The Tate has acquired the contents of Francis Bacon’s chaotic studio, after a decade of controversy about it. “Art world legend insists that when Bacon died in 1992 the Tate was offered the studio by his heir and last companion, John Edwards, who died in Thailand last year. The gallery is said to have rejected the offer and the room, with every scrap of paper and cigarette stub forensically recorded, went to the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin, where it is a popular exhibit. The history of the material donated to the Tate is as eccentric as the artist.”