Francis Bacon is widely regarded as one of the most significant post-war painters. From 1961, his studio at 7 Reece Mews, South Kensington, London, was both his home and his workplace, and, over time, the repository of thousands of items that were central to his art, the impetus for many of his most important paintings. The studio - with its extraordinarily rich contents untouched since Bacon"s death - was donated in 1998 by John Edwards to Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, where, after meticulous dismantling and reconstruction by archaeologists, conservators and curators, it is now on permanent display. The studio"s deconstruction revealed some 7500 objects, among them numerous well-thumbed, folded and torn photographs, many depicting Bacon"s friends and lovers; illustrated publications, including books and magazine articles on subjects as diverse as medicine, sport, wildlife and war; drawings, interventions and handwritten notes by Bacon; slashed canvases and his final,...