Lucian Michael Freud OM CH[1] (/frɔɪd/; 8 December 1922 – 20 July 2011) was a British painter and draughtsman, specialising in figurative art, and is known as one of the foremost 20th-century English portraitists. He was born in Berlin, the son of Jewish architect Ernst L. Freud and the grandson of Sigmund Freud. Freud got his first name “Lucian” from his mother in memory of the ancient writer Lucian of Samosata. His family moved to England in 1933 to escape the rise of Nazism. From 1942 to 1943 he attended Goldsmiths College, London. He served at sea with the British Merchant Navy during the Second World War.
His early career as a painter was influenced by surrealism, but by the early 1950s his often stark and alienated paintings tended towards realism.[2] Freud was an intensely private and guarded man, and his paintings, completed over a 60-year career, are mostly of friends and family. They are generally sombre and thickly impastoed, often set in unsettling interiors and urban landscapes. The works are noted for their psychological penetration and often discomforting examination of the relationship between artist and model. Freud worked from life studies, and was known for asking for extended and punishing sittings from his models.[3]
Later career[edit]
Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, 1995, a very large portrait of “Big Sue” Tilley, showing his handling of flesh tones, and a typical high viewpoint
Freud painted fellow artists, including Frank Auerbach and Francis Bacon and produced a large number of portraits of the performance artist Leigh Bowery. He also painted Henrietta Moraes, a muse to many Soho artists. A series of huge nude portraits from the mid-1990s depicted the very large Sue Tilley, or “Big Sue”, some using her job title of “Benefits Supervisor” in the title of the painting,[29] as in his 1995 portrait Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, which in May 2008 was sold by Christie’s in New York for $33.6 million, setting a world record auction price for a living artist.[30][31]
Freud’s most consistent model in his later years was his studio assistant and friend David Dawson, the subject of his final, unfinished work.[32] Towards the end of his life he did a nude portrait of model Kate Moss. Freud was one of the best known British artists working in a representational style, and was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1989.[33][34]
After Cézanne, 1999–2000, National Gallery of Australia
His painting After Cézanne, noteworthy because of its unusual shape, was purchased by the National Gallery of Australia for $7.4 million. The top left section of this painting has been ‘grafted’ on to the main section below, and closer inspection reveals a horizontal line where these two sections were joined.[35]
In 1996, the Abbot Hall Art Gallery in Kendal mounted a major exhibition of 27 paintings and thirteen etchings, covering Freud’s output to date. The following year the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art presented “Lucian Freud: Early Works”. The exhibition comprised around 30 drawings and paintings done between 1940 and 1945.[36] In 1997 Freud received the Rubens Prize of the city of Siegen.[37] From September 2000 to March 2001, the Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt was able to show 50 paintings, drawings and etchings from the late 1940s to 2000 in a larger overview exhibition despite the artist’s considerable resentment towards Germany.[38] All print media bore the motif of Freud’s outstanding painting Sleeping by the Lion Carpet (1995-1996) depicting the nude Sue Tilley.[39] In addition to some of his most important nude portraits of women, the large-format picture Nude with leg up (Leigh Bowery) from 1992 was also shown in Frankfurt, which was removed in the Metropolitan Museum New York from the exhibition in 1993.[40] The Frankfurt exhibition was realised in a personal dialogue between curator Rolf Lauter and Lucian Freud and is thus the only project Freud authorised in direct cooperation with a German museum.[41] The major retrospective at London’s Hayward Gallery in 1988 was the focal point for the BBC Omnibus programme which saw one of the very few conversations with Freud ever recorded, in this case with Omnibus director Jake Auerbach.[42] The conversations with the artist were made possible by Duncan MacGuigan from Acquavella Galleries New York. This was followed by a large retrospective at Tate Britain in 2002. In 2001, Freud completed a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. There was criticism of the portrayal in some sections of the British media.[43] In 2005, a retrospective of Freud’s work was held at the Museo Correr in Venice scheduled to coincide with the Biennale. In late 2007, a collection of etchings went on display at the Museum of Modern Art.[44]
