Art Sales: the Francis Bacon mystery grows

Colin Gleadell, The Telegraph, April 19, 2016

An exhibition titled Francis Bacon/Darren Coffield opened in London last week, reviving the debate about the authenticity of a hoard of large-scale drawings purportedly made and signed by Bacon and given, it is claimed, by the artist to Italian journalist Cristiano Locatelli Ravarino, in about 1989. 

 

According to Alice Herrick, whose gallery is hosting the exhibition, the drawings she is showing were part of that gift, and then given or lent by Ravarino to David Edwards, the brother of John Edwards, to whom Bacon left everything when he died in 1992.

 

Herrick, an artist and exhibition curator, specialises in showing works by living artists such as Darren Coffield, who makes up the other half of the exhibition. As a younger man, Coffield had frequented the Colony Room club in Soho, where Bacon and Edwards often drank, and is writing a book about it; hence the joint exhibition.

 

The authenticity of the Ravarino drawings has been frequently contested, and they are not to be included in the official Francis Bacon catalogue raisonné (catalogue of complete works) to be published by his estate this summer. Yet in this exhibition they are presented as authentic, fully catalogued works, and priced from £50,000 to £785,000 each.

 

As any market professional will tell you, for any painting or drawing purporting to be by an important modern artist to have any significant value, it should normally be listed in a catalogue raisonné, have a certificate of authenticity from the artist’s estate, or at least be recognised by authorised experts. Without these, they are virtually worthless. Neither Sotheby’s nor Christie’s has ever accepted any of the Ravarino Bacons for sale. But could they still have some kind of speculative value?

 

Herrick does not believe that their exclusion from the catalogue raisonné means they are fakes. “The estate may have rejected them,” she argues, “but they haven’t said they are fakes.” She points to a long list of supporters, mostly Italian critics, and including the British art historian Edward Lucie-Smith, who has described the drawings as “complete works” by Bacon, as opposed to studies, and to an exhibition history in which sections of the collection have been shown around the world, from Venice to Buenos Aires (curated by Lucie-Smith) and even to China.

 

There was also a court case in Ravarino’s home city, Bologna, brought by dissatisfied parties who had bought drawings from him and needed convincing they were by Bacon. In 2004, having heard evidence from a graphologist about the signatures, the judge declared his confidence that the drawings were genuine. Herrick has a catalogue (she calls it a catalogue raisonné) of some 400 drawings from the Ravarino collection in the gallery, with yet more to be added.

 

However, a judge at Cambridge county court more recently declared other drawings from Ravarino’s collection “not authentic Francis Bacon drawings”. This 2012 case centred around the bankruptcy of David Edwards and his sale in 2007 for £1.3 million of a dozen Bacon drawings and some photographs he had received from Ravarino. After the buyers asked for their money back and he couldn’t pay, Edwards was declared bankrupt.

 

Subpoenaed to appear as an expert witness, Martin Harrison, editor of the forthcoming Bacon catalogue, told the court the drawings were “merely pastiches, or even parodies, and profoundly disrespectful of Bacon’s authentic body of work”. The court estimated their value at a mere £480 in all, or about £40 each.

 

There is a growing feeling in the market that the Bacon estate, controlled by stained-glass artist, Brian Clarke, which has the right to declare them fakes or not, should make a statement about the Ravarino drawings, one way or another.