Francis Bacon with Barry Joule, left, in Bacon’s studio in 1986. Photograph: © Barry Joule

Secret tapes shed light on Francis Bacon’s bitter battle with Lucian Freud

Conversations between Francis Bacon and a friend reveal details of the long-running feud between two giants of British art

Dalya Alberge
Sunday 28 June 2018

They were titans of 20th-century art, painters whose friendship and rivalry helped create some of the most expensive artworks ever sold. Yet Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud had a falling out, for reasons that neither man fully explained.

Now, recordings of Bacon have emerged that shed light on the estrangement. Talking with a close friend, Bacon poured scorn on Freud, ridiculing one of his paintings in the Charles Saatchi collection and lamenting in 1982 that Freud “doesn’t want to see me”.

The recordings came to light weeks before a joint exhibition of their work in London. Tate Britain’s All Too Human: Bacon, Freud and a Century of Painting Life will reflect the complex friendship between the two men when it opens on 28 February.

Bacon confided: “Certainly the ones [Saatchi] bought of Lucian’s are the worst ones I have ever seen. I saw one ghastly thing of a man standing on a bed and two little heads peeping out from under the bed. It looked ridiculous.”

The recordings were shared with the Observer by Barry Joule, who lived near Bacon’s studio in South Kensington. In 1978, Bacon saw Joule repairing a neighbour’s television aerial and invited him in for champagne. They remained friends until the artist’s death in 1992.

Joule believes Freud’s friendship with Bacon was tainted by Freud’s jealousy: “He cut Francis off completely, much to Francis’s surprise, and never, ever relented.”

There seems to be another element of contention, however. Bacon’s Two Figures (1953), a masterpiece showing two nude men on a bed, was exhibited for the first time in decades last October, when it was loaned to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. It had ended up in Freud’s possession and he never allowed it to be borrowed, much to Bacon’s fury.

On one tape, Bacon recalled his German-born London dealer, Erica Brausen, freaking out over Two Figures. He imitated Brausen’s high-pitched Germanic tones: “When I took in that painting … she did say, ‘Darling, don’t bring that sheeet in here!’” He tried to explain that it was inspired by Eadweard Muybridge’s 1880s photographs of wrestlers. “She said: ‘I don’t care where it comes from. I don’t vaant de police in ’ere!’”

Bacon then related how the late art critic David Sylvester sold Two Figures to Freud for £80. When Joule expressed astonishment at the low price, Bacon replied: “I had to give 20 of it to … Sylvester as a commission, and I got 60 for it, I think … You see how things are.”

Joule will never forget Bacon’s “sad triple shrug of his shoulders, eyes downcast”.

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 Lucian Freud in 1954. Photograph: Paul Popper/Popperfoto/Getty Images

Joule said: “Freud stashed it away in his house. He later was to put his jealousy knife into Francis as he never, ever allowed this important picture to be borrowed, which mightily [upset] Francis, especially as he wanted it for his 1985 Tate retrospective.”

Bacon once confided to another friend: “When I die, my paintings won’t be worth anything, I’ll be forgotten.” He could not have been more wrong. His 1969 portrait Three Studies of Lucian Freud sold in 2013 for a record £89m.

Freud is admired for portraying the human body with brutal realism. His life-sized nude depiction of his muse Sue Tilley, who was known as “Fat Sue”, sold in 2015 for £35.6m.

Bacon met Freud in the mid-1940s. Although each admired the other’s art in the early days, they eventually stopped speaking.

Joule said that Two Figures was painted in an old garage near Henley-on-Thames rented by Bacon’s then lover, Peter Lacy, just before Christmas 1952. “The exact spot was poignantly pointed out to me by Francis … No doubt he considered it to be a … groundbreaking picture, one that would make a powerful ‘homosexual point’.”

In 1988 Joule was sipping whisky with Bacon, who had just finished a painting, when the phone rang. It was Freud, wanting Bacon to attend a supper for a forthcoming exhibition.

Joule said: “The conversation was short and curt. Only a few words were spoken, with a red-faced Francis slamming the receiver down so hard the wall shook. He angrily returned to his drink, swearing with the foulest language, which was unusual for him. ‘Never lends me his Two Figures painting and now he wants this!’”

In 1991 Joule was with Bacon in a Marylebone cafe when Freud walked in: “I saw Francis stiffen … Lucian did a double-take, but marched right past him. Later I quizzed Francis about what just happened, as I was sure Francis was up for a Freud rapprochement. He just sighed.”

Joule said that Bacon was happy to be recorded, insisting only that Joule wait 12 years after his death before making the conversations public.

The artist also gave Joule works of art, including 1,200 sketches from his studio, whose worth was estimated at £20m in 2004 when Joule donated them to the Tate, one of its most generous gifts. He kept about 120 drawings, which he is exhibiting in Italy at the Villa Fiorentino museum in Sorrento from May to October. The recording of Bacon discussing Freud will be featured.

THE GUARDIAN