1980
26 April – 7 June: An exhibition of Bacon’s works is held at the Marlborough Gallery, New York.
In May and June, Bacon is in Paris. During his stay, he and John Edwards visit Eddy Batache and Reinhard Hassert in their flat at 32 rue Saint-Guillaume in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighbourhood.
In November, Bacon travels to Paris and Monaco.
On 11 December, Sonia Orwell dies. She has been a member of Bacon’s circle of friends since the early 1950s and helped introduce him to the Parisian artistic and literary scene in the 1970s. On 18 December, Bacon attends her funeral, together with Michel and Louise Leiris.
1981
In early March, Bacon is in Paris.
On 27 March, his sister Winifred dies.
In April, Bacon travels to the South of France with Denis Wirth-Miller and Richard Chopping. At the end of the month, he stays in the Hotel des Saints-Pères, Paris.
In May, Michel Leiris publishes ‘Bacon le hors-la-loi’ (Bacon the Outlaw) in No. 408 of the magazine Critique.
The French philosopher Gilles Deleuze publishes Francis Bacon, logique de la sensation (an English edition entitled Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation is to be published in 2003).
In July, Bacon makes a trip to Normandy with Eddy Batache and Reinhard Hassert. They visit Étretat, Le Havre and Deauville.
In October, Bacon goes to Paris, then to Venice.
In November, Bacon pays a personal tribute to his friend Michel Leiris in a text published in the magazine L’Ire des vents, edited by Yves Peyré and travels around France with Eddy Batache and Reinhard Hassert, stopping off in Vézelay and Avallon, in Burgundy, then in Monaco.
© Eddy Batache
1982
On 22 January, Bacon visits the Walter Sickert exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, London, with David Sylvester and his friends, Michael and Geraldine Leventis.
In April and June, Bacon goes to Paris. On 16 June, he has lunch with Michel Leiris.
On 11 October, Bacon is filmed in his Reece Mews studio with William Burroughs for an interview produced by the BBC and broadcast as part of its television series Arena.
On 12 October, Bacon and the writer and broadcaster Daniel Farson lunch together to discuss a book Farson wants to write about the artist.
In December, Bacon spends Christmas in Monaco.
1983
Michel Leiris publishes Francis Bacon, face et profil (an English edition entitled Francis Bacon: Full Face and in Profile is also published in 1983).
In February, Bacon travels to Brittany, then Provence, with Denis Wirth-Miller and Richard Chopping. They stay at the Hotel Cézanne in Aix-en-Provence.
On 5 April, Bacon and David Sylvester dine with the banker and eminent art collector Gilbert de Botton.
From 18 to 28 May, Bacon travels in South Africa.
30 June – 14 August: Bacon has his first exhibition in Japan, at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. The exhibition then travels to the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto (13 September – 10 October) and the Aichi Prefectural Art Gallery, Nagoya (12 – 28 November). Bacon does not visit the exhibitions.
In September, Bacon gives up his house at 68 Queen’s Road, Wivenhoe.
In October, Bacon declines Queen Elizabeth II’s offer of the medal of the Order of Merit. In the course of his career, he refuses many prizes and distinctions.
In November, Bacon is in Paris with Denis Wirth-Miller, Richard Chopping, Eddy Batache and Reinhard Hassert.
In late December, Bacon and Edwards go to Tangier.
1984
18 January – 25 February: a show of sixteen of Bacon’s paintings is organised at the Galerie Maeght-Lelong, Paris. The catalogue includes texts by Jacques Dupin and Michel Leiris and an interview with Francis Bacon by David Sylvester.
In March, a documentary on Bacon, The Brutality of Fact, is produced by Michael Blackwood for the BBC. It is broadcast in the television programme Arena, on BBC 2, on 16 November.
On 2 May, Bacon goes to New York by Concorde with Edwards for his exhibition at the Marlborough Gallery from 5 May to 5 June.
1985
11 – 12 April: The British writer and media personality Melvyn Bragg interviews Bacon for The South Bank Show, broadcast on ITV on 11 June.
22 May – 18 August: A second Bacon retrospective comprising 125 of his artworks is mounted at the Tate Gallery, London. The exhibition subsequently travels to Germany; the Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart (19 October 1985 – 5 January 1986) and the Nationalgalerie, Berlin (7 February – 31 March 1986). Sir Alan Bowness, the director of the Tate Gallery, describes Bacon as ‘the greatest living painter’.
29 May – 31 July: An exhibition devoted to Bacon is shown at Marlborough Fine Art, London.
In early July, Bacon and Denis Wirth-Miller go to Paris.
Over the summer, Bacon and John Edwards travel to Tangier.
In October, Bacon visits Cannes, then Provence, with Denis Wirth-Miller. They then travel to Morocco.
23 October – 15 December: the National Gallery, London, organises the exhibition ‘Francis Bacon: The Artist’s Eye’, for which Bacon selects eighteen paintings from the museum’s collection.
In November, Bacon goes to Frankfurt, Germany, with Eddy Batache and Reinhard Hassert.
1986
On 21 March, Valerie Beston, John Edwards and Bacon go to Berlin to attend the Bacon retrospective at the Nationalgalerie. Gilbert Lloyd, the director of Marlborough Fine Art, travels with them.
From 4 to 16 June, Bacon and Edwards stay at the Hotel Balmoral, Monaco.
In July, Bacon reaches Paris and stays at the Hotel Pont Royal for a week. He receives Eddy Batache and Reinhard Hassert in his studio. Together, they visit the Rodin museums in Paris and Meudon.
11 July – 27 August: Bacon’s work is shown in the group exhibition ‘Images du corps’, Aix-en-Provence.
From 6 to 16 October, Bacon spends ten days with his sister Ianthe in Nice and Monaco.
1987
In January, Bacon stays at the Hotel Balmoral, Monaco, for three weeks.
In late February, Bacon arrives at the same hotel for a stay of about a month, before going travelling with Denis Wirth-Miller and Richard Chopping. In March, he dines with his friends Zoe and John Pelling at their home at 6 avenue de Grande-Bretagne, Monte Carlo. John Pelling is an artist and Anglican priest with whom Bacon regularly spends time both in London and Monaco.
A lung inflammation forces Bacon to return to London.
In June, he gives up his Paris pied-à-terre.
In mid-August, he is in Paris to sign lithographs at the Galerie Lelong.
In August, he meets José Capelo, a Madrid banker.
In late September, Bacon and Edwards stay at the Hotel Pont Royal, Paris, until the beginning of October. During their stay, they dine with Jacques Dupin and others at the École des Beaux-Arts.
30 September – 22 November: An exhibition devoted to Bacon is held by the Galerie Lelong, Paris, showing eleven paintings by the artist. After this small exhibition, the French media refer to the ‘Bacon myth’ and the newspaper Le Monde publishes an article about the exhibition on its front page.
On 18 October, Bacon is in Madrid with his friend José Capelo.
1988
In late June, Bacon goes to Paris and sees Michel Leiris, Eddy Batache and Reinhard Hassert.
22 September – 6 November: An exhibition of 22 paintings by Bacon is held at the Central House of the Union of Artists, the New Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. This is the first time a British artist has been exhibited in Soviet Russia. Bacon does not attend due to his fragile health, but John Edwards represents him.
From 15 to 30 November, Bacon stays in Monaco. He sees the Pellings several times, dining with them at the Pulcinella or the Pinocchio, or spending time at the Café de Paris.
Bacon paints Second Version of Triptych 1944 (1988), which he is to give to the Tate Gallery in 1991.
1989
In late January, Francis Bacon goes to Paris for a few days.
Diana Watson, Francis Bacon’s favourite cousin and one of his first patrons, dies on 10 February.
12 October 1989 – 7 January 1990: A major retrospective of Bacon’s work featuring nearly 60 paintings is mounted at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC, United States; it goes on to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (11 February – 29 April 1990), then the Museum of Modern Art, New York (23 May – 28 August 1990).
27 October – 18 November: Marlborough Fine Art, London, devotes an exhibition to Bacon to celebrate the artist’s eightieth birthday.
In late December, Bacon goes to Seville, Spain, for five days to see José Capelo.
