A friend of Francis Bacon who donated works from the artist's studio to the Tate Gallery threatened to recover them because, according to him, the museum does not value them enough.
In 2004, Barry Joule, Francis Bacon's handyman in the late 1970s, donated more than 1,200 drawings, photographs and documents from the painter's London studio, as
The Guardian
recalls
.
The set had been estimated at 20 million pounds (23.6 million euros).
Unhappy to see this gift kept in the reserves of the London gallery, Barry Joule believes that his generosity would be better appreciated in a French museum.
Read also: Francis Bacon, portrait of a painter as a furious reader
In an email sent on August 3 to Maria Balshaw, the director of the Tate, Barry Joule threatens to sue the institution so that it returns the works.
These threats come after years of heated exchanges between Barry Joule and the museum, during which the donor deplores that the works have not been the subject of a major exhibition.
La Tate, for her part, claims to have obeyed the terms of the donation contract, which required her to list and present the works.
Since 2004, the archived works have been accessible to the public and some were exhibited at Tate Britain in 2019. The whole was however strangely forgotten during the great exhibition dedicated to the painter in 2008.
An ultimatum in October
Barry Joule finds this lack of consideration for his donation and the work of Francis Bacon unacceptable. He regrets that the Tate curators initially led him to believe that the works, including an oil painting,
Study for Head of William Blake
, would lend themselves to greater exposure. But as the time passed,
"I continually encountered the silence of the Tate, or else I had no response or I was embarrassed," he
laments. Now, the collector is preparing to take legal action to have the donation returned to him
"if a satisfactory solution is not found by October 2021"
.
Read also: Pierre Soulages donates around twenty works to the Rodez museum dedicated to him
Barry Joule also explains to the
Guardian
that he is giving up another bequest, a 1936 self-portrait and nine other paintings from the same period, as well as other works, letters, books and audio recordings.
This is perhaps the museum's worst nightmare, as donors withdraw their bequests.
More and more collectors are taking advantage of the explosion in the value of certain pieces of contemporary art.
To avoid such an outcome, the Tate says it offered an interview to Barry Joule in September.
Other factors may explain Tate's reluctance to value this gift.
The rights holders expressed their doubts about the authenticity of the archives and none of these pieces appeared in the catalog listing the work of Francis Bacon, published in 2016. Contacted by
Artnet News
, a spokesperson for the The work cites a recent publication including a publication by researcher Sophie Pretorius, which concluded that the objects donated by Barry Joule were not consistent with the rest of Bacon's work.
According to her, Barry Joule's donation is
"riddled with exaggerations and contradictions"
.
"Probably"
the work of Bacon
In 2002, the then director of Tate, Nicolas Serota, wrote in a letter accepting the donation that the majority of the works
“probably”
came
from Francis Bacon's studio,
“the majority came from other hands”
.
More recently, according to Sophie Pretorius, a curator of the Tate affirmed that the institution would pronounce
"more clearly"
on the role played by Bacon in the development of the whole of this donation, in the light of his research work.
Read also: Francis Bacon at the Center Pompidou: the fury to read
Barry Joule and Francis Bacon met in 1978 and remained friends until the painter's death in 2004. Barry Joule explains that Francis Bacon gave him the archive shortly before the artist left for Spain in 1992 , where he died of a heart attack. The artist's friend explains that he chose the Tate because it was Francis Bacon's favorite gallery. His donation of 80 drawings by the artist to the Picasso Museum had given rise to an event exhibition in 2005. Among the potential destinations of the donation if he did indeed withdraw it from Tate, France, therefore, where he resides from now on.