The last time Barry Joule saw his friend Francis Bacon, it was 10 days before the celebrated painter’s death.

No one in the art world disputes that.

For over a decade before that spring day in 1992, Joule, a Canadian handyman with a rock-star mane, had been one of Bacon’s helpers, doing odd jobs around the artist’s London home and driving him to exhibitions. In Joule’s telling, the two became friends, and even went on the occasional “drunken bender” together.

No one disputes that, either.

What some do contest — fiercely — is a trove of papers and artworks that Joule says the artist gave him at that final meeting.

According to Joule, Bacon, then 82, handed over some bundles that included hundreds of newspaper and magazine cuttings, some of them with added brush strokes and paint splotches. Joule says Bacon also gave him an album of sketches, with drawings that look like the artist’s famous “screaming pope” paintings, and some canvases in the style of artists like Picasso or Dalí.

All those works, Joule insisted in hours of interviews, were by Bacon’s hand and are important historical documents. “It’s my rock-solid belief,” he said.