ESTATE OF FRANCIS BACONHow Francis Bacon
made $5m gift to the
Tate to spite his dealer
By Dalya Alberge
FRANCIS BACON was so furious that
his dealer had sold one of his triptychs
to a US museum without consulting
him that he cancelled the multi-mil-
lion-dollar sale by donating the work to
the Tate, the artist’s friend Barry Joule
has revealed.
Bacon was further irritated by his
dealer’s insistence that its title should
bear the word crucifixion, when it was
nothing of the sort.
He fell out with the late Valerie Bes-
ton, of the Marlborough gallery in Lon-
don, over his Second Version of Triptych
1944 , a nightmarish depiction of
three howling creatures, part-man,
part-beast, tormented and twist-
ing against a deep maroon back-
ground. It was a 1988 reworking
of his Forties masterpiece, Three
Studies for Figures at the base of a
Crucifixion, also in the Tate.
Although the title of the earlier
work includes the word
crucifixion, the atheist
painter told Mr Joule: “I
have only ever used a
Call to save
phone box
with crucial
wartime role
AI to read ‘illegible’
Brunel handwriting
By Callum AdamsWELSH villagers are trying
to save their beloved red tel-
ephone box from being
scrapped, because it helped
protect them during the Sec-
ond World War.
The phone box in the
quiet village of Bryn-y-
Gwenin, near Abergavenny,
South Wales, was used to
warn of air raids.
Now villagers have en-
listed the help of Conserva-
tive MP David Davies in their
bid to get BT to save the box
because of its wartime role
as the main point of contact
for warnings of Nazi bomb-
ing raids.
Mr Davies said keeping
the phone box would pre-
serve the village’s history as
well as serving a practical
purpose.
He said: “Mobile signal in
this part of rural Monmouth-
shire is intermittent and
very poor at best, so the pub-
lic telephone box is an essen-
tial village amenity for
Bryn-y-Gwenin.
“It also serves Llanddewi
Skirrid and the surrounding
area. With the Skirrid moun-
tain a popular spot for walk-
ers and cyclists, the
significance of the box is
paramount in an emergency.
“BT claims the phone box
has had very little use over asignificant period of time.
Calls may well be small in
number but one day that call
could be very important and
potentially life-saving.”
Previous plans to decom-
mission the box were suc-
cessfully overturned in 2016
following a similar local
campaign.
Resident Paul Webb said
villagers “cherished” the
box, which bears the Tudor
Crown of King George VI.
“One of our villagers,
Richard Cox, cleans it on a
weekly basis and repaints it
when necessary,” he said.
“The box has always been a
proud landmark at the en-
trance to our village. It is an
iconic part of British herit-
age yet, sadly, these red tele-
phone boxes are getting
more and more scare in the
countryside.
“It has been stated in the
past that if the phone itself
was removed but the box re-
mained then the villagers
would be prepared to have a
defibrillator installed as it
would be a very strategic
place for one to be available.”
The phone was originally
connected to the village post
office via a party line.
BT has launched a consul-
tation period to determine
the phone box’s future.
A spokesman for BT said:
“Most people now have a
mobile phone and calls made
from our public telephones
have fallen by around 90 per
cent in the past decade.
“We consider a number of
factors before consulting on
the removal of payphones.”By Naomi LarssonHE MAY have been one of
Britain’s most prolific engi-
neers, but Isambard King-
dom Brunel had notoriously
terrible handwriting.
Now researchers are hop-
ing a transcription computer
programme will help decode
his “almost impossible to
read” writing and uncover
secrets about the Victorian
engineer, who designed the
Clifton Suspension Bridge.
The SS Great Britain Trust
has tens of thousands of
pages from Brunel’s diaries
and letters, but his script is
barely legible. The team has
now designed AI software
that scans Brunel’s docu-
ments and learns to decipher
his handwriting.
The programme, called
Transkribus, was developed
by the University of Inns-
bruck and University Col-
lege London, and can now
read Brunel’s writing with
65 per cent accuracy.
Dominic Rowe, marketing
manager for the trust, said
the handwritten artefacts
could “deepen our under-standing of the way he
thought, who he was”.
“As a British icon, he is
known as being quite ruth-
less and really hardworking,
but we know there was anxi-
ety that he felt about pro-
jects. We are always trying to
find out who the guy was be-
hind the top hat.”
The team is testing the
software on one of Brunel’s
diaries. “We’re only just
starting to experiment as to
what... secrets this could un-
lock,” said Nick Booth, head
of collections at the Trust.News
crucifix as a device to hang or surround
my figures on ... But I have never
painted a crucifixion per se.
“Right now, I am having a tiff with
Valerie Beston ... as she insists on using
the word crucifixion.”
His paintings sell today for tens of
millions of pounds, and they had al-
ready reached seven-figure sums when
Beston was planning her 1988 sale.
Mr Joule, a friend and neighbour of
Bacon in South Kensington, is now re-
vealing the triptych’s three-year “tor-
turous route” to the Tate.
He told The Daily Telegraph: “Beston
promptly named [the triptych] with
‘crucifixion’ in the title and in-
formed Francis they had a ma-
jor museum that wanted to
buy it.”
The painting would have
sold for around $5 million,
he said.
“That’s when the long-
standing, fairly even rela-
tionship between
Beston and Bacon
broke down. She
had mostly gov-erned [him] like a Nazi stormtrooper.”
He said Bacon had “let the bombshell
casually drop that he possibly would
donate the picture to the Tate”.
Mr Joule was at the artist’s studio at
7 Reece Mews when Beston turned up
in a chauffeured car, banging loudly on
the door. Mr Joule opened the first-floor ‘hay door’ and looked down on a
“furious” Beston: “She yelled up at me,
‘Get Francis here immediately’ ...
“The grumbling painter eventually
appeared. Very agitated, Francis wasn’t
about to budge an inch. His round face
reddening up, he was furious that Bes-
ton had sold the picture.
“In a final twist of the knife,” Mr
Joule said, she “furiously screamed the
words ‘Remember Zurich’.” That was
taken as a threat, a reference to the taxaffairs of Bacon, who made regular
trips to the city, enjoying the food and
visiting friends.
“It was also possibly a place where
the proceeds of a painting recently sold
could be stashed away in a secret Swiss
bank account,” Mr Joule said.
Swiss friends included Gilbert de
Botton, a banker and a Tate trustee,
who encouraged Bacon’s donation.
Bacon, who died in 1992, recalled
that, when informing Beston of his de-cision, “her tight face dropped like a
wet sponge”. She was not invited to de
Botton’s celebratory supper for four at
Bibendum restaurant in Kensington.
When the banker called for the bill,
which exceeded £800, he was told Ba-
con had settled it.
In 2004, Mr Joule gave the Tate some
1,200 sketches from Bacon’s studio. A
small selection, along with the Biben-
dum bill, are currently on show at Tate
Britain until the end of September.Francis Bacon, left, donated ‘Second
Version of Triptych 1944’ to the Tate at no
cost, after falling out with his dealerHandwritten notes by Brunel
are ‘almost impossible’ to read’Rural community
campaigns to keepred box that warned
of Nazi bomb raids8 ***^ Monday 19 August 2019 The Daily Telegraph
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