In January 2004, London's Tate Gallery announced the acquisition of what the press release cautiously puts it in an extensive collection of "Francis Bacon-related material".

At the time, when it was important to put the gift from the artist's close friend, Barry Joule, in a good light, it was said that there were "more than 1,200 objects" from the studio of the artist, who died in 1992.

Among them were sketches, photographs spattered with paint, clippings from newspapers and magazines painted over, and books.

Joule, a Canadian by birth who moved into the house next to Bacon's studio in 1978, befriended him and been of help to him in the last years of his life as a go-to man, said the artist gave him this material just before his death with the words: "You know

Gina Thomas

Features correspondent based in London.

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A valuation of twenty million pounds circulated in newspaper reports.

There was talk of one of the most generous donations in the more than hundred-year-old history of the Tate and of a completely new picture by the artist, because the existence of the artist's repeated assurances that he had made no preliminary drawings for his pictures belied.

Tate director Nicholas Serota promised "fascinating insights" into Bacon's working methods.

Unsuitable for exhibition and further storage

Eighteen years later, the museum has now announced that it intends to get rid of the entire bundle of "almost a thousand objects".

Research had raised "credible doubts about the nature and quality of the material".

It is "not suitable for any significant exhibition and any previous potential for increasing public understanding of Bacon's art has been exhausted".

Therefore it is not suitable for further preservation in the Tate archives.

Years of discussion and debate about the authenticity of the objects preceded this communication.

Most recently, Joule even went to the press threatening to take legal action against the museum to withdraw its donation because Tate failed to honor the agreement to issue the papers.

He also announced that some of Bacon's early paintings, as well as tape recordings of conversations with the artist and "a not inconsiderable amount" of other archival materials that he had originally intended to bequeath to the Tate, would now be donated to French institutions instead.

Joule melodramatically announced that he was now turning his back on Tate forever.

Great Britain would thus lose part of its national art history.

Joule's archive was controversial from the moment its existence became public four years after Bacon's death, not least because of the poor artistic quality of the sketches it contained.

Nevertheless, the problematic aspects of Tate's original communication could at best be read between the lines.

The museum announced in 2004 that it would study, photograph, catalog and make the collection available online over the next three years to enable comparisons with material secured from the studio that Bacon's estate administration at the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin, the artist's city of birth, holds , had donated.

The estate administration has always questioned the authenticity of the so-called Barry Joule archive.

She tried to prevent

that Francis Bacon's name was used in connection with the collection.

When the Irish Museum of Modern Art planned an exhibition of Joule's material in 2000, they finally settled on the title 'Works on Paper Attributed to Francis Bacon'.

Two years earlier, Bacon's heir, John Edwards, had legally challenged the archive's rights and Joule's ownership claim to the objects.