2008, www.theguardian.com.

He loathed fashion: See Peter Schjeldahl, “Post-Script: Hilton Kramer,” New Yorker, March 28, 2012.

Too fierce: Hilton Kramer, “The Problem of Francis Bacon,” New York Times, November 17, 1968, www.nytimes.com.

Kramer saluted: Ibid. All subsequent quotations come from this same article.

A night or so: Richardson, interview with Stevens.

It was “sort of”: Ibid.

“George said, Cockney voice”: Ibid.

Bacon carried strong sleeping pills: Bacon used sleeping pills throughout his adult life and needed them in particular at times of high stress, such as gallery or museum openings. Paul Brass, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena documentary. For the librium, see Sophie Pretorius, “A Pathological Painter: Francis Bacon and the Control of Suffering,” in Inside Francis Bacon, Francis Bacon Studies III (London: The Estate of Francis Bacon Publishing, in association with Thames & Hudson, 2020), 176.

“If I don’t hide”: Bacon, quoted in Feaver, The Lives of Lucian Freud: The Restless Years 1922–1968 (New York: Knopf, 2019), 572.

Miss Beston wrote: Valerie Beston, letter to Lawrence Gowing, November 25, 1968, Marlborough Gallery archive.

With the help of Dicky Chopping: Jon Lys Turner, The Visitors’ Book (London: Constable, 2016), 288.

He was so grateful: See Maev Kennedy, “Painting Bacon Gave as Rent May Fetch 9 Million Pounds,” The Guardian, September 4, 2007, www.theguardian.com/uk.

In July 1969, as Bacon continued: Marlborough Gallery archives. Clive Barker saw Bacon during his summer stay at the Royal College. “He said, ‘They’re on holiday and I have the whole place by myself. I’m in the studio. Reworking Bullfight. So come there.’” Barker, interview with Swan.

In September 1969: Theodore Goddard solicitors completed the paperwork on October 2, 1969. Marlborough Gallery archives.

“I have bought”: John Russell, Francis Bacon (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1985), 169.

The centre: Ben Johnson, “Narrow Street London,” Historic U.K., www.historic-uk.com.

Bacon renovated: Terry Miles, interview with Mark Stevens, March 20, 2014.

The large, spacious main room: A photograph of the Narrow Street flat can be seen in Martin Harrison, In Camera (London: Thames & Hudson, 2005), 135.

“He did one or two”: Miles, interview with Stevens.

“I think she spent”: Ibid.

That was perhaps: Russell, Francis Bacon, 169.

Narrow Street was changing: Ibid.

A young woman named: See Carol Bristow, Central 822: The Remarkable Story of One Woman’s Thirty-Year Fight Against Crime (London: Transworld Publishers/Bantam Books, 1999), 59.

Then George telephoned: Ibid., 59.

The two met: Ibid.

George kept a stash: Bacon himself knew of George’s stash, although he pretended to the police that someone had just placed it there without his knowledge. Dalya Alberge, “Tapes Reveal Francis Bacon’s Shock at 1968 Drug Bust,” The Guardian, May 6, 2018.

“There was silence”: Bristow, Central 822, 60.

She “brushed past him”: Ibid.

A power broker: See Anthony Blond, “Obituary: Lord Goodman,” The Independent, May 15, 1995.

Private Eye: Geoffrey Bindman, “The Almighty Lawyer,” New Law Journal, September 27, 2007.

He was “infinitely”: Roy Strong, The Roy Strong Diaries 1967–1987 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997), 123.

When she finally told him: Bristow, Central 822, 60.

“I walked into”: Ibid., 60–1. All of Bristow’s subsequent quotations come from Central 822 as well.

During the trial: “Artist Faces Drug Charge,” newspaper clipping, 1971, no byline or date, Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation Monaco, archive.

“Bacon told the court”: Bristow, Central 822, 62.

Bacon had arranged: Ianthe Knott, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

“He told us he was having”: Ibid.

Her husband now told her: Ben Knott told Ianthe that Bacon was homosexual only on this trip. Knott, interview with Stevens.

34 HOMMAGE À BACON

Early in 1969: Bacon, letter dated March 3, 1969, to Michel Leiris in Valentina Castellani, Mark Francis, and Stefan Ratibor, eds., Francis Bacon Letters to Michel Leiris 1966–8 (New York: Gagosian Gallery, 2006), 11.

Bacon was “hardly”: Jacques Dupin, interview for Adam Low, director, Francis Bacon, Arena documentary, BBC 4 Archive, March 19, 2005.

The Musée des Arts: John Rothenstein diary, September 21, 1962, unpublished diaries, 1939–1990, Tate Archive, 8726/1.

Only Graham Sutherland: Daniel Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993), 201. After some accounts of Bacon’s retrospective at the Grand Palais reported that he was the first living British artist to have a retrospective in Paris, Graham Sutherland wrote a letter to the Standard saying that actually he, Sutherland, had been the first British painter since Gainsborough to be honoured with a retrospective in Paris.

In July 1969: Bacon, letter dated July 16, 1969, in Letters to Leiris, 13.

Bacon found him: Ibid.

A new minister: André Malraux was appointed minister of cultural affairs in 1958 by Charles de Gaulle and held the position for a decade. See www.britannica.com.

Bacon told Leiris: Bacon, letter dated March 3, 1969, in Letters to Leiris, 11.

The impetus: Letter dated January 25, 1966 in ibid., 5.

Bacon was still working: Most of the paintings done at the Royal Academy had yellow backgrounds in common. Martin Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, vol. III (London: Estate of Francis Bacon, 2016), 896.

He hosted: Bacon, undated letter to Sonia Orwell, Orwell Archive, University College London.

He also invited: Ibid. In another undated letter to Orwell Bacon wrote, “I am seeing Gautier on the morning of April 15th/Isabel is coming over at the same time. Love Francis.”

He asked Ann Fleming: Ann Fleming, letter to Nicholas Henderson, December 24, 1969, in Mark Amory, ed., The Letters of Ann Fleming (London: Collins Harvill, 1985), 400.

Calming things down: Ibid.

The Grand Palais: See “Grand Palais,” www.britannica.com.

Above the grand staircase: See “Quadrigas,” www.grandpalais.fr/en. The actual title of the quadriga is “Immortality Outstripping Time.”

Over the years: “Grand Palais,” www.britannica.com.

He did not abandon: There is a reflection of George’s face in two mirrors in Three Studies of the Male Back of 1970. He painted a small diptych of Dyer in 1971 and also a dark, rather tortured-looking Study of George in 1969. In 1971, he painted a final, full-size Study of George Dyer.

In his Triptych of 1970: Dyer’s “latent jealousy exploded when he discovered that Francis had a new friend, the model for the Triptych 1970 … As with all Bacon portraits, the face and sleek black hair are instantly recognizable, especially in the right-hand panel in which he poses naked.” Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life, 188.

In the late spring: Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, vol. I, 91. Lee Dyer also recalled that George had been sent to dry out not long before the show. Dyer, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

The catalogue essay: Bacon, cable to Leiris dated May 15, 1971, in Letters to Leiris. 14.

He might have stayed: Terry Danziger Miles, interview with Mark Stevens, March 20, 2014.

“We all went to that hotel: Janetta Parladé, interview with Annalyn Swan, November 2, 2017. Parladé stayed at the St. Père a week later. Sonia Orwell told her all about Dyer’s suicide on that trip.

Fearing that he would be: Dr Paul Brass, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

French president Georges Pompidou: Michael Peppiatt, Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma (London: Constable & Robinson, 2008), 288.

His wife was hosting: Jon Lys Turner, The Visitors’ Book (London: Constable, 2016), 294.

The day before: Miles, interview with Stevens.

“She was 15”: Ibid.

The day before the formal: Turner, The Visitors’ Book, 295.

As they passed: Ibid.

Bacon was initially: Ibid.

He returned to his room: Ibid., 295–6.

Neither Bacon nor George: Miles, interview with Stevens.

Bacon left: Turner, The Visitors’ Book, 296.

When he returned.: Miles, interview with Stevens.

“I thought”: Ibid.

“George has brought home”: Ibid.

Early the next morning: Ibid. The rest of the quotations about finding George’s body are from the Terry Miles interview with Mark Stevens.

Miss Beston, however, saw: Ibid.

Afterwards, a grand dinner: For photographs of the dinner, see those of the photographer André Morain.

“They called the [hotel] manager”: Miles, interview with Stevens.

Nadine Haim rode: Nadine Haim, interview with James Norton, April 19, 2014.

A large sign: The sign hung over the grand entrance stairs. See the photos of André Morain.

There was Salvador Dalí: Peppiatt, Francis Bacon, 290.

The Leirises had offered: Peppiatt, Francis Bacon, 293. The Leirises, Sonia Orwell, and Marguerite Duras, a close friend of Orwell, underwrote the dinner. Ibid., 437.

He had often been to Le Train Bleu: When Bacon and Dyer took the train down from Paris to Montpellier after the 1966 Galerie Maeght show to join Stephen Spender and David Plante at the Spenders’ house there, they would have travelled from the Gare de Lyon and might well have eaten at Le Train Bleu, which Bacon liked to do before travelling south.

At the end of the evening: Peppiatt, Francis Bacon, 294.

He spent the night: Miles, interview with Stevens.

The Times called the success: Patrick Brogan, “Francis Bacon Paintings Boost Britain: French Critics Acclaim a Great Artist Whose Works Disturbed and Amazed Paris,” The Times, January 11, 1972, 5.

To many in England: Similarly, Terence Mullaly’s article in the Daily Telegraph, which incorporated both the Bacon show in Paris and a Henry Moore retrospective in Germany, also noted the boost to Britain, not just Bacon. It was headlined “Exhibitions Emphasise British Prestige,” the Daily Telegraph, October 26, 1971.

Andrew Causey: Causey, “Francis Bacon’s European Retrospective,” Illustrated London News, February 1972, 62–3.

The exhibition also marked: Louis le Brocquy, letter to Francis Bacon, undated, Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin, LBCOPY1.

“Perhaps you yourself”: Ibid.

The critic John Berger: Berger, “The Worst Is Not Yet,” New Society, January 6, 1972, 22–3.

The first substantial book: John Russell’s book was mentioned in a number of reviews of Bacon’s show. See Pierre Schneider, “The Savage God,” The Sunday Times, November 7, 1971.

After Paris, the show: Peppiatt, Francis Bacon, 300.

Even before the Grand Palais: H.C., “Grande Première à Paris de Francis Bacon No. 1 de l’Index ’71” Connaissance des arts, October 1971.

The French novelist: Marguerite Duras, “Marguerite Duras s’entretient avec Francis Bacon,” La Quinzaine littéraire, November 30, 1971, 16–17.

“To work I must be”: Ibid.

And in an interview: Bacon, interview with Jean Clair (with the participation of Maurice Eschapasse and Peter Malchus), Chroniques de l’art vivant 1971, October 25, 1971.

The Italian director: See “Last Tango in Paris,” italian.vassar.ed.

He brought his leading man: Bertolucci, quoted in Peppiatt, Francis Bacon, 300.

The American critic: Paul Richard, “Francis Bacon and His Art: Mirrors of a Horrific Life,” The Washington Post, March 21,1975.

35 A TOAST TO DEATH

The note of poignant farce: Ronnie Dryden, interview with James Norton, May 26, 2009.

Francis Chappell & Sons: Ibid.

“He had to go up”: Ibid.

Bacon, who paid: Ibid.

Bacon always got along well: Lee Dyer, interview for Adam Low, director, Francis Bacon, Arena, BBC Four archive, March 19, 2005.

Bacon purchased: Dryden, interview with Norton.

“George was the first one there”: Ibid.

A relative told her: Rita Isaacs, interview with James Norton, May 22, 2009.

Rita Isaacs called it: Ibid.

Bacon arrived: Dyer, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

“The little church”: John Russell, Francis Bacon (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1993), 151.

He behaved “with a stoicism”: Ibid.

At the graveside: Dyer, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

“We was close, me and him”: Dryden, interview with Norton.

“I was going to give him”: Ibid.

When Rita walked up: Isaacs, interview with Norton.

“Bacon paid”: Dyer, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

In the end, said Rita: Isaacs, interview with Norton.

The proceeds: Ibid.

“He was shattered”: Anne Dunn, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

Not long after: David Plante, Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three (New York: New York Review of Books, 2017), 76–7.

“You don’t understand”: Ibid.

Sonia wrote to Michel Leiris: Hilary Spurling, The Girl from the Fiction Department: A Portrait of Sonia Orwell (Berkeley: Counterpoint Press, 2003), 155–6.

The death of a lover: Helen Lessore, quoted in Daniel Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 217.

But a constitution: Dyer, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

Sonia Orwell, who read: Janetta Parladé, interview with Annalyn Swan, November 17, 2017.

And Paul Brass: Paul Brass, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

Brass believed: Ibid.

The postmortem determined: Dyer, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

When the New Statesman: Letter from Theodore Goddard solicitors to the New Statesman, November 9, 1971, Marlborough Gallery archives.

Michael Peppiatt, who met: Michael Peppiatt, Francis Bacon in Your Blood: A Memoir (New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2015), 192.

Along with Librium: See Sophie Pretorius, “A Pathological Painter: Francis Bacon and the Control of Suffering,” in Inside Francis Bacon, Francis Bacon Studies III (London: The Estate of Francis Bacon Publishing, in association with Thames & Hudson, 2020), 176. For the Caves des France, see John Preston, “London Calling by Barry Miles: Review,” www.telegraph.co.uk.

When he tried to move: Bobby Hunt, quoted in Daniel Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994), 259. Hunt confused which eye was involved (it was Bacon’s left eye). Peter Beard took a photograph of Bacon in his studio in 1972 not long after the accident, in which the stitches and bruise can clearly be seen. Rebecca Daniels, “Francis Bacon and Peter Beard: The Dead Elephant Interviews and Other Stories,” in Francis Bacon: A Terrible Beauty (exhibition catalogue for the Hugh Lane show of October 28, 2009–March 7, 2010), 140–1.

To exorcise George’s ghost: Françose Salmon, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

Bacon appeared to Salmon: Ibid.

“I think it’s something”: Ibid.

It may have been: David Wallace, interview with Mark Stevens, March 27, 2014. All of the subsequent quotations come from this interview.

Helen Lessore: Helen Lessore, A Partial Testament: Essays on Some Moderns in the Great Tradition (London: The Tate Gallery, 1986), 77.

In 1972, he visited: Janetta Parladé, interview with Annalyn Swan, November 2, 2017.

“Francis said he was fed-up”: Jeffrey Smart, Not Quite Straight: A Memoir (Port Melbourne, Victoria, Australia: William Heinemann Australia, 1996), 425.

A figure climbs: T. S. Eliot, “Ash Wednesday.”

And in The Waste Land: T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land, www.poetryfoundation.org.

Bacon later told the art historian: Hugh Davies, May 29, 1973 interview for Francis Bacon: The Early and Middle Years, 1928–1958 (New York: Garland Publishing Co., 1978. The typed transcripts of the interviews are contained in Martin Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon: New Studies (Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2009), 89–123.

Wendy Knott, the wife: Wendy Knott, interview with Mark Stevens, March 7, 2008.

Bacon took pride: Peppiatt, Francis Bacon in Your Blood, 207.

“He told us to come”: Harley Knott, interview with Stevens.

“He took me”: Ibid.

“The first place”: Ibid. All of the rest of the quotes come from this interview.

He mixed his real: Both Harley and Ianthe described their trips to Wivenhoe in their interviews with Mark Stevens.

Ianthe twice accompanied: Ianthe Knott, interviews with Mark Stevens, March 5 and 6, 2008.

“We went over to the boats”: Ibid.

“We had the most extraordinary”: Pam Dan, interview with the authors, February 24, 2011.

There was even a Wivenhoe Arts Club: See “Wivenhoe Arts club 1966–1976,” www.wivenhoehistory.org.uk.

“Half of Fleet Street”: Dan, interview with the authors.

Still, the unstable family triangle: For more on Celia Hirst, see www.wivencyclopedia.org.

“Three men each”: Dan, interview with the authors.

According to Hirst: Celia Hirst, interview with the authors, February 24, 2011.

During the scenes between Dicky and Denis: Dan, interview with the authors.

Only rarely was Bacon: Ibid.

Sometimes, when Bacon wanted: Terry Danziger Miles, interview with Mark Stevens, March 20, 2014.

The chef Robert Carrier: See “Who Was Robert Carrier,” hintleshamhall.co.uk.

Carrier was “what is now known”: Miles, interview with Stevens.

“Our company had this big”: Ibid.

“It would start with me”: Ibid. The rest of the quotations from Miles come from this interview.

Auntie was a homosexual: Ibid.

“It was always a big palaver”: Ibid.

The group might then continue: For more on Annie Ross, see James Gavin, “Annie Ross:s A Free-Spirited Survivor Lands on her Feet,” New York Times, October 3, 1993.

He seemed “slight”: Annie Ross, interview with Mark Stevens, April 25, 2014.

Whenever Ross was performing: Miles, interview with Stevens.

“[Bacon] had the most impeccable”: Ross, interview with Stevens.

“I think I told a story”: Ibid.

“The minute you drop in”: Miles, interview with Stevens.

One day, Freud came: Harley Knott, interview with Stevens.

Later, they went: Ibid.

One time: Tim Behrens, letter to Adam Low, for Francis Bacon, Arena.

“Theirs was a deep love”: Annie Freud, quoted in Phoebe Hoban, Lucian Freud: Eyes Wide Open (Seattle: Icon Books/Amazon Publishing, 2017), 66.

“I’ll tell you something”: Ibid.

“Francis was there”: Ibid.

Anne Dunn believed: Anne Dunn, interview with the authors, July 26, 2010.

She considered Freud’s portrait: Ibid.

His obsessive womanizing: The London art world was seemingly split into two camps over what many saw as Freud’s almost frantic womanizing and his social climbing. As the painter Lindy Dufferin—herself the Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava—put it rather drily, “I would see Lucian out and about: he was very friendly with rich people.” Dufferin, interview with Annalyn Swan, March 21, 2013. Dufferin used the name Lindy Guinness for her artwork.

According to James Kirkman: James Kirkman, interview with Mark Stevens, April 24, 2012.

In 1972, he sent Freud: Bacon cable to Freud, December 10, 1972. Marlborough Gallery archives.

“Your show looks”: Ibid.

Freud left: See “Chronology,” Lucian Freud Archive, lucianfreud.com.

Two years later: Ibid.

Freud had been viewed: Anthony D’Offay, quoted in Hoban, Lucian Freud, 95.

Christopher Gibbs: Christopher Gibbs, interview with the authors, October 12, 2013.

Freud “shunned dutifulness”: Alice Weldon, interviews with Annalyn Swan, March 7 and 12, 2012.

When Valerie Beston: Freud, 1985 letter to Valerie Beston, hand-printed, Marlborough Gallery archives.

When his close, longtime friend: Weldon, interviews with Swan.

Muriel did not usually: Miles, interview with Stevens.

“Most of the time”: David Marrion, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

The old-timers: Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life, 209.

“He would say hello: Marrion, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

When Denis told him: Turner, The Visitors’ Book, 306.

Bacon’s own sense of mortality: Paul Brass, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

A few months after: Michael Peppiatt, Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma (London: Constable & Robinson, 2008), 299.

After he underwent: Ibid.

He came from “before”: Deakin was part of the Soho scene from the end of the war, even before Muriel Belcher opened the Colony Room. See Gordon Comstock, “John Deakin: Champagne and Sulphur in Soho,” The Guardian, April 7, 2014, theguardian.com.

He did not seek fame: Eddie Gray, interview with Mark Stevens, October 2013.

It was 99 and 99.99 per cent: Weldon, interview with Swan.

In Brighton: Peppiatt, Francis Bacon, 299.

Deakin informed the hospital: Ibid.

It was the “last”: Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life, 198.

He travelled: Peppiatt, Francis Bacon, 299.

Later, at the Colony: John Christie, director, The Life and Unsteady Times of John Deakin, 1991.

In a full flutey register: Ibid.

Bacon began complaining: Davies, interviews for Francis Bacon: The Early and Middle Years.

Not long after George’s death: Julia Blackburn, The Three of Us: A Family Story (New York: Vintage Books, 2009), 59–61.

“Then Francis entered”: Ibid.

36 AN ENGLISHMAN ABROAD

“Parisian art-lovers”: Raymond Mason, At Work in Paris: Raymond Mason on Art and Artists (London: Thames & Hudson, 2003), 171–2.

During the summer of 1973: Mark Lancaster, interview with the authors, May 9, 2010.

The eponymous Galerie: Mason, At Work in Paris, 94.

During the 1970s: Ibid.

“We went out a lot”: Nadine Haim, telephone interview with James Norton, May 10, 2009.

In 1971: See “Balthus, biographie,” www.claude-bernard.com.

Neither liked the other’s: Michael Peppiatt, Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma (London: Constable & Robinson, 2008), 349. Balthus did the same to Raymond Mason. Mason, At Work in Paris, 350.

Sometime around: Haim, interview with Norton.

Bacon allowed: Michel Soskine, interview with Annalyn Swan, October 1, 2011.

In fact, Raymond Mason: Mason, At Work in Paris, 174.

Balthus was appreciated: Ibid, 75.

When a deeply tanned: Ibid., 174–5.

In February 1973: The trip is recorded in Jeffrey Smart, Not Quite Straight: A Memoir (Port Melbourne, Victoria, Australia: William Heinemann Australia, 1996), 424–5.

Balthus had spent: See “Balthus,” www.villamedici.it/en.

When a limousine: Smart, Not Quite Straight, 424–5. The rest of the information comes from this same passage. For more on Jeffrey Smart, see www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au.

Now, in 1975: David Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon (London: Thames & Hudson, 1975; New York: Pantheon Books, 1975).

Sarah Whitfield: Sarah Whitfield, interview with Mark Stevens, December 7, 2010. In 1980, an expanded version of the interviews was published. Several Marlborough Gallery employees later recalled that Valerie Beston had copies of the interviews and helped with the language.

However, one of Bacon’s earliest admirers: Sam Hunter, “Francis Bacon: The Anatomy of Horror,” Magazine of Art, January 1952, 11–15.

In March 1973: Hugh Davies’s first interview with Bacon was on March 17, 1973, in London; the last was on August 17, 1973. Davies, Francis Bacon: The Early and Middle Years, 1928–1958 (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1978). Davies kindly provided the authors with the typewritten transcripts of the interviews. See also Martin Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon: New Studies (Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2009), 89–123.

Davies became the friend: Ibid.

There was even one memorably: Jon Lys Turner, The Visitors’ Book (London: Constable, 2016), 304.

He had been born: For a detailed overview of Beard, see Leslie Bennetts, “African Dreamer,” Vanity Fair, November 1996, www.archive.vanityfair.com.

Beard was welcome: Ibid.

His first marriage: Ibid.

Beard and Bacon: Nejma Beard, email correspondence with Annalyn Swan, July 2016.

Later that year: Ibid.

Beard believed: “Peter Beard,” www.taschen.com.

One day he was photographing: Bennetts, “African Dreamer,” Vanity Fair. In the article, Bennetts quotes an entry in Andy Warhol’s diary from the 1970s: “Mick arrived so drunk from an afternoon with Peter Beard and Francis Bacon that he fell asleep on my bed.”

Beard photographed: Bacon’s work diary is in the collection of The Estate of Francis Bacon.

In the end: Bacon would paint numerous portraits inspired by Beard throughout the 1970s, many not identified directly by name.

“It’s the last house”: Beard, Hugh Lane Gallery archive, Dublin, RM98F130:45.

“Peter was a lovely”: John Normile, interview with Annalyn Swan, November 9, 2017.

Terry Danziger Miles: Miles, interview with Mark Stevens, March 20, 2014.

MoMA was becoming: See “William Rubin biography,” assets.moma.org.

The only possibility: During the tenure of flamboyant director Thomas Hoving, from 1967 to 1977, the museum founded a contemporary art department and became much more serious about showing, and acquiring, twentieth-century art. See Randy Kennedy, “Thomas Hoving, Remaker of the Met, Dies at 78,” New York Times, December 10, 2009.

In June 1971: Henry Geldzahler, letter to Frank Lloyd, June 3, 1971. Metropolitan Museum of Art (MMA) archive.

To counter an argument: See Griselda Pollock, “The Missing Future: MoMA and Modern Women,” www.moma.org.

His controversial exclusion: Laurie Wilson, Louise Nevelson: Light and Shadow (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2016), 285–6.

Given his close friendship: David Hockney had painted Geldzahler and his partner, Christopher Scott, in a huge double portrait in 1969. See Natasha Gural, “‘Totally Hypnotizing’ Hockney Portrait of Famous Gay Couple Could Fetch $38 Million at Christie’s,” forbes.com.

Bacon was thrilled: Bacon, letter to Henry Geldzahler, July 1, 1971, MMA archive.

The Grand Palais exhibition: Text of Henry Geldzahler’s opening night speech. MMA archive.

We were both overwhelmed: Thomas Hoving, letter to Henry Geldzahler, December 5, 1974, MMA archive.

Hilton Kramer: Hilton Kramer, “Signs of a New Conservatism in Taste,” New York Times, March. 30, 1975.

“I don’t want”: Pierre Levai, interview with Mark Stevens, June 8, 2008.

When Rousseau afterwards: Theodore Rousseau, letter to Bacon, June 14, 1972, MMA archive.

“I did so much hope”: Bacon, letter to Theodore Rousseau, August 30, 1973, Marlborough Gallery archive.

Rousseau responded: Theodore Rousseau, letter to Bacon, September 22, 1972, Marlborough Gallery archive.

Geldzahler initially envisaged: Henry Geldzahler, letter to Bacon, Ocober. 19, 1971, MMA archive.

Altogether, he wrote: Bacon, letter to Theodore Rousseau, September 25, 1973, MMA archive.

Bacon also made: Ibid.

Bacon told Geldzahler: Bacon, letter to Henry Geldzahler, June 3, 1974, MMA archive.

In the end: Gilbert Lloyd, letter of November 20, 1974, to Henry Geldzahler, and another letter the same day to the finance department at the Met, MMA archive.

Beard had spent: Turner, The Visitors’ Book, 306.

It would include: The Village Voice article, or at least a large portion of it, was included in the “Peter Beard” room at the Hugh Lane Gallery (Dublin) show Francis Bacon: A Terrible Beauty, October 28, 2009–March 7, 2010. The article is dated December 29, 1975.

He was friends: Bennetts, “African Dreamer,” Vanity Fair. See also “Peter Beard: Montauk’s Shindig Extraordinaire,” whalebonemag.com.

On the back: Hugh Lane Museum archive, RM98F98:23.

In the final version: “Francis Bacon: Remarks from an Interview with Peter Beard, edited by Henry Geldzahler,” Francis Bacon: Recent Paintings 1968–1974 (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1975), 18.

Terry Miles preceded: Miles, interview with Stevens. The rest of Miles’s quotations come from this interview.

Bacon was on best: Gilbert Lloyd, interview with Mark Stevens, November 2, 2012.

In London, the week: David Sylvester, “Francis Bacon: A Kind of Grandeur,” Sunday Times Magazine, March 23, 1975.

Lee Radziwell: Bacon, quoted in Michel Archimbaud, Francis Bacon: In Conversation with Michel Archimbaud (London: Phaidon Press, 1994), 46.

John Russell: Miles, interview with Stevens.

Geldzahler arranged: Grace Glueck, “Briton Speaks About Pain and Painting,” New York Times, March 20, 1975.

Amei Wallach of Newsday: Amei Wallach, “Capturing Nightmares on Canvas,” Newsday, March 28, 1975.

About four hundred people: Paul Richard, “Francis Bacon and His Art: Mirrors of a Horrific Life,” Washington Post, March 21, 1975.

Willem de Kooning: Wallach, “Capturing Nightmares,” Newsday.

Several prominent: Ibid.

Andy Warhol: Ibid.

He maintained: Several reviews and articles about the show included Bacon’s putdown of Pollock. As Tom Hess wrote in New York Magazine, “He recently called the Metropolitan Museum’s notable Pollock ‘lace curtain,’ a clever bit of bitchiness that reflects somewhat more on Bacon than on Pollock, who, as everyone knows, was born McCoy.” Thomas Hess, “Blood, Sweat and Smears,” New York Magazine, April 21, 1975.

Christopher Gibbs recalled: Christopher Gibbs, interview with the authors, October 12, 2013. For background on La Popote, see Gerard Noel, “Bursting out of the closet,” www.spectator.co.uk.

During the opening: Wallach, “Capturing Nightmares,” Newsday.

Some friends: Bacon bought Helen Lessore’s ticket. Miles, interview with Stevens.

But Bacon disappeared: Levai, interview with Stevens.

Gilbert Lloyd said: Lloyd, interview with Stevens.

Norman Canedy wrote: Canedy, “Francis Bacon at the Metropolitan Museum,” Burlington Magazine, 117, no. 867 (June, 1975), 425–6, 428.

He began: Henry Geldzahler, “Introduction,” in Francis Bacon: Recent Paintings, 1968–1974, March 20–June 29, 1975 (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1975), 5.

They introduced: Ibid., 7.

Hilton Kramer at the New York Times: Kramer, “Signs of a New Conservatism in Taste,” New York Times.

Rosenberg reported: Harold Rosenberg, “The Art World: Aesthetics of Mutilation,” New Yorker, May 12, 1975.

Hess’s review: Hess, “Blood, Sweat and Smears,” New York Magazine.

Although “superficially”: Ibid.

“In the past few weeks”: Ibid.

“The British always love”: Ibid.

One month into its run: Henry Geldzahler, letter to Bacon, April 21, 1975, MMA archive.

The show was extended: Henry Geldzahler, letter to Bacon, June 10, 1975, MMA archive; the attendance figure comes from Carter Wiseman, “Agony and the Artist,” Newsweek, January 24, 1977.

The writer Susan Sontag: Susan Sontag, “Francis Bacon: ‘About Being in Pain,’” Vogue, March 1975.

“Bacon is one of”: Ibid.

“Bacon’s work seems”: Ibid.

Bacon spent a further: Miles, interview with Stevens.

He visited: See “Andy Warhol: A Factory,” www.guggenheim.org.

The waspish Dicky: Turner, The Visitors’ Book, 310.

He admired: David Sylvester, Looking Back at Francis Bacon (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2000), 246.

“I also think”: Sylvester, interview with Bacon.

Warhol cheerfully confessed: Wiseman, “Agony and the Artist,” Newsweek.

Before the opening: Miles, interview with Stevens. All of the following quotes come from this interview.

Another friend: Ibid. All of the quotes from Miles below come from this interview.

“I don’t like the idea”: Bacon, quoted in ibid.

Suddenly, from under: Ibid.

37 ECHOES

In 1974: Michael Peppiatt, Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma (New York: Constable & Robinson, 2008), 316.

Peppiatt found: Michael Peppiatt, Francis Bacon in Your Blood: A Memoir (New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2015), 215.

“The apartment was on”: Vladimir Veličković, phone interview with James Norton, 2004.

“The size and light”: Peppiatt, Francis Bacon, 318.

In September: Peppiatt, Francis Bacon in Your Blood, 242–3.

The architect: Peppiatt, Francis Bacon, 319.

The art dealer Claude Bernard: Raymond Mason, At Work in Paris: Raymond Mason on Art and Artists (London: Thames & Hudson, 2003), 170–2.

Using traditional craftsmen: Michel Cosperec, interview for Adam Low, director, Francis Bacon, Arena documentary, BBC Four archive, March 19, 2005.

“I arranged it a little”: Nadine Haim, interview with James Norton, May 10, 2009.

The result was: Terry Danziger Miles, interview with Mark Stevens, March 20, 2014.

“He was exceptional”: Cosperec, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

“This caused consternation”: Mason, At Work in Paris, 170–2.

In 1975, for example: Danny Moynihan, interview with the authors, February 28, 2011.

“He came round every day”: Ibid.

Once, when the gambling: John Normile, interview with Annalyn Swan, November 9, 2017.

One morning, after writing: Bacon’s letter is in the Tate Archive, 200816/2/1/368.

Dicky and Denis: Theodore Goddard, solicitors, letter recording the sale of 80 Narrow Street on October 21, 1975, to Mr and Mrs E. B. Fisher for £27,000. The amount after expenses (£26,100) was put in Bacon’s bank account at the National Westminster Bank on Kensington High Street. Marlborough Gallery archives.

“Francis really intends”: Jon Lys Turner, The Visitors’ Book (London: Constable, 2016), 311.

It had not always: Ibid.

He “liked it”: Bill Wendon, interview with James Norton, February 26, 2015.

“So they bought champagne”: Ibid.

In the middle of June: Madame Maristella Vladimir Veličković, interview with Anthi-Danaé Spathoni, May 16, 2016.

The truck also: For photographs of the rue de Birague studio, see the publications Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation (Italy: Castelli Bolis Poligrafiche Spa, 2015 and 2017).

He appeared to be delighted: Peppiatt, Francis Bacon, 310.

Raymond Mason: Mason, At Work in Paris, 170–2.

“F and D off to see”: Dicky Chopping diary, August 1975, in Turner, The Visitors’ Book, 312.

The purchase, in August 1975: Ibid.

In 1975: Marlborough Gallery archives.

“Francis Bacon, whose pictures”: “Bacon Makes a Modest Move,” Daily Express, September 7, 1976.

“To my amazement”: Turner, The Visitors’ Book, 314.

It still echoed: Michel Archimbaud, Francis Bacon: In Conversation with Michel Archimaud (New York: Phaidon Press, 1993), 32.

He was “almost the only”: David Sylvester, Looking Back at Francis Bacon (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1993), 109.

John Russell wrote at the time: John Russell, Francis Bacon (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1993), 109.

“The thing about the French”: Michael Clark, interview with Annalyn Swan, December 18, 2015.

Bacon read Racine: A list of all Bacon books, in the collection of the Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin, contains a number of books in French.

Bacon enjoyed French conversation: Russell, Francis Bacon, 109.

Bacon also liked: Emelia Thorold, interview with Annalyn Swan, December 5, 2008.

“You know, he’s an artist”: Christopher Gibbs, interview with the authors, October 12, 2013.

“He talked about painters”: Jacques Dupin, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

They would have lunch: Eddy Batache and Reinhard Hassert, interview with Mark Stevens, June 2016.

Bacon would sometimes: Peppiatt, Francis Bacon in Your Blood, 111.

“I really can’t see: Peppiatt, Francis Bacon, 325.

Bacon enjoyed, said Haim: Haim, interview with Norton.

It was run by: See “Fabrice Emauer,” obituary, www.andrejkoymasky.com.

“You didn’t have to be”: Andy Thomas, “Nightclubbing: Guy Cuevas and the Paris Disco Scene,” Red Bull Music Academy Daily, January 28, 2016, daily.redbullmusicacademy.com.

So well-known: Peppiatt, Francis Bacon, 348. In Andy Thomas’s interview with Guy Cuevas, Cuevas mentioned Bacon as one of the star regulars at Le Sept. “It was a really fabulous crowd with a lot of the fashion people there, so people like Karl (Lagerfeld), Yves Saint Laurent, Kenzo, Claude Montana and Thierry Mugler alongside actresses like Claudia Cardinale and the artist Francis Bacon.” Thomas, “Nightclubbing,” daily.redbullmusicacademy.com.

“He really loved eating”: Haim, interview with Norton.

The staff was: Anne Madden, interview with Annalyn Swan, May 7, 2008.

Bacon also developed: Mme. Maristells Veličković, interview with Anthi-Danaé Spathoni. All of the subsequent quotations in this paragraph come from this interview.

Bacon remained fundamentally: Ibid. Bacon had actually met Peter Brook years before. Bacon, in Michel Archimbaud, Francis Bacon, 95.

The dinner lasted: Mme. Veličković, interview with Spathoni.

Bacon did not try: Ibid.

“He would let”: Ibid.

Batache, who lived: Eddy Batache, “Francis Bacon: An Intimate View,” in Martin Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon: La France et Monaco/France and Monaco (Paris: Editions Albin Michel, 2016), 187–8. All of the quotations in this paragraph come from this piece.

Perhaps Bacon would like: Brett Whiteley had done a portrait of Francis Bacon a few years earlier. Ibid., 187.

They gathered first: Batache, “Francis Bacon An Intimate View,” Francis Bacon, 188.

Then they walked: Bofinger’s figured prominently in Bacon’s life in the Marais. Peppiatt, Francis Bacon, 321.

“Francis was a man”: Eddie Batache, interview with James Norton, November 23, 2010.

Bacon took: Batache, “Francis Bacon: An Intimate View,” Francis Bacon, 188–9.

Crevel was also a man: See “Rene Crevel,” www.goodreads.com.

Although Eddy and Reinhard: Batache and Reinhard, interview with Stevens.

“Francis was one”: Ibid.

Bacon loved taking the train: Ibid.

Eddy was a Lebanese: See “Reinhard Hassert and Eddy Batache,” www.francis-bacon.com.

Reinhard was born: Ibid.

The young men: Ibid. The rest of the details come from the interview with Stevens.

Eddy was dark-haired: See, for example, a photograph of Batache taken by Reinhard Hassert at Hostellerie du Chateâu de Fère, Fère-en-Tardenois, France, in July 1978. Michael Cary, ed., Francis Bacon: Late Paintings (New York: Gagosian Gallery, 2015), 154.

Reinhard, slender: Ibid. Francis Bacon: Late Paintings also has a number of photographs of Hassert.

His asthma was reasserting: Dr Paul Brass, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

“He believed there was”: Batache, quoted in Janet Hawley, “Dark Night of the Soul,” Sydney Morning Herald, November 3, 2012.

“Francis tried”: Ibid.

Bacon filled many hours: Batache and Reinhard, interview with Stevens.

The three went: Batache, “Francis Bacon: An Intimate View,” Francis Bacon, 190. The following quotes came from this piece.

“What he loved”: Ibid.

If Bacon did feel: Batache and Reinhard, interview with Stevens.

“What do you”: Mason, At Work in Paris, 104.

“His astonishment”: Ibid.

One was a “palatial”: Ibid., 99.

The party might include: Ibid.

Bernard himself: Ibid., 94. In the early days of his gallery Claude Bernard kept an organ downstairs on which he frequently played.

At his country estate: Ibid., 102–3. The rest of the details about La Besnardière come from these pages as well.

An exhibition of Bacon’s recent art: The exhibit, called “Francis Bacon: oeuvres récentes,” opened on July 9, 1976.

“I love Paris”: Archimbaud, Francis Bacon, 168.

The big table: Hassert, “Dark Night of the Soul,” Sydney Morning Herald.

He acquired: The artist Michael Clark, who visited Bacon at 7 Reece Mews in the 1970s and ’80s, described Bacon mixing pigment in a frying pan. Michael Clark, interview with Annalyn Swan, December 18, 2015.

Bacon struggled: Batache, “Francis Bacon: An Intimate View,” Francis Bacon, 199.

Reinhard Hassert: Ibid.

“Francis came round”: Batache, ibid.

In November 1975: Ianthe Knott, interviews with Mark Stevens, March 5 and 6, 2008.

Ben and Francis always: Keith Knott, interview with Mark Stevens, March 7, 2008.

It was a “terrible shock”: Peppiatt, Francis Bacon in Your Blood, 248.

Bacon rushed to London: Ibid.

He paid: Marlborough Gallery archives.

In April 1976: Bacon, letter in Valentina Castellani, Mark Francis, and Stefan Ratibor, eds., Francis Bacon Letters to Michel Leiris, 1966–1989 (London: Gagosian Gallery, 2006), 23.

The Musée Cantini: See “Cantini Museum,” www.museu.ms/.

The building was constructed: See “The Musée Cantini,” www.marvellous-provence.com.

Bacon liked the longtime: See “Gaston Defferre,” www.britannica.com. Defferre had been mayor of Marseilles even earlier, in 1944–1945.

Before the show: Turner, The Visitors’ Book, 316–17.

“Dicky and Denis”: James Birch, interview with the authors, December 8, 2008.

A surprising number: Ibid.

The Marlborough gallery: Pierre Levai, interview with Mark Stevens, June 8, 2008.

Only three of the large images: Martin Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, vol. IV (London: Estate of Francis Bacon, 2016).

More important: Ibid.

Lucian Freud hosted: Birch, interview with the authors.

After the opening: Levai, interview with Stevens.

David Sylvester wrote: Sylvester, Looking Back at Francis Bacon, 156.

Bacon once said: Andrew Carduff Ritchie, ed., The New Decade: 22 European Painters and Sculptors (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1955), 63.

The triptych, said a friend: Helen Lessore, A Partial Testament: Essays on Some Moderns in the Great Tradition (London: Tate Publishing, 1986), 94.

38 SPECTACLE

One afternoon: John Edwards said that the two met in 1976. John Edwards, “Foreword,” and Perry Ogden, photographer, 7 Reece Mews: Francis Bacon’s Studio (London: Thames & Hudson, 2001), 10. Except for Edwards’s foreword, the book is composed solely of Ogden’s photographs.

“So you’re”: Edwards’s account of the meeting comes from Brian Clarke, interview with Annalyn Swan, February 9, 2020.

Sometime before: Joan Littlewood was friendly with both Bacon and Belcher. A postcard from Littlewood to Bacon in 1967 asks him to come and visit her theatre in Stratford. The postcard was part of the so-called Robertson Collection of studio refuse that was auctioned by Ewbank Fine Art Auctioneers and Valuers near Woking in 2007. See Charlotte Higgins, “It’s trash but it’s Bacon’s trash—and it’s sold for almost £1m,” The Guardian, April 25, 2007, www.theguardian.com/uk.

To make the trip: 7 Reece Mews, 10.

John Edwards, then twenty-six or twenty-seven: Edwards was born on October 9, 1949. Questionnaire for passport, Marlborough Gallery archives.

“I do think”: Paul Brass, interview for Adam Low, director, Francis Bacon, Arena documentary, BBC Four archive, March 19, 2005.

Bacon would not entirely: John Edwards, quoted in Daniel Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon (New York: Pantheon, 1993), 218.

“Francis fell for John”: Brian Clarke, interviews with Annalyn Swan, June 3, 2016 and February 9, 2020.

David Marrion: David Marrion, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

Bacon found: Michael Peppiatt, Francis Bacon in Your Blood: A Memoir (New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2015), 227.

But there Bacon stood: Ian Board, quoted in Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life, 219.

And as usual: See David Plante, “Bacon’s Instinct,” The New Yorker, November 1, 1993.

He typically refused: Michael Dillon, interview with Annalyn Swan, October 24, 2013.

“I think he felt very free”: John Edwards, quoted in an unsigned obituary, Daily Telegraph, March 7, 2003.

“John,” said his friend: Clarke, interviews with Swan.

Edwards was born: East London Advertiser, March 7, 2002. The same article has details about Edwards’s father.

His mother: Philip Mordue, email correspondence with Brian Clarke and Annalyn Swan, March 7, 2017 and March 11, 2020.

The family was: Ibid.

“He could read certain things: Clarke, interviews with Swan.

John “bunked off”: East London Advertiser, March 7, 2002.

At fourteen, he dropped out: Clarke, interviews with Swan.

“He was incapable”: Ibid.

His older brothers Leonard and David: Mordue, correspondence with Clarke and Swan.

He was arrested: Ibid.

The fourth time: Ibid.

“John had very few jobs”: Ibid.

Edwards himself: Alexis Parr and Fiona Wingett, “How Francis Bacon’s millions ended up in the hands of an ex-con called Phil The Till,” Sunday Mail, March 9, 2003.

“John didn’t need”: Clarke, interview with Swan.

Bacon became: David Marrion, quoted in Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life, 219.

Edwards “was a young man”: Marrion, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

Marrion recalled: Ibid.

In the beginning: Although John Edwards later claimed that his relationship with Bacon was not physical, those who knew Edwards best said that at the beginning the affair was, indeed, sexual. Not-for-attribution interview.

It would remain: Clarke, interviews with Swan.

Bacon did not intend: He gave both of his portraits of Leiris to his friend. See Martin Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. IV (London: The Estate of Francis Bacon, 2016), 1116.

The likeness was less: John Russell, Francis Bacon (London: Thames & Hudson, 1993), 172.

“It is less literally”: Bacon, quoted in David Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1987), 146–7.

And so, Marlborough sold: Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, vol. IV, 1092, 1106, 1110. In 1974, an air waybill for Swissair shows fifteen paintings being shipped to Zurich by T. Rogers and Co., packers. By 1980, cheques for Bacon were regularly being deposited in his National Westminster Bank account from T. Rogers and Co. Bacon’s payments were officially coming, then, not from Marlborough in London but presumably from Marlborough elsewhere, through the packing company. Marlborough Gallery archive. The UK’s Value-Added Tax had begun the year before and would have meant a far greater amount of taxes owed for any painting sold in the UK.

“They [Bernard and Bacon] were great friends”: David Somerset, interview with the authors, June 18, 2012.

The international edition: Carter Wiseman and Edward Behr, “Agony and the Artist,” Newsweek International, January 24, 1977.

“For weeks”: Ibid.

“Bacon’s grisly visions”: Ibid.

“The whole neighbourhood”: Michel Soskine, interview with Annalyn Swan, October 1, 2011.

That would happen: Raymond Mason, At Work in Paris: Raymond Mason on Art and Artists (London: Thames & Hudson, 2003), 104.

Three rooms: Soskine, interview with Swan.

A “contingent”: Mason, At Work in Paris, 104.

Now the concentration: Soskine, interview with Swan.

A French minister: Eddy Batache and Reinhard Hassert, interview with Mark Stevens, June 2016.

For the punks: See Geoff Bird, producer, “How France Gave Punk Rock Its Meaning,” Liberty, Fraternity, Anarchy, Radio 4, March 3, 2011, www.bbc.com.

They strode barbarously: Peppiatt, Francis Bacon in Your Blood, 278.

Paris Match estimated: Sabine de la Bosse, “Francis Bacon: 8000 Parisiens en un jour pour le pentre le plus cher du monde,” Paris Match, February 4, 1977.

Not only did Reinhard: Hassert, interview with Stevens.

Bacon noticed: Ibid.

Bernard capped: Mme. Maristella Veličković, interview with Anthi-Danaé Spathoni, May 16, 2016.

He commandeered: Soskine, interview with Swan, Oct. 1, 2011.

At the dinner: Veličković, interview with Spathoni.

Two days later: Ibid.

“The best exhibition”: Richard Cork, “Home Thoughts from an Incurable Surrealist,” The Times Saturday Review, March 16, 1991.

“Powerful like Rembrandt”: Unsigned, undated notice for the show, Le Quotidien de Paris.

Bacon wrote to Somerset: Letter from Bacon to David Somerset, February 2, 1978, Hugh Lane Gallery archive, RM98F23:54.

Glimcher brought: Rachel Wolff, “Fifty Years of Being Modern,” New York Magazine, February 6, 2009, nymag.com. See also Paul Lancaster, “Pace Gallery 50th Anniversary: Arne Glimcher,” The Daily Beast, July 14, 2017.

At the time Marlborough: Judith H. Dobrzynski, “A Betrayal the Art World Can’t Forget; the Battle for Rothko’s Estate Altered Lives and Reputations,” New York Times, November 2, 1998, www.nytimes.com.

In 1975: Ibid.

In 1977: Ibid.

Bacon came wearing: Arnold Glimcher, interview with Mark Stevens, March 4, 2019.

“We had such”: Ibid. All of the following quotes come from this interview.

On the flight home: Arnold Glimcher, letter of March 4, 1978, to Bacon, Hugh Lane Gallery archive, RM98F22:74.

“He was very nervous”: Glimcher, interview with Stevens.

Years later, Glimcher attributed: Steve Boggan, “I Wooed Bacon with Claridge’s Champagne, but London Gallery Cheated Me, Says Dealer,” The Independent, November 28, 2001.

In the 1960s and ’70s: Richard Evans, “How Labour Will Take Tax Rates Back to the 1970s,” The Telegraph, June 3, 2017, www.telegraph.co.uk.

In 1980, the records of Marlborough: Profit-and-loss statement for the year ended April 5, 1980, Marlborough Gallery archive.

Many high earners: Philip Johnston and Ian Cowie, “Labour Remains Haunted by the Sound of Squeaking Pips,” The Telegraph, June 21, 2003.

Even after the Labour Party: Ibid.

As a result, tax games: Ibid.

Peter Beard alluded: In a letter to Bacon dated September 28 (probably either 1984 or 1987, as Bacon had upcoming shows both of those years) Beard wrote, “I know you’re on the final count-down for another Swiss-account-shattering Paris show …” The letter was displayed in a “Peter Beard Detritus Box,” in “Francis Bacon: A Terrible Beauty,” Hugh Lane Gallery exhibition, October 2009.

Over the years: On April 14, 1982, for example, Bacon flew to Zurich before heading to Paris. Valerie Beston diaries, The Estate of Francis Bacon archive. Probably not coincidentally, Marlborough London had Swiss secretaries. James Kirkman, interview with Mark Stevens, April 24, 2012.

He was probably: Ianthe Knott said that Bacon had generously given money to her sons, for example, which they invested in a farm in Zimbabwe—only to have it confiscated in the ongoing land appropriation by the government. Ianthe Knott, interviews with Mark Stevens, March 5 and 6, 2008.

Martin Summers: Martin Summers, interview with Mark Stevens, April 23, 2012.

Andrew Graham-Dixon reported: Andrew Graham-Dixon, “Profile: Francis Bacon, Confounder of Art Critics,” The Independent, September 24, 1988.

Grey Gowrie, Margaret Thatcher’s: Gowrie, interview with Mark Stevens, November 2011.

The year before: John Lelliott Ltd. builders, letter to Valerie Beston, August 23, 1977, Marlborough Gallery archive.

Not long after: In a letter of April 20, 1978, to the builders, Beston noted that Bacon had seen some of the men leafing through his magazines and was upset. Marlborough Gallery archive.

“Although Mr Bacon”: Ibid.

Bacon did not notice: Valerie Beston’s diary records in detail the process of getting back the painting. On October 16, 1978, she rang the detective “for news of missing picture.” The Estate of Francis Bacon archive.

He was reminded: Ibid. Valerie Beston noted in her diary on July 17, 1979, that the “Mafia” triptych was delivered to the gallery. Eight days later, she records that the “centre panel of Mafia Triptych returned to artist to destroy.”

“I think the most attractive”: David Somerset, interview with the authors.

Bacon liked to be in places: Clive Barker, interview with Annalyn Swan, June 27, 2016.

Lucian Freud: Alice Weldon, interviews with Annalyn Swan, March 7 and 12, 2012.

The thief fell: A “Detective Constable Lunn” met with the unsuspecting thief on October 20, offering a £2,500 reward for the return of the painting. The thief accepted and was arrested. He was formally charged with the theft on October 23. Beston diary, October 23, 2012. The Estate of Francis Bacon archive.

He was subsequently: Ibid., November 13, 2012. The trial was at the Lower Court, South London. The thief was given probation for two years.

39 FRIENDS AND RIVALS

It was never easy: Edwards was born in 1949, the year that Bacon booed Princess Margaret.

In 1977: Louisa Buck, “Denis Wirth-Miller: A Partial Memory,” in Denis Wirth-Miller, 1915–2010 exhibition catalogue (The Minories Gallery, Colchester Institute, Colchester, 2011), 17.

Sometime before: Jon Lys Turner, The Visitors’ Book (London: Constable, 2016), 322.

Francis “was terribly kind”: Ibid.

Denis walked outside: Ibid., 323.

Bacon “began to rock”: Ibid.

Dicky often told Denis: James Birch, interview with the authors, December 8, 2008.

He destroyed most: James Birch quoted in Buck, “Denis Wirth-Miller: a partial memory.”

He blamed problems: Louisa Buck, interview with Dan Chapman, in “Denis Wirth-Miller: A Partial Memory.” Also Pam Dan, interview with the authors in Wivenhoe, February 24, 2011.

In December 1978: Turner, The Visitors’ Book, 327.

A Christmas feast: Ibid.

“I tried to deter”: Ibid.

Fewer than six weeks: Ibid.

“I wanted it to be a landscape”: David Sylvester, Looking Back at Francis Bacon (London: Thames & Hudson, 2000), 175.

In 1981, he explained: Bacon, letter of November 20, 1980, to Michel Leiris, published in Valentina Castellani, Mark Francis, and Stefan Ratibor, eds., Francis Bacon: Letters to Michel Leiris 1966–1989 (New York: Gagosian Gallery, 2006), 30.

Attracted by Bacon’s: As Freud told his biographer William Feaver, “Francis opened my eyes in some ways. His work impressed me, but his personality affected me.” William Feaver, The Lives of Lucian Freud: The Restless Years, 1922–1968 (New York: Knopf, 2019), 358.

“When each one”: David Somerset, interview with the authors, June 18, 2012.

Freud later said: Freud to Sebastian Snee, art critic of The Boston Globe, quoted in Phoebe Hoban, Eyes Wide Open (Boston: New Harvest, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013), 65–6.

“I remember his complaining”: James Kirkman, interview with Mark Stevens, April 24, 2012.

“Lucian took the view”: Somerset, interview with the authors.

He told the art critic: Martin Gayford, Man with a Blue Scarf: On Sitting for a Portrait by Lucian Freud. (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2010), 188.

Bacon could be: William Feaver, quoted in Janet Hawley, “Dark Night of the Soul,” Sydney Morning Herald, November 3, 2012.

Bacon called: Danny Moynihan, interview with the authors, February 28, 2011. “I remember my mother saying that she had bumped into Bacon after seeing the Freud retrospective at the Hayward Gallery and Bacon had said, ‘It’s far too expressionist for my liking.’”

To James Kirkman: Kirkman, interview with Stevens.

In the early 1980s: David Russell, interview with the authors, March 6, 2012.

John Edwards once set up: Geraldine and Michael Leventis, interview with Annalyn Swan, November 11, 2017.

“He was my”: Ibid.

Michael, who was Greek: Ibid.

“Lucian made no effort”: Ibid.

“You’re in the restaurant”: Ibid.

Graham Greene famously: Julian Evans, “Graham Greene,” Prospect Magazine, September 26, 2004.

At a restaurant once: Eddy Batache and Reinhard Hassert, interview with Mark Stevens, June 2016.

In July 1978: Beston diary, Estate of Francis Bacon archive.

The three travellers: Eddy Batache, interview with James Norton, November 23, 2010.

There would often be: Eddy Batache, “Francis Bacon: an Intimate View,” Francis Bacon: La France et Monaco/France and Monaco (Paris: Albin Michel/Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation, 2016), 192.

The following year: Batache, interview with Norton.

Castres had a lovely: See “Goya museum,” www.amis-musees-castres.asso.fr/en.

Bacon wanted to see: Batache, interview with James Norton.

“Some friends of Francis”: Ibid.

“He thought it”: Ibid.

It was only once: Batache, “Bacon: An Intimate View,” Francis Bacon, 193.

He granted Batache: Ibid., 188–9.

“His models”: Ibid., 189.

Bacon even asked: Ibid.

And so he shaved it off: Ibid., 197.

It took Bacon three weeks: Batache, quoted in Hawley, “Dark Night of the Soul,” Sydney Morning Herald.

The colour in the portraits: While Bacon was painting the double portrait of Batache and Hassert, the three spent time together at the Louvre, where Bacon studied a Chardin self-portrait intently. Batache couldn’t understand why until he realized later “that he had found in Chardin the secret of the multiple reflections that enliven the lenses of spectacles.” (Hassert wore glasses.) Batache, “Bacon: An Intimate View,” Francis Bacon, 190.

Bacon and Barker maintained: Clive Barker, interview with Annalyn Swan, June 27, 2016.

Bacon told Barker: Ibid. That Bacon’s interest was piqued is immediately evident in several of his works from 1978 and ’79 that incorporate the “figure-on-a-rail” motif into his paintings. One, a preliminary, large-scale sketch—Seated Figure—that dates from roughly 1978, is a virtually direct translation of Bacon’s figure-on-a-rail idea. Here a male figure is seated on a rail, his right leg drawn up in front of him and his left arm flung back, as if in motion. Sketched in thin oil paint, it is one of the very few larger-scale studies to survive in Bacon’s work. A powerful painting of 1978 attests to Bacon’s fascination at the time with both sculptural figures and monumental bodies in motion. Figure in Movement, 1978 is clearly inspired by the Discus Thrower, or Discobolus, of Myron, one of the most famous of all ancient Greek sculptures. In Bacon’s version, the figure—his torso doubled over, his lower body coiled in upon itself, his arms outspread—has so much centripetal force that he threatens to spin right out of the painting. Henry Geldzahler’s description, in his catalogue essay for Bacon’s 1975 show at the Metropolitan Museum, of Bacon’s mid-seventies paintings, comes to mind—the “image of speed, the contorted body which can hold its position only for the moment it is pictured.”

“He had been looking”: Barker, interview with Swan.

Bacon would have to lie: Ibid. The rest of the quotations come from this interview.

And so Bacon “lay”: Ibid.

Bacon proved an ideal: Ibid.

“He did them in Paris”: Ibid.

“I remember”: Ibid.

The next time: Ibid.

“He was in the Hotel Westminster”: Louis le Brocquy, interview with Annalyn Swan, May 7, 2008.

The idea of painting: Mme. Maristella Veličković, interview with Anthi-Danaé Spathoni, May 16, 2016.

“He would sometimes share”: Eddy Batache, “Bacon: An Intimate View,” Francis Bacon, 199.

“The only possibility”: David Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1987), 148.

Bacon told Batache: Batache, “Francis Bacon: An Intimate View,” Francis Bacon, 200.

“I did not realize”: Ibid.

Batache and Hassert felt: Ibid.

In August 1977: Francis Bacon, letter of July 22, 1977, to the Royal Hospital outlining Winnie’s travel arrangements, and requesting that an ambulance meet her flight from Salisbury when it arrived at Heathrow Airport on August 16th. Marlborough Gallery archive.

Bacon never had: Ianthe Knott, interviews with Mark Stevens, March 5 and 6, 2008.

“Eventually Winnie”: Knott, interview with Stevens.

Not only did Bacon arrange: Letter of July 22, 1977, to the Royal Hospital. Marlborough Gallery archive.

Bacon made certain: Letter, Royal Hospital and Home for Incurables to Bacon. The year’s rental was £73.44. Marlborough Gallery archive.

Muriel Belcher began: Turner, The Visitors’ Book, 307.

Bacon paid her medical: Ibid.

In the spring of 1977: Hilary Spurling, The Girl from the Fiction Department: A Portrait of Sonia Orwell (Berkeley: Counterpoint Press, 2003), 162.

“She rented”: Ibid.

In 1979, at the Colony: Wirth-Miller, letter to Richard Chopping quoted in Turner, The Visitors’ Book, 336. “Francis is terribly saddened by her obvious breaking up,” he wrote.

Only Robert Carrier: Ibid.

Soon, she was bedridden: Michael Clark drew and painted several portraits of the bedridden Belcher in her final months. See www.michaelclark.info/colonyroom.html. The two also had long conversations: “I certainly got Muriel to talk. I said to Muriel, ‘There’s something quite extraordinary how you’ve had so many extraordinary people who have come to the Club.’ I mentioned a range of them—Freud, Auerbach, Giacometti. And of course Francis. And I said, ‘What do you think draws them to the Club?’ And she paused and she looked up from her sickbed and said, ‘I think it’s my CHARM dear.’” Clark, interview with Annalyn Swan, December 18, 2015.

Valerie Beston was also there: Valerie Beston diary, August 8, 1979, The Estate of Francis Bacon archive.

Eventually, Belcher moved: Ibid., July 9, 1979.

“When Ian [Board] told”: Clark, interview with Swan.

Bacon regularly visited: Eddy Batache and Reinhard Hassert, interview with Mark Stevens, June 2016.

In one memorably: Bacon visited Muriel on July 13, 1979, and Winnie two days later. Beston diaries.

She was cremated: Beston diary, November 6, 1979. “Muriel cremated Golders Green Cemetery,” Beston noted. “George Melly gives short address. No religious service.”

“In order to transfer”: Brian Clarke, interview with Annalyn Swan, June 3, 2016.

In 1980, Sonia Orwell: Spurling, The Girl from the Fiction Department, 172.

“Sonia came back”: Ibid., 174.

“Mary McCarthy sent”: Ibid.

In the end, Orwell spent: Ibid.

It was Bacon who brought: Daniel Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon (New York: Pantheon Press, 1993), 256.

Valerie Beston ordered: Beston diary, entry of July 24, 1980.

“He used to have”: Dr Paul Brass, interview for Adam Low, director, Francis Bacon, Arena documentary, BBC Four archive, March 19, 2005.

But Bacon visited: Spurling, The Girl from the Fiction Department, 175.

One night in December: “Sonia died in the night at St. Stephens.” Beston diary, December 11, 1980.

Bacon’s closest French friends: Ibid., December 18, 1980.

Valerie Beston visited: Ibid., March 16, 1981.

Her son John Stephenson arrived: Ibid., March 23, 1981.

“Francis was very, very jealous”: Michael Dillon, interview with Annalyn Swan, October 24, 2013. The following quotations come from this interview.

In her diary: Beston diary, February 28, 1980.

Bacon regularly: Valerie Beston’s diaries are filled with back-and-forth trips in the late 1970s and ’80s.

David Plante: Plante, unpublished diaries, Tate Archive, 200816/4/2/15/2.

“Francis said”: Ibid.

“Nikos and I”: Ibid. The rest of the quotations in this paragraph come from the Plante diaries.

Among the drinkers: Ibid. The rest of the quotations in this paragraph come from the Plante diaries.

40 LOVE AND MONEY

Early in his relationship: Dr Paul Brass, interview for Adam Low, director, Francis Bacon, Arena documentary, BBC Four archive, March 19, 2005.

“I mean”: Ibid.

He ordered a vanity plate: Brian Clarke, interview with Annalyn Swan, June 3, 2016. Licence read “847 BOY”—VIP BOY.

In 1981: Valerie Beston recorded in her diary that Bacon gave Edwards the key to Reece Mews on April 4, 1981. The day before she had noted, “Troubling about keys.” The Estate of Francis Bacon archive.

And he trimmed: See Martin Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, vol. IV (London: Estate of Francis Bacon, 2016), 1194.

Avedon photographed: Avedon photographed Bacon in Paris on April 11, 1979. See “Richard Avedon,” www.phillips.com.

Now that John was “with”: Valerie Beston diary, The Estate of Francis Bacon archive. The entries that included John became regular after February 1980.

Bacon paid all: David Marrion, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

If Bacon was wearing: Michael Clark, interview with Annalyn Swan, December 18, 2015. Clarke described the watches in detail.

“They were a similar age”: Philip Mordue, correspondence with Brian Clarke and Annalyn Swan, March 7, 2017.

“Both my older brother”: Emine Saner, “So Where’s Bacon’s ‘Missing Millions’?” Evening Standard, September 1, 2004, www.standard.co.uk.

After being a successful: Ibid. David’s business was called Seabrook Antiques and was in Long Melford. Daniel Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon (New York: Pantheon Press, 1993), 219.

In 1976, David and John Tanner: Saner, “So Where’s Bacon’s ‘Missing Millions’?” The Evening Standard. See also Martin Newell, “Joy of Essex: Cockneys on the Move,” East Anglian Daily Times, August 10, 2013.

Not only did Dicky and Denis: For more on Cavendish Hall, see www.landmarktrust.org.uk.

Cavendish Hall had recently: Ibid.

Bacon’s cockney nickname: John Normile recalled John Tanner’s nickname. Normile, interview with Annalyn Swan, November 9, 2017.

Bacon liked to sing: Alexis Parr, “Bring Home the Bacon: This Marble-Lined Suffolk Mansion—Built with the Legacy of Francis Bacon—Is for Sale at 3.5 Million,” May 10, 2011, Mail Online, www.dailymail.co.uk.

What Bacon’s next-door: John Spero, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

“He was just a wonderful”: Ibid.

“You know”: Ibid.

“I never really figured”: Wendy Knott, interview with Mark Stevens, March 7, 2008.

“I knew he was gay”: Ibid.

Even though Bacon: Ibid.

“I knew sometimes”: Marrion, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

“Francis was always frantic”: Ibid.

He “had his own”: Ibid.

In a typical diary entry: Beston diary, July 6, 1981, The Estate of Francis Bacon archive.

Gilbert Lloyd: Gilbert Lloyd, interview with Mark Stevens, November 2, 2012.

“John was a good”: David Russell, interview with the authors, March 6, 2012.

Michael Dillon: Michael Dillon, interview with Annalyn Swan, October 24, 2013.

Stephen Spender: Marrion, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

Towards the end of 1981: Jon Lys Turner, The Visitors’ Book (London: Constable, 2016), 334.

They had lunch: In her diary Valerie Beston recorded their lunch on February 22, 1982, and a trip to Chartres on February 10, 1983, that ended in Brittany. The trio returned to Wivenhoe on March 3. “Hung over,” notes Beston. Estate of Francis Bacon archive.

In May 1983: Turner, The Visitors’ Book, 334.

Chopping observed: Ibid.

“Francis didn’t”: Pam Dan, interview with the authors, February 24, 2011.

Bacon and Edwards packed up: Beston diary, June 18, 1982.

That September, he wrote: Bacon, letter dated September 24, 1983, in Turner, The Visitors’ Book, 338.

This one ended: Ibid.

He tried: Beston diary, April 23.

“It was very difficult”: Clarke, interview with Swan.

It was probably during: Beston recorded their return on May 6, 1981.

He wrote to Leiris: Bacon, letter to Michel Leiris, August 29, 1981, in Valentina Castellani, Mark Francis, and Stefan Ratibor, eds., Francis Bacon: Letters to Michel Leiris 1966–1989 (New York, Gagosian Gallery, 2006), published for the exhibition Francis Bacon: Triptychs, June 20–August 4, 2006, Gagosian Gallery, London, 28.

Bacon expressed a dislike: Eddie Gray, interview with Mark Stevens, October 2013.

He would lament: Ibid.

“I seem to recall”: Knott, interview with Stevens.

Early in 1981: “JE [John Edward] friend at Old Bailey,” Beston diary, January 25, 1981.

“I think I owe you the promise”: Mordue, undated letter to Bacon from HM Prison Coldingley, Bisley, Woking, Surrey. Bacon correspondence. The Estate of Francis Bacon archive.

On March 6, 1981: Turner, The Visitors’ Book, 334.

A few months later: David Plante, “Bacon’s Instinct,” New Yorker, November 1, 1993.

John joined the table: Ibid.

Then Edwards leaned: Ibid.

By the end of the year: Beston diary, December 12, 1981.

In March 1982: Beston diary, March 30, 1982.

It happened: Clarke, interview with Swan.

Bacon telephoned Valerie Beston: Beston diary, March 30, 1982.

When Edwards assured: Ibid. March 31, 1982.

“He wouldn’t have wanted”: Marrion, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

In September 1982: Valerie Beston wrote in her diary on September 13, 1982, “Decides to take the flat—gives deposit.”

“It was a lovely”: Ianthe Knott, interviews with Mark Stevens, March 5 and 6, 2008.

“It soon contained”: Barry Joule, interview with Annalyn Swan, November 5, 2017.

Early in 1982: On January 8, Valerie Beston wrote in her diary, “FB hoping for news from JE and brother about Pub.” Kevin Moran, who eventually wound up with the pub, identified it as the Nag’s Head. Kevin Moran, interview with the authors, September 26, 2013.

“I do hope”: Philip Mordue, undated letter from Coldingley prison to Francis Bacon. The Estate of Francis Bacon archive.

Moran was: Kevin Moran, interview with the authors. The personal detail comes from this interview.

The actor Tom Baker: Ibid.

Sometimes Bacon spent: Ibid.

“I would close”: Ibid.

“I got to know”: Ibid. The rest of Moran’s quotes in this paragraph come from this interview.

“Running a pub”: Clarke, interview with Swan.

To console John: John Edwards flew to Las Vegas on June 10, 1982. Beston diaries, The Estate of Francis Bacon archive.

Edwards liked: Saner, “So Where’s Bacon’s ‘Missing Millions’?” Evening Standard. The Estate of Francis Bacon archive has the information on Edwards’s stay in Florida.

On a visa application: Marlborough Gallery archive.

A typical Valerie Beston: Beston diary, August 9, 1982.

John had a salesman’s: Russell, interview with the authors.

In August 1982: On August 23, Valerie Beston recorded in her diary, “JE caught very drunk carrying milk bottle. Charged. To appear in November.”

Bacon became concerned: The solicitors Theodore Goddard were called in to help with the case. In a letter of November 3, 1982, they wrote to Bacon that Edwards had been extremely drunk and high on marijuana, holding a broken milk bottle and swearing at the police. They referred in their letter to Edwards’s “reasonably long criminal record.” Marlborough Gallery archive.

A few years after Muriel: Clarke, interview with Swan.

He used the windfall: Ibid.

The house was called: Marlborough Gallery archive.

It was a small: Ibid. The address was “The Old School, the Green, Sudbury, Suffolk.”

“Francis did”: Clarke, interview with Swan.

Valerie Beston: Beston diary, March 15, 1983.

A young friend: David Wallace, interview with Mark Stevens, March 27, 2014.

Whenever Edwards walked: Paul Conran, interview with Mark Stevens, February 12, 2011.

“He insisted”: Ibid.

Edwards began to spend: Clarke, interview with Swan.

“They may have been”: John Spero, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

In the evenings: Ibid.

So did Bacon: Ibid.

John would sometimes: Ibid.

Often Bacon took: Felice Pollano, interview with Annalyn Swan, February 20, 2020.

Invariably, Bacon ordered: Ibid.

Pollano occasionally: Ibid.

There was “never enough”: Ibid.

The young man: Barry Joule, interview with Annalyn Swan, June 15, 2016.

He was often: Ibid.

A friend of Joule “had”: Barry Joule, interview with Swan, November 5, 2017.

Joule “would go”: Ibid.

He “got to Maud Gosling”: For more on Gosling, see “Maud Lloyd,” The Telegraph, December 1, 2004, www.telegraph.co.uk.

“Nureyev and I”: Joule, interview with Swan, November 5, 2017.

By the mid-1980s: Ibid.

If Bacon wanted to go: Ibid.

At one point in the early: Ibid. The following quotes all come from this interview.

At a Galerie Maeght-Lélong: The Galerie Maeght became the Galerie Maeght-Lelong in 1981, upon Aime Maeght’s death. “Jacques Dupin, Jean Fremon, and myself first founded the Galerie Maeght-Lélong,” said Lelong in an interview with Donatien Grau. It eventually became the Galerie Lelong, but in the interim period it continued the connection with Maeght. Grau, “Daniel Lelong,” www.flashartonline.com.

“Edwards had gone out”: Pierre Levai, interview with Mark Stevens, June 8, 2008.

The show was “literally mobbed”: Peppiatt, Francis Bacon in Your Blood, 374.

Nadine Haim: Nadine Haim, interview with James Norton, May 10, 2009.

Maeght was safe: Bacon even painted Dupin’s portrait. When Jack Lang became minister of culture under French President François Mitterrand, the government commissioned a series of portraits by leading artists. Bacon chose Dupin. Dupin, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

Four months later: The show at Marlborough New York ran from May 5 to June 5.

Bacon “loved seeing”: Geraldine and Michael Leventis, interview with Annalyn Swan, November 11, 2017.

He and John stayed: Geraldine Leventis, interview with Swan.

“We went to shops”: Michael Leventis, interview with Swan.

“Francis loved students”: Geraldine Leventis, interview with Swan.

“He came running back”: Michael Leventis, interview with Swan.

Between 1975 and 1980: In the fiscal year 1974–75, Marlborough Gallery records show that Bacon made £73,000 from his paintings, roughly equivalent to £577,000 in 2019. By 1980 that had doubled. T. Rogers, the shipping company that began to pay Bacon instead of Marlborough, put £145,000 into his bank account that year. Marlborough Gallery archive. For the triptych, see Rita Reif, “At Auction Wallets Were Close to the Vest,” The New York Times, May 21, 1981.

By the end of the decade: Rita Reif, “Pollock Price Among Records at Sotheby’s,” New York Times, May 3, 1989, nytimes.com.

“Alfred Hecht”: Russell, interview with the authors.

By the early 1980s: See Study of the Human Body, 1981–82 in Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, vol. IV, 1234.

In the mid-1980s: Geraldine and Michael Leventis, interview with Swan.

“When Francis heard”: Michael Leventis, interview with Swan.

In 1985, Valerie Beston: Beston diary, January 13, 1985.

Once Bacon began: David Somerset, interview with the authors, June 18, 2012.

Previously a key figure: Rory Ross, “Finger on de Botton,” Tatler, March 2000. Ross’s article provides a good overview of de Botton.

It was from: Ibid.

De Botton was known: David Landau, “Gilbert de Botton: Self-Made Financier Who Revelled in Money, Markets and Modern Art,” The Guardian, September 19, 2000, www.theguardian.com.

For example, he wooed: Ibid.

Bacon often talked: Geraldine and Michael Leventis, interview with Swan. The young painter Anthony Zych recalled Bacon telling him about de Botton. Anthony Zych, interview with Annalyn Swan, November 10, 2017.

Eventually, as if: See Study for Portrait of Gilbert de Botton (1986), in Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, vol. IV, 1316. Unlike many of Bacon’s portraits of friends—including Michel Leiris—the portrait of de Botton is large-scale.

In the mid-1980s: John Spero, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

The elegant backwater: In the mid-1980s, London and New York saw the biggest urban building boom in their histories. The Canary Wharf development in London brought increasing numbers of bankers and other wealthy financial types into London; South Kensington and Chelsea became extremely desirable places to live. See Andrew Tallon, Urban Regeneration in the U.K. (London: Routledge, 2013), 47.

“Everybody knew everybody”: John Spero, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

The law firm: Theodore Goddard letter, November 3, 1982. Marlborough Gallery archive.

In October 1983: Marlborough Gallery archive, folder titled “Francis Bacon 1985, Th. Goddard/Reece Mews.”

Not only: Ibid.

“For a while”: John Spero, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

Next door to Bacon: Ibid.

Bacon was worried: Ibid. He wrote to Michel Leiris about his concerns. Bacon, letter to Leiris, November 23, 1982, Francis Bacon: Letters to Michel Leiris 1966–1989, 37.

In August, 1984: Marlborough Gallery archive.

It would be a disaster: Alan Bowness, letter dated August 17, 1984 in ibid.

Somerset wrote a short: David Somerset, letter dated August 17, 1984 in ibid.

His letter had the lustre: Marcus Williamson, “David Somerset, Society Grandee,” The Independent, August 22, 2017, www.independent.co.uk.

Gowrie, the minister for the arts: See Grey Gowrie,” montylitfest.wordpress.com.

His great-uncle: Grey Gowrie, interview with Mark Stevens, November 2011.

“In fact, he exaggerated”: Ibid.

Patrick Kinmonth, who came: Patrick Kinmonth, “Francis Bacon,” Vogue, May 1985.

Both Bacon’s: John Spero, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

41 PERFORMANCE ARTIST

He confided to Leiris: Bacon wrote, “I have finally been able to start working. It has been a very bad year for asthma, as a result of the amount of pollen.” Letter of July 11, 1982, in Valentina Castellani, Mark Francis, and Stefan Ratibor, eds., Francis Bacon: Letters to Michel Leiris 1966–1989, 182.

From June 1984: Valerie Beston noted on June 10 that Bacon had “bad asthma”; on August 25, “FB on penicillin—recovering from bronchitis”; and on August 28, that Bacon was “still suffering from asthma,” and that he “sounds miserable and depressed on phone. Not painting at the moment.” Valerie Beston, Beston diaries, The Estate of Francis Bacon archive.

On one occasion: Ibid.

On another: Ibid.

A cold: Ibid. On December 16 she recorded, “9 p.m. FB ill with heavy cold and asthma. Dr Brass puts him into hospital. Cromwell Hospital.”

Bacon visited: Sophie Pretorius, “A Pathological Painter: Francis Bacon and the Control of Suffering,” in Inside Francis Bacon, Francis Bacon Studies III (London: The Estate of Francis Bacon publishing, in association with Thames & Hudson, 2020), 182.

The flamboyant poet: The Independent’s description is cited in numerous places, among them Reed’s own website, www.jeremyreed.co.uk. His connection to Bacon is also touted there.

At around 6 p.m.: Jeremy Reed, interview with James Norton, September 2011. According to his account, Reed met Bacon in 1983.

At one point, he became: Ibid.

Bacon favoured: Eddie Gray recalled that Bacon liked Jonathan’s, a gay club near Leicester Square. Bacon also took the Leventises to a homosexual club, at Leicester Square. Eddie Gray, interview with Mark Stevens, October 2013; Geraldine and Michael Leventis, interview with Annalyn Swan, November 11, 2017.

Bacon and Reed met: Reed, interview with Norton. The following quotations are all taken from the Reed interview.

Barbituates and tranquilizers: Pretorius, “A Pathological Painter,” 177.

Beckett wrote: See “Samuel Beckett, Quotable Quote,” www.goodreads.com.

What Anne Madden called: Madden, quoted in Joanna Pitman, “The Many Faces of Bacon,” The Times, August 30, 2008.

“Death,” he said to Reed: Reed, interview with James Norton.

“Perhaps he had”: Jacques Dupin, interview for Adam Low, director, Francis Bacon, Arena documentary, BBC Four archive, March 19, 2005.

Towards the end: Raymond Mason, At Work in Paris: Raymond Mason on Art and Artists (London: Thames & Hudson, 2003), 174.

Then, as Mason: Ibid.

“At the sight”: Ibid.

At Rules: Ibid., 175.

He informed the group: Ibid.

“I was sitting opposite”: James Birch, interview with the authors, December 8, 2008.

The art historian Sarah Whitfield: Whitfield, interview with Mark Stevens, December 7, 2010.

If a waiter appeared indifferent: Michael Peppiatt, quoted in Peter Conrad, “The Power and the Passion,” The Observer, August 9, 2008, www.theguardian.com.

He once said to Anne Madden: Madden, quoted in Pitman, “The Many Faces of Bacon, “The Times.

Sylvester referred: Richard Cork, presenter, A Man Without Illusions, BBC Radio 3, BBC Archive, May 16, 1985.

The French art dealer: Daniel Lelong, interview with Anthi-Danaé Spathoni, March 25, 2017.

A German reporter: “An Unloved Artist,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 7, 1985.

Sometimes, he babied: Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin, archives.

A photograph taken: The photograph is reproduced in Michael Cary, ed., Francis Bacon: Late Paintings (New York: Gagosian Gallery, 2105), 8; published on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name.

Bacon is dressed: Jeremy Reed recalled that Bacon liked cashmere jumpers. Reed, interview with James Norton.

He confided: Michael Peppiatt, quoted in Peter Conrad, “The Power and the Passion,” The Guardian, August 10, 2008.

Daniel Lelong called him: Lelong, interview for Adam Low, Francis Bacon, Arena.

Grey Gowrie said: Grey Gowrie, interview with Mark Stevens, November 2011.

Geordie Greig wrote: Geordie Greig, “Bacon: Still Honing the Razor’s Edge,” Now! October 10, 1980.

For The Times in 1983: Peter Lennon, “A Brush with Ebullient Despair: The Times’ Profile: Francis Bacon,” The Times, September 15, 1983.

Michael Wojas: Louisa Buck, “Artists’ Colony,” The Times Magazine, September 12, 1998.

Anthony Zych: Anthony Zych, interview with Annalyn Swan, November 10, 2017.

“It’s a bloody nuisance”: Lennon, “A Brush with Ebullient Despair,” The Times.

“After that”: Ibid.

The photographer Neil Libbert: See “Neil Libbert: The Faces that Came to Define an Era—in Pictures,” www.theguardian.com.

The small spitcurl: The artist Michael Clark recalled how Bacon would carefully arrange his hair in the mirror of the Colony Club. Michael Clark, interview with Annalyn Swan, December 18, 2015.

Peter Conrad, who taught: Conrad, “The Power and the Passion,” The Observer.

“He looked eruptive”: Ibid.

Now and then: In a note to Valerie Beston dated August 25, 1968, John Russell reported that Bacon had vanished; they had been scheduled to meet. “Could you tell me where he is?” he asked. “Is he at the health place, where he meant to go, or is there trouble of a new (or familiar) kind?” Marlborough Gallery archive.

The rumour would float: Michael Clark, quoted in Conrad, “The Power and the Passion,” The Observer.

“He was marvellous company”: Anne Madden, quoted in Pitman, “The Many Faces of Bacon,” The Times.

He took to calling: Sutherland, quoted in Daniel Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon (New York: Pantheon Press, 1993), 202.

“There was this little boy”: Pam Dan, interview with the authors, February 24, 2011. The rest of the quotes in this paragraph come from this interview.

In 1982, Bacon’s mordant: Bacon had dinner with Burroughs at Mr Chow’s on October 6, before the interviews at Reece Mews. There were two interview sessions, one on October 4 and the next a week later. Beston diary, entries of October 4 and October 11, 1982.

On the street: See the series of photographs of the two by John Minihan. “Francis Bacon,” johnminihan.blogspot.com.

Paul Conran: Conran, interview with Mark Stevens, February 12, 2011.

He told Lucian Freud: Alice Weldon, interviews with Annalyn Swan, March 7 and 12, 2012.

“Mirrors are the doors”: Jean Cocteau, quoted in Peter Bradshaw’s Orphée review, “Cocteau’s Classic Never Looks Back,” October 18, 2018, www.theguardian.com.

“As a portraitist”: Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation (New York and London: Continuum, 2003), 15.

In a chapter titled: Ibid., 41–2.

“The extraordinary agitation”: Ibid.

He began his book: Michel Leiris, Full Face and in Profile, John Weightman, trans. (New York: Rizzoli, 1987), 5.

Bacon’s “clean-shaven face”: Ibid., 19.

He ended: Ibid., 19.

“Wishing to show”: Eddy Batache, “Francis Bacon: An Intimate View,” in Martin Harrison, ed, Francis Bacon: La France et Monaco / France and Monaco (Paris: Albin Michel and Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation, 2016), 186–203.

Bacon would also: Martin Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonne, vol. IV (London: Estate of Francis Bacon, 2016), 1234.

“I would like”: Bacon, in David Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon (London: Thames & Hudson, 1975), 114. See 108–14 for a lengthy discussion of Bacon’s sculptural ambitions.

To Eddy Batache: Batache, “Francis Bacon: An Intimate View,” in Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon: La France et Monaco/France and Monaco.

To Reinhard Hassert: Reinhard Hassert, interview with Mark Stevens, June 2016.

Raymond Mason thought: Raymond Mason, At Work in Paris: Raymond Mason on Art and Artists (London: Thames & Hudson, 2003), 175–6.

Like Mason, Timothy Behrens: Timothy Behrens, letter to Adam Low, director, for Francis Bacon, Arena.

The writer Colm Tóibín: Colm Tóibín, “Late Francis Bacon: Spirit and Substance,” in Michael Cary, ed., Francis Bacon: Late Paintings (New York: Gagosian Gallery/Rizzoli, 2015), published on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name.

Late one night: John Eastman, interview with Mark Stevens, August 19, 2015. Eastman was with Bacon at the time.

“Oh, Rothko”: Bacon to Anne Madden. Madden, interview with Annalyn Swan, May 7, 2008.

42 THE LAST PICTURE SHOW

He shamed Edy de Wilde: Bacon, letter to Edy de Wilde dated December 19, 1983, Marlborough Gallery archive.

He tried flattery: Bacon, letter to Claes Oldenberg dated December 19, 1983, Marlborough Gallery archive.

He “admired”: “Francis Bacon: An Art of Anguish?” The Economist, May 23, 1985.

No artist likes: Elaine de Kooning, Willem de Kooning’s wife, wrote for ArtNews while Hess was the editor there. (She also had an affair with him.) She recalled that this was a favourite phrase of his.

When they first met: Richard Francis, “Working with Francis Bacon,” Michael Cary, ed., Francis Bacon: Late Paintings (New York: Gagosian Gallery/Rizzoli, 2015), published on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name.

“He was a generous”: Ibid. The rest of the quotations in this paragraph come from Francis, “Working with Francis Bacon,” Francis Bacon: Late Paintings, 85–90.

Through catalogue entries: Ibid., 88.

It could not have pleased: Marina Vaizey, “Bacon: Genius Who Walks Alone,” Sunday Times, May 26, 1985.

Once Bacon read: Francis, “Working with Francis Bacon,” Francis Bacon: Late Paintings, 89.

He convened a summit: Ibid.

“If one entry”: Ibid., 89–90.

Bacon told Richard Francis: Ibid., 90.

Bacon “threatened to withhold”: Ibid., 89. No doubt Bacon far preferred the catalogue for his 1971 exhibition at the Grand Palais, which included, along with reproductions (mostly in colour) of his paintings only an essay by Michel Leiris, a short chronology of biographical dates, and a bibliography.

He would sometimes throw back: Ibid., 88.

He approved: Francis, Ibid., 85.

Three days later: Daniel Farson, “A Cause for Celebration,” The Spectator, May 11, 1985.

“VB gets blame”: Valerie Beston diary, May 14, 1985, The Estate of Francis Bacon archive.

On the 16th and 17th: Ibid.

Michael Blackwood made: Blackwood, director, Alan Yentob, producer, The Brutality of Fact, Arena documentary, BBC TV archive, November 16, 1984.

Richard Cork arranged: Richard Cork, presenter, A Man Without Illusions, BBC Radio 3, BBC Archive, May 16, 1985.

He was “remarkably dressed”: Patrick Kinmonth, “Francis Bacon,” Vogue, May 1985.

At Wheeler’s: Ibid.

“His ageless”: Ibid.

Just before the exhibition: Beston diary, May 8, 1985.

The retrospective was very large: There were 126 paintings in the Tate show against 130 in the Grand Palais show.

The Tate’s main exhibition spaces: Francis, “Working with Francis Bacon,” Francis Bacon: Late Paintings, 85.

In the Sunday Times Magazine: Grey Gowrie, “Francis Bacon: Artist of Endgame,” The Sunday Times Magazine, May 19, 1985.

His piece was illustrated: Ibid. The photograph, in which Bacon looks more hawklike than usual, was shot by Don McCullin.

Alan Bowness: Bowness in Francis Bacon, Tate Gallery, exhibition catalogue (London: Tate Publishing), 1985.

Not only that: Ibid.

Two nights before: Marlborough Gallery archive.

He did not forget: List of Bacon’s invitations, Marlborough Gallery archive. The information on Ivan Hall comes from Michael Peppiatt, Bacon in Your Blood: A Memoir (New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2015), 276.

Before the dinner: Sarah Whitfield, interview with Mark Stevens, December 7, 2010. The rest of this recollection comes from the same interview. Global Asset Management’s sponsorship of the show was written up in an unsigned article, “GAM’n Bacon,” Unit Trust Management, August 1985.

Bacon was “lovely and tender”: Friends of José Capelo, interviews with the authors, December 2017 and February 2020.

Among those on the tour: Ibid.

Bacon learned, for example: Ibid.

After the informal: Geraldine and Michael Leventis, interview with Annalyn Swan, November 11, 2017. Among the collectors was Jerome Stern. Stern was an American financier and collector. See Melanie Gerlis, “Adventurous Art Collection of Ellen and Jerome Stern Comes to Sotheby’s,” The Art Newspaper, September 20, 2017, www.theartnewspaper.com.

In his celebratory review: Robert Hughes, “Singing Within the Bloody Wood,” Time, July 1, 1985.

The praise for Bacon: Perhaps the best-argued, and most thoughtful, negative review was by John Spurling in the New Statesman. He began by lauding the early work, calling Bacon’s work of the Forties and Fifties “exciting and energetic.” But then had come the big, theatrical, grand statements of such later triptychs as the 1981 Oresteia. Bacon, he wrote, “gave up the struggle to remake the world in a new image,” settling for “the partial gain of his intense fascination with the human body, naked and exposed to the light, bunched up tightly like a sausage within the stocking of its own skin.” John Spurling, “Gilt-Framed,” New Statesman, May 31, 1985.

“A genius? I say rotten”: Bernard Levin, The Times, June 28, 1985.

Even Bacon’s great admirers: Speaking of Bacon’s “mastery of the physical side of painting,” Robert Hughes wrote in his Time review that “the one thing it [Bacon’s command of the paint] cannot reliably do is fix the extreme disjuncture between Bacon’s figures and their backgrounds. The contrast of the two—the intense plasticity of the figures, the flat staginess of the rooms and spaces in which they convulse themselves—is what gives rise to the charge of ‘illustration.’” Hughes, “Singing Within the Bloody Wood,” Time.

The most original: Emmanuel Cooper, “Sad social commentary,” Tribune, June 28, 1985. Cooper was an important gay rights activist as well as a writer, teacher, and potter. See David Horbury, ed., Making Emmanuel Cooper (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020).

The crowds came: Michael Fraser, letter to Francis Bacon, May 31, 1985. Marlborough Gallery archive.

“We ate nothing”: Steve Busfield, “Melvyn Bragg and the South Bank Show: Five Moments to Savour,” The Guardian, May 6, 2009.

The novelist Julian Barnes: Julian Barnes, “Bringing Home the Bacon,” The Observer, June 16, 1985.

With Bacon’s money: Brian Clarke, interview with Annalyn Swan, June 3, 2016.

He gave it to his mother: Ibid.

John’s new place: The Estate of Francis Bacon archive.

It consisted of: Philip Mordue, correspondence with Brian Clarke and Annalyn Swan, March 7, 2017 and March 11, 2020.

John and Philip resembled: In August 1987, Edwards and Mordue invited a friend they had met on a cruise in the States to see the farm. As she later wrote to them, “I want to thank you for a wonderful time at your lovely farm in Suffolk. It’s an extremely interesting ‘farm,’ and your building plans should make it spectacular. I would love to see it when the shrubs you planted are in bloom and the conservatory is in place.” Letter to Edwards and Mordue, August 30, 1987. The Estate of Francis Bacon archive.

They must convert the barn: Daniel Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon (New York: Pantheon Press, 1993), 278.

They would have a conservatory: Edwards and Mordue built the conservatory in the fall of 1987. The Estate of Francis Bacon archive. The shrubs caught the attention of Daniel Farson on a visit in the early 1990s. Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life, 278.

A Wurlitzer organ?: The organ they were interested in cost £3,500. The Estate of Francis Bacon archive.

A snooker room?: David Plante described the snooker room on a visit to Dales Farm around the late 1980s. David Plante, “Bacon’s Instinct,” New Yorker, November 1, 1993.

Around the property: Andrew Sinclair, “Last Days of the Rage,” Sunday Times, September 5, 1993. The conservatory cost £6,765, which Bacon paid. The Estate of Francis Bacon archive.

A stone heron: Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life, 278. James Birch recalled the Japanese koi. Birch, interview with the authors.

The small farmhouse: Clarke, interview with Swan, February 9, 2020.

Although John himself: Valerie Beston has references in her diaries to John buying furniture, John driving furniture to the country, and his brother picking up furniture at Reece Mews. Beston diaries, Estate of Francis Bacon.

Around the time of the retrospective: Francis, “Working with Francis Bacon,” Francis Bacon: Late Paintings.

Parked in the driveway: Birch, interview with the authors.

“If they got pissed”: Ibid.

“I had been told”: Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life, 278.

Hanging inside: Ibid.

James Birch recalled: Birch, interview with the authors.

Sometimes, the Leventises: Geraldine and Michael Leventis, interview with Swan.

In one room, for example: Plante, “Bacon’s Instinct,” New Yorker.

“Denis, who at around seventy”: Ibid.

Shortly afterwards: Ibid.

“Then the door opened”: Ibid. The following quotes come from Plante’s piece.

In 1985 John and Philip: A letter from Maxine Wyers on August 30, 1987, noted that, two summers before, John and Philip had been with her in Malibu and Palm Springs. The Estate of Francis Bacon archive. Valerie Beston recorded in her diary on May 2, 1987, that “JE and Philip to US for 4 weeks. 1 week NY, 3 wk. Malibu.”

They travelled: For the trips to Kenya, Greece, and India, Philip Mordue, correspondence with Clarke and Swan; for the cruises, a “Bonnie and Steve” letter to John and Philip on October 6, 1988, on Sun Line Stella cruise ship stationery. The Estate of Francis Bacon archive.

Valerie Beston’s diaries: On April 15, 1988, for example, Beston noted, “JE in London.” John Edwards also went to the wedding in London of Michael Leventis’s nephew and a second celebration in Athens that year. Other than that, the only mention of Edwards is when he goes to Moscow to represent Bacon at his show there. Beston diary, September 21, 1988, The Estate of Francis Bacon archive.

In 1984, Bacon spent: Geraldine and Michael Leventis, interview with Swan.

In 1987, Beston’s single: Beston diary, May 2, 1987, The Estate of Francis Bacon archive.

The previous year: Gilbert Lloyd, interview with Mark Stevens, November 2, 2011.

The version of the retrospective: Hans-Joachim Müller, “Die Leideform Mensch” (“Man as a Suffering Agent”), Die Zeit, 1 November 1, 1985.

Built in the: See Dr Steven Zucker and Dr Beth Harris, “The Pergamon Altar,” smarthistory.org.

“You know, we’ll have to go”: Lloyd, interview with Stevens.

At lunch afterwards: Ibid. The rest of the quotations come from this interview.

Institutions now competed: The University of St. Andrews, for one, offered him an honorary degree as early as December 1973. He had four offers of honorary degrees in 1973 and 1974 alone. Marlborough Gallery archive.

He turned all of them down: The records of the Marlborough Gallery show a constant stream of prizes offered to Bacon in the latter part of the 1980s—the Golden Rose Award from Palermo, in 1988, for example—as well as invitations to the Queen’s Garden Party (1987) and the Royal Academy of Arts Annual Dinner. Marlborough Gallery archive.

The awards were like: Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life, 7.

Two years before: Sir Philip Moore, letter of October 26, 1983, from Buckingham Palace to Bacon, Marlborough Gallery archive.

Established in 1902: Josh Warwick, “Order of Merit: Who Deserves Membership of the Most Exclusive Club in the World?” The Telegraph, December 13, 2013, www.telegraph.co.uk.

“As I am sure”: Sir Philip Moore, letter to Bacon.

In 1963: Mark Hudson, “Henry Moore, The Man Behind the Myth,” The Telegraph, February 18, 2010, www.telegraph.co.uk. See also “Timeline,” www.henry-moore.org.

So did Lucian Freud: Warwick, “Order of Merit,” The Telegraph.

“The only thing better”: Richard Eden, “Sir Clement Freud and Brother Lucian Freud in Feud as Latter Rejects Knighthood,” The Telegraph, June 28, 2008, www.telegraph.co.uk.

Bacon sent regrets: As he wrote to Sir Philip Moore, “Would you please convey to Her Majesty the Queen how honoured I feel in being offered the Order of Merit, but I regret that I am unable to accept this honour.” Marlborough Gallery archive.

In the late 1970s: See “Interview with The National Gallery’s Colin Wiggins,” www.artmap.london.

The elderly Bacon was: David Sylvester, Looking Back at Francis Bacon (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2000), 252.

In the mid-1980s, however: Ibid.

From the Renaissance: Bacon’s selections are contained in the National Gallery publication The Artist’s Eye: Francis Bacon: an Exhibition of National Gallery Paintings Selected by the Artist (London: The National Gallery, 1985).

He told Melvyn Bragg: Bacon, quoted in Francis Bacon, Melvyn Bragg, interviewer, David Hinton, producer, The South Bank Show, London Weekend Television, 1985.

Ingres did the same: Ibid.

Not least, he included Turner’s: “I think [Turner] is a remarkable painter,” Bacon told Michel Archimbaud, “but generally I don’t like landscapes. It’s a genre that doesn’t interest me much.” Michel Archimbaud, Francis Bacon: In Conversation with Michel Archimbaud (London: Phaidon Press, 1993), 39.

Lawrence Gowing: Anthony Zych, interview with Annalyn Swan, November 10, 2017.

Bacon remarked: Michael Peppiatt, Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma (London: Constable & Robinson, 2008), xxi.

In 1982, Bacon gave: Farson wrote Bacon on October 30, 1982, telling him that the book was off and thanking him for his “generous gift.” The Estate of Francis Bacon, letters to Bacon.

Five years later: Bruce Bernard, “The Book That Bacon Banned,” The Independent Magazine, May 2, 1992.

John was so often away: “The relationship would be somewhat restored for the remainder of Bacon’s life, although the quarrels returned as a constant feature,” wrote Jon Lys Turner in The Visitors’ Book (London: Constable, 2016), 338.

Bacon took a holiday: Valerie Beston recorded in her diary on June 4, 1986 their trip down to Monte Carlo. They stayed twelve days.

He spent two weeks there with the Leventises: Geraldine and Michael Leventis, interview with Swan.

Bacon gambled and visited: Anne Dunn, interview with the authors, July 26, 2010.

He went to Aix-en-Provence: Geraldine and Michael Leventis, interview with Swan.

Edwards and Geraldine Leventis: Ibid.

He visited: Ibid.

Even so, Bacon remained: Valerie Beston noted in her diary that they flew to Nice on October 6, 1986.

“It was just Francis”: Ianthe Knott, interviews with Mark Stevens, March 5 and 6, 2008.

“Francis and I could always”: Ibid.

One evening: Ibid. The rest of the quotations in this paragraph come from this interview.

43 FRESH FACES

“The cordoned-off street”: The description of Berlemont’s retirement comes primarily from Eve MacSweeney, “Angst of the Spirit,” Harper’s Bazaar, October 1989.

Gaston had assumed control: Richard Boston, “Gaston Berlemont: Landlord of the French Pub, Bohemia’s Favorite Watering Hole,” The Guardian, November 3, 1999, www.theguardian.com.

Margaret Fenton: Margaret Fenton, interview with Annalyn Swan, February 27, 2012.

“We used to bow”: Ibid. The following quotations also come from this interview.

He was wearing: Farewell to Gaston July 14th 1989 pt2, YouTube, the Museum of Soho Mosoho, August 16, 2013.

He had befriended: Michael Clark, interview with Annalyn Swan, December 18, 2015.

“How old are you”: Clark, interview with Swan.

In 1979: Clare Shenstone, interview for Adam Low, director, Francis Bacon, Arena documentary, BBC Four archive, March 19, 2005.

He left his number: Ibid.

On her first visit: Ibid. The rest of the quotations from Shenstone come from this interview.

Three years or so after: Anthony Zych, interview with Annalyn Swan, November 10, 2017. Zych knew Gowing through the Slade: Gowing was the head of the Slade School of Fine Art when Zych was a student there.

Gowing “said that he’d”: Zych, ibid.

Gowing then called Bacon: Ibid.

Zych had been given: Ibid.

Saatchi would later buy: See “Top 200 Collectors: Charles Saatchi,” artnews.com.

“He was my idol”: Ibid. The quotations in the next paragraph come from this interview.

“By 1987 and ’88”: Ibid. Zych knew that he was learning from a master, but he was also giving up more than he understood at the time. Young artists can be easily overwhelmed by powerful older figures who, in the end, make it more difficult for them to develop an independent outlook. Zych adapted to Bacon’s habits but was not, for example, a natural or experienced drinker: “I’d remember so much more except for the alcohol. He got people drunk. That was his defence.” Zych also adopted, at great cost to his career, Bacon’s indifference to practical matters. Bacon and Gowing both told Zych (as did the critic Brian Sewell) to leave the gallery that had given him such a tremendous start to his career—the Bernard Jacobson gallery. It proved a disastrous decision.

“One reason”: Ibid.

In the evenings Zych sometimes: Ibid. The rest of the quotations and information in this paragraph come from this interview.

Zych asked a friend: Ibid. John Ginone had a business filming and photographing body-builders in poses with homosexual overtones. Ginone made some coloured photographs of Zych that included mirrors. The images themselves likely did not interest Bacon, but the fleshiness could seed his imagination. See Martin Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, vol. IV (London: Estate of Francis Bacon, 2016), 1374.

In the late 1980s: Terence Conran, interview with Mark Stevens, July 7, 2011.

The elder Conran liked: Ibid.

“I had more in common”: Katrine Boorman, interview with the authors, February 28, 2011.

“Little tidbits”: Ibid.

“The kitchen was all”: Ibid.

His parents: James Birch, interview with the authors, December 8, 2008.

As a young man: Ibid.

Birch endeared himself to Bacon: Ibid.

“My father was”: Ibid.

In March 1985: James Birch, email exchange with Annalyn Swan, November 29, 2017. For more on Robert Chenciner, see “Robert Chenciner,” Cornucopia, The Magazine for Connoisseurs of Turkey, www.cornucopia.net.

Relations between: See “Perestroika,” www.historycom.

Birch decided to pursue: Birch, email with Swan.

He first met: Ibid.

Birch asked: Ibid.

At the time: Birch founded his new gallery in Soho with Paul Conran in 1986. James Birch, “Francis Bacon Exhibition Moscow 1988,” Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation, andrewsolomon.com.

When Gorbachev began talking: Sergei Klokov did meet Bacon on a visit to London, however. James Birch, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

It was the “charming”: Andrew Solomon, “Exhibitions: Francis Bacon,” Contemporanea (Nov.–Dec. 1988).

His reasoning: Sergei Klokov, “Letter from Moscow: Francis Bacon,” Apollo, December 1988.

At Birch and Conran’s: Birch, interview with the authors.

“Francis, what would”: Ibid.

“The idea thrilled”: Ibid.

He had completed: Harrison, Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, vol. IV.

Having twice failed: In 1969 he painted Study for Bullfight No. 1, Study for Bullfight No. 2, and Second Version of Study for Bullfight No. 1.

According to Jacques Dupin: Jacques Dupin, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

Bacon was inspired: Ibid.

Sànchez died: Borja Hermosa, “Sànchez Mejías, the Intellectual Bullfighter, Returns to the Arena,” El País, January 11, 2018, elpais.com.

Although he had finally: Mme. Manstella Veličković, interview with Anthi-Danaé Spathoni, May 16, 2016.

Le Figaro and Le Matin: Michel Nuridsany, “L’Un des plus grands peintres vivant expose ses dernières toiles galerie Daniel Lelong,” Le Figaro, September 29, 1987; Maiten Bouisset, “Bacon: Je suis juste un homme qui fait des images,” Le Matin, October 1, 1987.

So did Le Monde: Geordie Greig, “Storming of the Bastion of Art: Paris Fetes Bacon as London Shows a French Revolutionary Face,” Sunday Times, October 4, 1987.

On this occasion: Daniel Lelong (“Art Biz,” Flash Art) for liking the dimensions and white walls; also Daniel Lelong, interview with Anthi-Danaé Spathoni, June 29, 2016.

“With the secretaries”: Dupin, Francis Bacon, Arena.

On opening night: Greig, “Paris Fêtes Bacon,” Sunday Times.

Ianthe was present: Marlborough Gallery archive.

Then, suddenly: Lelong, interview with Spathoni.

Dr Brass believed: Brass, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

Then through the silence: Bacon was extremely grateful to Dr Lachenal. Bacon subsequently wrote to thank him, and also to ask if the doctor would send him three or four of the Berodual inhalers. See “Berodual,” www.boehringer-ingelheim.com. Marlborough Gallery archive.

Valerie Beston later wrote: Undated letter to Jacques Dupin, Marlborough Gallery archive.

44 SUDDENLY!

In August 1987: All of the information about the planning of the dinner party comes from Barry Joule, interview with Annalyn Swan, November 5, 2017.

“I learnt very quickly”: Ibid.

Bacon was by now: Ibid.

“First I phoned Freddie”: Ibid. The rest of the quotes in this paragraph come from this interview.

José maintained: Biographical details about Capelo come from a number of friends in Madrid, among them Cristina Pons and Patricia Ferrer. Pons, interview with Annalyn Swan, November 13, 2017; Ferrer, interview with Swan, October 2, 2011.

“For José, the draw”: Joule, interview with Swan.

Afterwards, he wrote: Bacon, quoted in Daniel Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993), 274.

His partner of many years: Martyn Thomas was killed in a car crash in 1985. Julie Kavanagh, Secret Muses: The Life of Frederick Ashton (New York: Pantheon Books, 1996), 555.

In the late 1950s and early ’60s: Ashton, Bacon, and Cecil Beaton had all been dining with Ann Fleming in the late 1950s on the evening when Fleming persuaded Bacon to bring Ron Belton to meet them: “Last London evening a grouse celebration with Beaton, Bacon and Ashton—Francis was restless for he had a date with a Ted at Piccadilly Circus.” Ann Fleming letter to Patrick Leigh Fermor, August 1959, in Mark Amory, ed., The Letters of Ann Fleming (London: Collins Harvill, 1985), 236. Ian Fleming’s description of “her favourite coterie” is from Kavanagh, Secret Muses, 411.

“He was the master”: Ibid., 412.

At the dinner party: Ashton was born in Ecuador in 1904. Ibid., 5.

Bacon brought with him: Joule, interview with Swan.

“Ashton,” said Joule: Ibid.

Among his other failures: Ibid.

“We managed to get him”: Ibid.

Parladé maintained: Parladé and Bacon had remained friends over the years even though they rarely saw each other. She would send Bacon postcards, for example, when she was travelling. One from Florence on August 15 (no year) read, “I’ve seen an enormous number of simply marvellous faces but had a very peaceful life on a hill just outside Florence. A great many people but they all go into the cathedral and the Uffizi Gallery and luckily nowhere else. I’ll be in London in September and hope there will be a chance of seeing you. Love Janetta.” Hugh Lane archive, RM98F129:4.

Francis “wanted”: Janetta Parladé, interview with Annalyn Swan, November 2, 2017.

Her husband: Parladé was a celebrated interior designer in Spain. For more on Parladé, see Michael Peppiatt, “Jaime Parladé Creates a Spanish Country Home in Andalucia,” Architectural Digest, September 2008, www.architecturaldigest.com.

The word came back: Parladé, interview with Swan.

“On his bedside table”: Paul Brass, interview for Adam Low, director, Francis Bacon, Arena documentary, BBC Four archive, March 19, 2005.

He was unusually: Cristina Pons, interview with Annalyn Swan, November 13, 2017.

“Sometimes”: Ibid.

Pons regarded: Ibid.

José won: Friends of José Capelo, interviews with the authors, December 2017 and February 2020.

The terms: Ibid.

Mitt Romney: Ibid.

He moved into a flat: Joule, interview with Swan.

Now, when she visited: Pons, interview with Swan.

He introduced her: Ibid.

Pons described: Ibid.

Unfailingly polite and fairly reserved: Ibid.

José sometimes insisted: Friends of Capelo, interviews with the authors.

Bacon might typically respond: Ibid.

Not long after: On October 18, 1987, Valerie Beston recorded in her diary, “FB to Madrid with José Capel (sp) Blanco.” Estate of Francis Bacon archive.

Bacon liked the celebrated Bar Cock: Patricia Ferrer, interview with Annalyn Swan, October 3, 2011.

“We say ‘Central’”: Ibid.

“Fifty per cent”: Ibid.

After the Second World War: Maricruz Bilbao, interview with Annalyn Swan, October 1, 2011.

Bar Cock developed: Ibid.

So did the occasional: Even the Spanish royal family frequents Bar Cock. After royal wedding festivities in 2011, “The royals came in at 2 in the morning,” said Ferrer. “All day it had been formal. Then we got a call from the royal house. And they came in their jeans. You can’t close the bar at 3 [as usually done] when the royals are here. They were here until 4.”

Bacon and José typically: Ferrer, interview with Swan.

Even so, the couple: Ibid.

“Sometimes”: Ibid.

Other than a taste: Friends of Capelo, interviews with the authors.

In Madrid, he liked: Bilbao, interview with Swan.

Bacon usually wore: Ferrer, interview with Swan. The following quotes also come from this interview.

He was already friendly: Elvira González and Isabel Mignoni, interview with Annalyn Swan, November 15, 2017.

“Julián Gallego wrote”: Mignoni, interview with Swan.

Bacon “liked flamenco”: González, interview with Swan.

“At that moment”: González, interview with Swan.

“The ring has stairs”: Mignoni, interview with Swan.

Inside Bacon there remained: Eddy Batache, interview with Mark Stevens, June 2016.

The elderly Bacon: Friends of José Capelo, interviews with the authors, December 2017 and February 2020.

Sex, he told friends: Ibid.

“I was never bored”: Ibid.

Bacon might say: Ibid.

“He never opened up: Joule, interview with Swan.

Well-versed: Friends of Capelo, interviews with the authors.

Gill Hedley: For more on Hedley’s role, see www.gillhedley.co.uk.

That displeased: James Birch, interview with the authors, December 8, 2008.

The British Council would not: Ibid.

“Francis was worried”: Ibid.

In the end: Birch, email exchange with Annalyn Swan, November 29, 2017.

In late June 1988: Beston, diary, June 23, 1988, The Estate of Francis Bacon archive.

“They had to persuade”: Birch, interview with the authors.

“Francis could have pulled”: Ibid.

Bacon wrote an official: Facsimile letter in the catalogue for Francis Bacon, exhibition September 23–November 6, 1988 (London: British Council and Marlborough Gallery, 1988), 5. The original statement, dated June 4, 1988, is in the Marlborough Gallery archive.

“In one of van Gogh’s”: Ibid.

“Francis wanted to take”: Birch, interview with the authors.

But then David Sylvester: Ibid.

In April 1988: Beston diary, April 29, 1988.

Then he had the idea: Paul Brass, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

“He was terrified”: Ibid.

“The run-up”: Ibid.

A little more than a month: Bacon informed the British Council on August 18 according to Beston’s diary, August 18, 1988.

Four days later: Ibid., August 22, 1988.

Bacon also disliked: Ibid.

“Francis gave me”: Birch, interview with the authors.

The official press release: “Francis Bacon Exhibition, Moscow 22nd September—7th November 1988,” The British Council press release, July 18, 1988.

On the morning: Birch, email exchange with Annalyn Swan, November 29, 2017.

He cooked the travellers: Ibid.

The exhibition opened: British Council press release.

It was a “mini retrospective”: Ibid.

The ceremonies were: Brandon Taylor, “The Taste for Bacon,” Art News, January 1989, 57.

“The opening reception”: Birch, email exchange with Swan.

The first secretary: Andrew Graham-Dixon, “Bekon in Moscow,” The Independent, October 1, 1988.

It was: Ibid.

He flew first class: Birch, interview with the authors.

“I’d go into”: Ibid.

“The present writer”: Mikhail Sokolov, “Tragedies Without a Hero: The Art of Francis Bacon,” Art Monthly, no. 121 (November 1988), 3–5.

“The British admire”: Grey Gowrie, “Bacon in Moscow: A Small Gloss on Glasnost,” Modern Painter 1, no. 4 (Winter 1988–89), 34–9.

“The horrifying thing”: Ibid.

“‘Mr Bacon’s paintings’”: Graham-Dixon, “БЭКОН in Moscow,” The Independent.

Nine hours before the show: Geordie Greig, “Bacon’s Art Gets the Red-Carpet Treatment,” Sunday Times, September 25, 1988.

In an interview with Geordie Greig: Ibid.

The writer underscored: Ibid. The following quotes come from this article.

Grey Gowrie, who was interviewed: Gowrie, “Bacon in Moscow: A Small Gloss on Glasnost,” Modern Painters.

The print run: Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life, 245. In an amusing footnote to the show, the ever-resourceful Gilbert Lloyd of the Marlborough Gallery wrote to the Union of Artists nine months later requesting the “8,395 rubles collected from the sale of 3,650 catalogues.” (Presumably the rest of the catalogues sold after that—or Farson had the wrong number in sales.) Marlborough wanted to recoup whatever it could against the costs of underwriting the show—which, of course, had mostly been underwritten by Bacon himself. Marlborough Gallery archive.

Bacon was so grateful: Birch, interview with the authors.

Klokov sold: Ibid.

During the opening celebrations: She died on September 24, 1988. See “Louise Leiris (1902–1988),” www.universalis.fr.

Always “a lady”: Anthony-Noel Kelly, interview with Annalyn Swan, September 25, 2013. Most of the details on Diana Watson’s later years come from this interview.

“You realized”: Ibid.

In 1986, Diana still sometimes: Beston diary, August 13, 1986.

By 1988: Kelly, interview with Swan.

Meanwhile, Bacon took practical: This story, like that of George Dyer breaking through the skylight at 7 Reece Mews, is so widely known, and retold, that few question its authenticity. However, Bacon’s sister Ianthe Knott disputed the truth of the story. The money at the end of Diana Watson’s life, she said, came from selling the portrait of her that Bacon painted in 1957.

She died: Martin Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonne, vol. I (London: Estate of Francis Bacon, 2016), 100.

Bacon often escaped: Valerie Beston’s diaries recorded trips to Seville in December 1988 and, in 1989 and 1990, to Paris, Toulouse, Aix, and Venice.

In London, José also helped: Parladé, interview with Swan. Another great friend of Janetta’s, who had seen Bacon in the 1950s and ’60s when he intersected more with the literary world, was Mougouch (Agnes) Fielding, the widow of the painter Arshile Gorky; she later married the writer Xan Fielding. Like Janetta, Mougouch was part of the world of Bloomsbury artists and writers; she was particularly close to Cyril Connolly. Bacon would come to parties at her house on Chapel Street in the 1960s. Mougouch Fielding, interview with the authors, March 3, 2011.

Once, the two went: Friends of Capelo, interviews with the authors.

“He was really charming”: Robert Sainsbury, quoted in Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life, 269.

“Out of his friends”: Jacques Dupin, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

Although most of Bacon’s: Friends of Capelo, interviews with the authors.

José noticed: Ibid.

José once arranged: Ibid.

What José most wanted: Ibid.

Bacon so admired one suit: Ibid.

Sometimes, they went: Ibid.

Bacon once mentioned: Bacon, letter to Wirth-Miller, no date, “4:30 Thursday morning,” collection of Jon Lys Turner, friend, co-executor and beneficiary of the estates of Dicky Chopping and Denis Wirth-Miller.

He told him: Friends of Capelo, interviews with the authors.

Bacon announced his intention: Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, vol. IV, 1356.

Bacon completed: Ibid.

It followed Bacon’s direction: Eddy Batache, “Francis Bacon: An Intimate View,” in Martin Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon: La France et Monaco (Paris: Albin Michel/Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation, 2016), 194.

In the interim: Michel Archimbaud, interview with Anthi-Danaé Spathoni, March 8, 2018.

Bacon and Boulez: Ibid. The rest of the information on Bacon and Boulez’s friendship and the details of the one-night fête come from Spathoni’s interview.

For one night, then: Ibid.

So did the wife of French president: Ibid.

Boulez displayed: Michel Archimbaud kindly supplied photographs of the musical score to Anthi-Danaé Spathoni.

Bacon dedicated: Ibid.

45 CURTAIN CALLS

The gathering: See Martin Harrison, Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné (London: The Estate of Francis Bacon, 2016), vol. V, 1521.

Nor did the selection: The Hirshhorn retrospective included only twenty-two paintings from the 1970s and ’80s, among them two triptychs from the ’70s and three from the ’80s. A far greater percentage of the paintings overall thus came from the earlier decades.

In the Washington Post: Paul Richard, “Art: Bacon’s Sublime Screams,” Washington Post, October 12, 1989.

The artist’s earliest images, he wrote: Alan G. Artner, “The World According to Francis Bacon,” Chicago Tribune, October 29, 1989.

And yet, Artner argued: Ibid.

“But the fact”: Ibid.

In The Nation: Arthur Danto, “Art,” The Nation, July 30, 1990. The rest of the quotations come from this review.

Bacon’s intentionally provocative: Bacon, quoted in David Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon (New York; Thames & Hudson, 2004), 50.

In London: “Francis Bacon Shrinks from Birthday Bash,” Iberian Daily Sun (Madrid), November 5, 1989.

“We expected him”: Ibid.

Glum headlines appeared: “Bacon Reaches Eighty on a Low Note,” in ibid; Daniel Farson, “Francis Bacon Celebrates at 80 Without Pomp,” Sunday Telegraph, October 23, 1989.

“I was startled”: Farson, “Francis Bacon Celebrates at 80 Without Pomp,” The Sunday Telegraph.

“It’s very nice”: Ibid.

“He was very worried”: Paul Brass, interview for Adam Low, director, Francis Bacon, Arena documentary, BBC Four archive, March 19, 2005.

The doctor called a nephrectomy: Ibid.

He told only: Bacon, letter of apology to Denis Wirth-Miller, dated Sunday morning, 3rd December, quoted in Jon Lys Turner, The Visitors’ Book (London: Constable, 2016), 358. The letter reads, “when I came in for the operation I only mentioned it to Valerie [Beston] and José it was only after the operation which I did not expect to come through I asked Paul to let John know.” The letter is incorrectly dated December 1991, based upon Denis Wirth-Miller’s notation on the envelope. (Wirth-Miller was not always reliable about dates.)

Dr Brass went to see him: Brass, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

Perhaps the best indication: Bacon’s letter to Denis Wirth-Miller also contained an apology: “When I telephoned yesterday evening the very last thing I wanted was to be rude to you—all I asked was not to mention that I was in hospital as I do not want my sister coming over to see me … I do hope I shall see you soon as I think of you as one of few friends.”

An ordinary patient: Friends of José Capelo, interviews with the authors, December 2017 and February 2020.

Only three weeks after: Valerie Beston diary, December 28, 1989, The Estate of Francis Bacon archive.

The Sunday after his return: Beston diary, January 7, 1990.

Miss Beston found him: Ibid.

He was cheered: Ibid.

During the first nine months: Records of these trips come from Beston’s diaries, from Eddy Batache and Reinhard Hassert, from Barry Joule, and from friends of José Capelo.

After a successful: Ibid. Friends of Capelo, interviews with the authors.

He told friends: Ibid.

He was “jolly ill”: Paul Brass, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena. After the nephrectomy, Bacon was hospitalized several more times, but for asthma-related illnesses. In the final year of his life, Bacon went in and out of heart failure repeatedly. According to Dr Brass, Bacon had suffered for years from valvular heart disease and an incompetent aortic valve and had severe hypertension. “Towards the end of his life, his asthma played a huge part in conjunction with heart failure,” said Brass. Interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

Two months after a trip: Beston diary, July 11 and July 19, 1990.

In a letter of August 2: Ibid.

No sooner had he arrived: Ibid., July 26, 1990.

“Francis said to them”: Jacques Dupin, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

The photographs represented: Ibid.

Dupin was the sort of man: “Jacques Dupin, Art Scholar and Poet, Dies at 85,” www.nytimes.com.

“I thought”: Dupin, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena. On June 1, Valerie Beston noted in her diary that “Dupin sees his portrait. Likes it.”

A trip to Italy: Friends of Capelo, interviews with the authors. The trip began with a flight to Venice by way of Zurich. Bacon might have been picking up money for the trip. More likely he was meeting with his bankers about settling money on his family. Beston diary, September 19, 1990. In Venice they saw a major Titian show. (See Michael Kimmelman, “An Artist and His City: Titian in Venice,” New York Times, July 1, 1990). They then went to Naples.

It concluded: Friends of Capelo, interview with the authors.

It was astonishing: Barry Joule, interview with Annalyn Swan, November 4 and 5, 2017. Joule shared with the authors a photograph of Bacon on the hydrofoil.

But he was far more subject: It was the manoeuvring of Barry Joule that led to a warming of the relationship. At one point Joule helped organize an exhibition, at the Photographers’ Gallery in London, of the work of the celebrated fashion photographer and portraitist George Hoyningen-Huene. One of his most famous models was Toto Koopman, who was featured in a number of his iconic shots. Koopman came to a talk at the gallery given by Horst, Hoyningen-Huene’s protégé. That gave Joule a chance to befriend Toto. “After the lecture ended”—Koopman had identified herself during Horst’s talk—“she grabbed my arm,” said Joule. “‘Who are you, you marvellous man?’ she asked. ‘We are having a cocktail party. Would you like to come?’” They went skiing in the Alps. She invited him to Panarea and the exquisite compound of small houses overlooking the sea named Sette Mulini (the Seven Millers’ Houses) that she and Brausen had spent years, since the 1960s, renovating. Joule became a regular at Sette Mulini and at their apartment in London at 74 Eaton Place, a fashionable address in Belgravia.

“Bacon became intrigued”: Barry Joule, interview with Swan.

One day in the late 1980s: Ibid.

He also introduced Eddy and Reinhard: Friends of Capelo, interviews with the authors.

One evening he took: Ibid.

Their relationship belonged: Ibid.

Leiris chose to sit: Ibid.

After missing: Both Valerie Beston’s diaries and multiple interviews document Edwards’s infrequent appearances in London. As Anthony Zych said, “John Edwards had almost stopped going to Reece Mews by 198⅞8.” Anthony Zych, interview with Annalyn Swan, November 10, 2017. Barry Joule also said that Edwards was hardly there by 1987. Joule, interview with Swan.

“John did come occasionally”: Brass, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

“We knew Francis”: Geraldine and Michael Leventis, interview with Annalyn Swan, November 11, 2017.

Valerie Beston had taken note: Beston diary, January 8, 1990.

Then, after Bacon: Beston diary, March 6 and 9, 1990.

It seemed irrational to José: Friends of Capelo, interviews with the authors.

He had grown accustomed: Ibid.

In a letter from Naples: Estate of Francis Bacon archive.

“I remember Francis”: Janetta Parladé, interview with Annalyn Swan, November 2, 2017.

Although Capelo disliked: Friends of Capelo, interviews with the authors.

The two men continued: Ibid.

In August 1990: Bacon, letter to Denis Wirth-Miller, collection of Jon Lys Turner, friend, co-executor and beneficiary of the estate of Wirth-Miller and Chopping.

Bacon was not very productive: Man at a Wash Basin harks back to 1970, and to the painting Three Studies of the Male Back of that year, the first of what might best be called Bacon’s Muscle Beach paintings. In Three Studies, Bacon had painted three nude male figures seated on swivel pedestal chairs with their backs to the viewer, their shoulders and legs heavily muscled to the point of caricature. It was a particular, exaggerated take on male beauty that would resurface periodically from then on in Bacon’s work—in Study from the Human Body (Man Turning on Light) of 1973, in Figure Writing Reflected in Mirror and Figure at a Washbasin of 1976. When Hugh Davies queried Bacon in 1973 about the original Three Studies of the Male Back painting, Bacon told him that it was not so much an attempt to paint portraiture without showing the face—as Davies had speculated—as about his fascination with highly developed bodies. “I had a paratrooper staying here who was a magnificent specimen, taking all the exercises etc.,” said Bacon. “They came just from looking at him.” Hugh Davies, transcripts of interviews for his dissertation, Francis Bacon: the Early and Middle Years, 1928–1958 (New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1978). The transcripts have been published as “Interviewing Bacon, 1973,” in Martin Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon New Studies (Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2009), 104.

It was not for lack: Two small portraits of Capelo and one of Bacon were given by Bacon directly to Capelo and not recorded by Marlborough. They were stolen from Capelo’s apartment in Madrid in June 2015. Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, vol. IV, 1399.

That could be inhibiting: Bacon had numerous photographs of Capelo that he could use for reference that were taken on their trips together. After Bacon’s death, they were returned to him. Friends of Capelo, interviews with the authors.

José agreed: Beston diary, June 2, 1990.

Dr Brass persuaded him: Brass, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena. The rest of the quotations in this paragraph come from the Arena interview.

Dr Brass would often: Ibid. The following quotations in this paragraph come from this interview.

During a period: Barry Joule, email to Annalyn Swan, February 19, 2018.

Bacon enjoyed riding: Ibid.

They saw a film: Ibid.

And they stayed: Ibid.

At Tate Liverpool: Ibid. Francis Bacon: Paintings Since 1944 was curated by Richard Francis, who had curated Bacon’s 1985 retrospective at the Tate (and had to deal with a prickly Bacon). He was now the chief curator of Tate Liverpool. See Michael Kimmelman, “From Liverpool’s decay a New Tate Gallery Rises,” New York Times, April 23, 1989, www.nytimes.com.

Bacon told Joule: Joule, email to Swan.

Once back in London: Beston diary, July 6, 1990.

Capelo left: Friends of Capelo, interviews with the authors.

He became briefly: Danny Moynihan, interview with the authors, February 28, 2011. Also Richard Shone diary, November 18, 1990.

It wasn’t: Danny Moynihan, interview with the authors.

It was probably: Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, vol. IV, 1380.

Valerie Beston noted: Beston diary, December 8, 1990.

On December 12: Joule, interview with Swan.

José went: Friends of Capelo, interviews with the authors.

Even so, José: Ibid.

He had meanwhile completed: The diptych of Capelo was photographed by Marlborough on December 18, 1990. Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, vol. IV, 1378.

He did not seriously: This was true of virtually all of Bacon’s paintings of those who meant a great deal to him—Peter Lacy, George Dyer, John Edwards, and the portraits of Peter Beard painted in 1975 and 1976.

Bacon gave: Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, vol. IV, 1378. The diptych was titled “Two Studies for a Portrait,” 1990.

On Christmas Day itself: Joule, email to Swan, February 19, 2018.

They took: Ibid.

David Sylvester once told: Friends of Capelo, interviews with the authors.

Bacon mournfully informed: Daniel Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993), 274.

Like a lover who cannot: Ibid., 273.

“He was clearly”: Barry Joule, interview with Swan, November 4 and 5, 2017.

They went to Paris in January: Friends of Capelo, interviews with the authors.

In Paris they were invited: Michel Archimbaud, interview with Anthi-Danaé Spathoni, March 8, 2018. Explosante-fixe was first performed in 1991 as a work in progress; the world premiere was in 1993. See “explosante-fixe,” www.universaledition.com.

The piece, still a work: See “Explosante Fixe,” musicinmovement.eu.

It was recorded arriving: Harrison, ed., Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, vol. IV, 1386.

When an interviewer later: Richard Cork, presenter, “I’ll Go On Until I Drop,” Kaleidoscope, BBC Radio 4, August 17, 1991.

46 BORROWED TIME

He broke with the devoted: Geraldine and Michael Leventis, interview with Annalyn Swan, November 11, 2017.

Barry Joule arranged: Joule, interview with Annalyn Swan, November 4 and 5, 2017.

He also broke: Anthony Zych, interview with Annalyn Swan, November 10, 2017.

But everybody: Ibid.

Ianthe did not like John: Ianthe Knott, interviews with Mark Stevens, March 5 and 6, 2008.

The maître d’: Elena Salvoni, interview with Annalyn Swan, October 31, 2012.

Caroline de Mestre Walker: Caroline de Mestre Walker, interview with Annalyn Swan, October 18, 2013.

Sometimes Bacon ate: Bacon enjoyed going to Bibendum to the very end. Terence Conran, interview with Mark Stevens, July 7, 2011.

Unlike many friends: Danny Moynihan recalled Bacon coming faithfully for his once-a-week portrait session in the 1970s with his father. Moynihan, interview with the authors, February 28, 2011.

Moynihan was cremated: Richard Shone diary, November 18, 1990.

Bacon and Anne Dunn: Ibid.

“No one introduced anyone”: The rest of the quotations from Shone come from this diary entry.

After dinner, the young: Moynihan, interview with the authors.

Bacon spat: Shone, interview with the authors.

The venom astonished: Moynihan, interview with the authors.

She was reliably: Friends of José Capelo, interviews with the authors, December 2017 and February 2020.

There were things: Ibid.

Peter Lacy was “the real”: Knott, interviews with Stevens.

She visited: Ibid.

On a trip to Madrid: Manuela Mena, interview with Annalyn Swan, October 4, 2011.

An English voice: Ibid.

He wanted to spend: Ibid. The Velázquez show of the year before had proved so crowded that it was difficult to see. At times, the museum had to close the doors to keep more than five hundred people from being in the nine rooms of the exhibition at any one time. (Alan Riding, “Prado Opens the Largest Show of Velázquez’s Work Ever Held,” New York Times, January 25, 1990.) People stood in line outside the museum for five and six hours at a stretch in the wintry weather to gain entry.

The Prado’s guards: Mena, interview with Swan.

“We opened that door”: Ibid. The rest of the quotations in this paragraph come from this interview.

“Freud was very different”: Ibid.

For the hour and a half: Ibid.

His ageing flesh: Bacon sometimes found Michelangelo’s obsession with male flesh almost embarrassing in its palpable longing. David Sylvester, Looking Back at Francis Bacon (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2000), 238.

“I recall that he looked”: Mena, interview with Swan.

After his visit: Ibid.

José reassured: Friends of Capelo, interviews with the authors.

In an August, 1990: Bacon, quoted in Richard Cork, presenter, “I’ll Go On until I Drop,” Kaleidoscope.

“Yes, stronger”: Ibid.

“On a good day”: John Russell, Francis Bacon (London: Thames & Hudson), 182.

The Irish poet Paul Durcan: Durcan, “The King of Snails,” in David Sylvester, curator, Francis Bacon in Dublin (London: Thames & Hudson/Hugh Lane Gallery, 2000), 27–32.

“Francis in the Colony Room”: Ibid., 28.

He wrote about it: In the poem, “Putney Garage,” Bacon is eighty. He turned eighty on October 28, 1989. So the encounter would have been the following autumn, in 1990.

Maricruz Bilbao: Maricruz Bilbao, interview with Annalyn Swan, October 1, 2011.

“And the first thing”: Ibid. The rest of the quotations about Cruz’s interview at Marlborough come from Bilbao.

True to form, he left: Friends of Capelo, interviews with the authors.

Bacon had developed: Michel Archimbaud, Francis Bacon: In Conversation with Michel Archimbaud (New York: Phaidon Press, 2004), 44.

Bacon and José also visited: Friends of Capelo, interviews with the authors.

The next day: Ibid.

The neighbouring vineyard: Bacon would indeed design their label in the fall of 1991. Marlborough Gallery archive.

The two had remained: Archimbaud, interview with Anthi-Danaé Spathoni, March 8, 2018.

Over the next months: Francis Giacobetti, “Francis Bacon: The Last Interview,” The Independent Magazine, June 13, 2003.

Initially, Giacobetti did not use: See Fiona Mahon, “Seven Seminal Images, by Francis Giacobetti,” www.hungertv.com.

In a rented studio: Giacobetti, “Francis Bacon: The Last Interview,” The Independent.

Bacon asked Archimbaud: Ibid.

Giacobetti was for years: Mahon, “Seven Seminal Images,” www.hungertv.com.

In late December: For background on Baroness de Rothschild, see “Baroness Philippine de Rothschild,” (obituary), The Telegraph, August 27, 2014, www.telegraph.co.uk/. On May 18, 1993, the Baroness gave a delightful little toast at the Marlborough for Bacon. “A year and a half ago I met Francis Bacon in London,” she said. “I met a delightful, witty, charming young gentleman, and I believe we got on quite well. In December 1991 he brought me, with the utmost modesty, this amazing painting, in, of all things, a plastic bag. At the end of March 1992, we all at Mouton decided to use it for this label.” Marlborough Gallery archive.

Bacon, if he lived long enough: In the end, the wine was sent to John Edwards. Marlborough Gallery archive.

That same month: Bilbao, interview with Swan.

He sat beside her: Henrietta Moraes, quoted in Peter Lennon, “Francis and Me,” Weekend Guardian, May 2–3, 1992. The following quotes come from this article.

“Freud had a tray”: Joule, interview with Swan, November 4 and 5, 2017. The rest of the quotations about Freud come from this interview.

Michel Archimbaud once saw: Archimbaud, interview with Spathoni.

When the painter Zoran Mušič: Zoran Mušič, quoted in Michael Peppiatt, Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma (London: Constable & Robinson, 2008), 391.

He was not living: Russell, Francis Bacon, 182.

Dr Brass found: Brass, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

“I have a sort”: Ibid.

Bacon’s nephew Harley Knott: Harley Knott, interview with Mark Stevens, March 7, 2008.

Bacon explained: Brass, interview for Francis Bacon, Arena.

In late December 1991: Russell, Francis Bacon, 193.

Bacon packed: Ibid. His bag, wrote John Russell, was “one of the heaviest pieces of hand luggage that had ever been taken aboard an aircraft.”

At Charles de Gaulle: Ibid. All of the details on Bacon’s collapse comes from Russell’s book.

Russell and Bernier: Ibid.