A titan of modern British art, Lucian Freud created some of the most instantly recognisable artistic portrayals of humanity that exist today.
Author William Feaver, who managed to gather hours upon hours of interviews from Freud, despite his saying he didn’t ever want a biography published, has released The Lives of Lucian Freud eight years after his death. Meanwhile, the Royal Academy is dedicating an exhibition purely to his self-portraits, as varied between them as with the rest of his portfolio.
Both of these give an insight into Freud as a reckless, selfish and dangerous artist, whose works unflinchingly reflect the people he chose to paint.
From the earlier days of smooth, linear brushwork to the highly expressive impasto paintings later on, we have gathered some of Freud’s most important works.
Girl with a White Dog (1951)
Girl with a White Dog is more typical of Freud’s early period, producing an effect that is less textured than his later work. The subject of the portrait is his first wife Kitty Garman when she was pregnant, pictured with a bull terrier they were given as a wedding present. Also the daughter of sculptor Jacob Epstein, she sat for many of Freud’s paintings during their brief marriage, which ended because of his continued affairs, namely with Lady Caroline Blackwood, who he would also marry.
Hotel Bedroom (1954)
Here is one of Freud’s best known paintings of Lady Caroline Blackwood, in which he depicts the couple in Parisian Hotel La Louisiane. In this painting she lies facing away from him and staring blankly into the distance, while he looks over her in shadow. It was painted not long before she left him, and shows the clear tension in their relationship. His menacing stance cuts a sinister silhouette, showing the self-deprecation in how he portrayed himself.
Reflection (Self-portrait) (1985)
Freud is one of the few 20th century artists to create such a steady stream of self-portraits. His 1985 work Reflection (Self-Portrait), is one of the most famous. He painted this when he was 63 years old, a stark reflection of himself cast in dramatic light. The smoothness of the background accentuates the contours in his face, a technique achieved through cleaning his brush after each stroke to keep the colour constantly changing.
Naked Man, Back View (1991-92)
Nudes constitute a large portion of Freud’s portraits, and he was never coy about who he was depicting. Naked Man, Back View is of performance artist and designer Leigh Bowery. Usually seen in flamboyant clothes and make-up, this account of him, disrobed, revealing and vulnerable, shows him without any of his trademark theatricality. He posed regularly for Freud over four years, until he died from an Aids-related illness in 1994. He said of Freud: “I love the psychological aspect of his work – in fact, I sometimes felt as if I had been undergoing psychoanalysis with him... His work is full of tension. Like me, he is interested in the underbelly of things.”
Benefits Supervisor Sleeping (1995)
Benefits Supervisor Sleeping is one of the portraits to feature another of Freud’s muses, Big Sue (aka Sue Tilley). He painted a large number of pictures of her between 1994 and 1996, having been introduced to each other by Bowery. Tilley was a close friend of Bowery and wrote a biography Leigh Bowery: The Life and Times of an Icon. Four years after Freud’s death, the painting sold for a whopping £35.8 million.
Lucian Freud: The Self-portraits runs from October 27-January 26 2020 at the Royal Academy of Arts, royalacademy.org.uk
