I recently visited Paris and took the opportunity to see the Francis Bacon exhibition at the Centre Pompidou. Titled Books and Paintings, it looks at how literary figures like TS Eliot, Joseph Conrad and Nietzsche shaped the painter’s work.

The Irish-born painter’s list of artistic influences is wide ranging, from Velázquez’s dark imagery to Picasso’s fragmented perspectives. However, it is literature that possibly had the most profound influence on Bacon’s art.

Bacon had a huge library in his London studio and he had books everywhere - on shelves and even scattered about the floor. Following his death in 1992, some 1,300 of his books passed into the ownership of Trinity College in Dublin, while nearby in the Hugh Lane Gallery you can see Bacon’s studio. In 1998, the Hugh Lane director Barbara Dawson secured the donation of the studio and it was moved to Ireland.

A team, led by conservator Mary McGrath, tagged and packed each of the items, including the dust. The walls, doors, floors and ceiling were also removed. The relocated studio opened to the public in 2001 and has been popular ever since.

I call it my imagination material. I need to visualise things that lead me to other forms

Over 7,000 items were found and these were catalogued on a specially designed database, comprising some 570 books and catalogues, 1,500 photographs, 100 slashed canvases, 1,300 leaves torn from books, 2,000 artist’s materials and 70 drawings.

In what proved to be one of the last interviews he gave, Bacon explained the importance of literature in shaping his work. Referring to his expansive library of books and photographs, he said: “I call it my imagination material. I need to visualise things that lead me to other forms, that lead me to visualise forms that lead me to other forms or subjects, details, images that influence my nervous system and transform the basic idea.”

Bacon was not an artist to be dictated to, and this is something that could also be said about many of the writers he admired most. Standing up to societal norms, values and dogmas can be identified as a theme running through much of their work.

Bacon’s railing against the norm possibly originated from his background. The son of a military captain who trained the winner of the 1911 Irish Grand National, Bacon was born in Dublin and lived until his teenage years here, mostly near Kilcullen in Co Kildare. His homosexuality was the cause of much angst in his family, especially with his father, and he left home at the age of 16 to live in London.

The Paris exhibition concentrates on the last 20 years of Bacon’s life, two decades that began with the tragic death of the artist’s lover and partner of eight years, George Dyer. A petty criminal, Dyer’s relationship with Bacon was both tender and brutal, and this is conveyed in one of the show’s centrepieces, the triptych In Memory of George Dyer.

In 1971, two days before the opening of Bacon’s retrospective at the Grand Palais in Paris, Dyer took his own life in the couple’s hotel room in the city. Putting Bacon’s fame at the time in some perspective, his works were commanding prices equal to those of Picasso, and the Irishman was at the height of his popularity. News of Dyer’s death was covered up in order not to take from the occasion of the most important show of Bacon’s career. The triptych paying homage to Dyer also reveals the artist’s guilt at not having been able to prevent his death.

Bacon saw the last years of his life as a means of telling his life story by way of his art

Most profound is the middle canvas; dark shadows and the figure of Dyer with a naked light bulb, about to climb the final steps to the hotel room. While grim in content, it is also very moving.

Bacon saw the last years of his life as a means of telling his life story by way of his art. If you get to see this show in Paris, you will be struck by Bacon’s use of strong vibrant colours, yellow, orange and pink among them, and a style that was summed up by one art historian as “immaculate”.

Bacon: Books and Painting runs at the Centre Pompidou in Paris until 20 January 2020 and includes about 60 of the artist’s paintings. If you are fortunate enough to be able to get to see this, it is also recommended that you also go to the El Greco exhibition at the Grand Palais. This runs until 10 February.

A final suggestion for a memorable trip is to eschew a visit to the Louvre and instead visit the nearby Musée d’Orsay. You will not be disappointed.

Take a moment to visit the website and have a sneak preview of what you can see for real in the Hugh Lane Gallery. Admission is free and the gallery is located at Charlemont House, Parnell Square North, Dublin 1, D01 F2X9.

To book tickets for the Paris exhibition and get your desired timeslot to visit, click here.