About People Lucian Freud 1 Enduring Understanding Students

About People Lucian Freud 1

Enduring Understanding Students will understand that artworks do encapsulate themes of identity and relationships in a variety of ways 2

Essential Questions Overarching Questions - What is an identity? - How can relationships within a family or society be shaped? - How artists form identity or relationships with their art? Topical Questions - Is nakedness nudity? - How is an artwork autobiographical? 3

Biographical Outline 1922: 1933: 1938 -39: Born in Berlin, Germany. Escaped to UK from Nazism. Arrival of grandfather Sigmund Freud in London and death of Sigmund Freud. 1939 -42: Studied at Central School of Arts and Craft in Holborn and East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing. 1942 -43: Attended Goldsmiths College, University of London. 1946: Spent two months in Paris. 1966: Served at North Atlantic convoy for three months. 2007: The highest paid living artist for the work Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, 1995. 4

When (1922 - ) 1933 -45: The Third Reich (Germany under Hitler). 1939: World War II began. 1856 -1939: Sigmund Freud. 1941: Lucian Freud sailed with Merchant Navy convoy for three months. 1945: He met Francis Bacon. 1970: The demise of his father. 1989: The demise of his mother. 5

Where Germany The rise of Nazism which is also a form of fascism. It refers to the ideology and practices National Socialists German Workers Party under Adolf Hitler. The Nazis believe themselves as the master race and purged the Jewish by mass killings- also known as the Holocaust UK There’s a sudden and renewed interest in figural painting among some artists like Freud and Bacon, despite the trend then was steering away from that. 6

Which Freud is often called the greatest realist painter of the 20 th century. While that description holds true, it also separates him from the mainstream of art history during the modern period, when abstraction and other non-objective styles were in ascendance. A contrarian who always went his own way, Freud felt no compunction to respond to movements or trends. For many decades his work was little known outside of a circle of aficionados in Britain. Then, in the 1980 s, when a new international development known as New Figuration or Neo-Expressionism signaled a move toward painterly figuration, many in the art world began to pay attention to Freud. 7

His Painting- Early Work The Painter’s Room 1943 -44, with its ripped couch, frazzled yucca and red and yellow zebra’s head reaching in through the window, is a classic Surrealist array of the implausible and theatrical. The Painter’s Room, 1943 -44 Oil on canvas, 62. 2 x 76. 2 cm Private Collection 8

What Subject Matter- His Early Works • Horses- they were usually drawings. • Portraits- concentration on the face with downcast eyes. His early portraits seem to show what’s beyond the face, revealing some inner states of mind. It shows signs of psychological atmosphere. • Group Portraits- his group portraits do not show relationships between members of the group but separate existence of individuals. 9

What Subject Matter- His Mature Works • They are classified into two main categories- naked portraits and portrait heads. • They are usually the people in his life- family members and friends (people that interest him and people that he cares for). To quote him, “Whom else can I hope to portray with any degree of profundity? ” (Smee, 2007). • The emotional connections with his subject matter directs him to a deep and concentrated involvement. He would paint the same sitters again and again, so he can understand them mentally and physically. • His models would sit for him for hours and successively on a daily basis. • He never dictates their poses, nor compose his pictures. • There also other subject matter like, animals, plants, and observed in close quarters. 10

What Theme- His Mature Works • These portraits are often awkward rather than idealized. • They are reflections of their human nature with the absence of “theatrical poses” or “symbolical props” or “narrative devices” (Figura, 2008). • They are concentrated on the faces, with “close-in descriptions of heads, often with downcast eyes” (Smee, 2007). • The poses of his portraits are never theatrical. • Props are usually stuff that happens to be in his studio and they are never symbolical. • His portraits are not meant to flatter the sitter or promote public personae. • Hence, they are not traditional portraits in that sense. 11

What Theme- His Naked Works • Freud’s figures are labelled as naked, not nudes. They are unflattering. • They are grossly frank than erotic, crude than beguiling. • Their poses- “unusual vantage point, angular limbs, foreshortened faces and tortured body language” subverts traditional nudes. • They seem to be projected with an animalistic sexualism, which reminds one of his grandfather’s proposition that man exists to fulfil basic desires, (much like the animals). • His naked portraits are not in adoration of nudity but rather to emphasize on the rawness of the naked body. 12

What - Subversive of Traditional Nudes Normally I underplay facial expression when painting the figure, because I want expression to emerge through the body. I used to do only heads, but came to feel that I relied too much on the face. I want the head, as it were, to be more like another limb. Small Naked Portrait, 1973 -74 Oil on canvas, 22 x 27 cm Ashmolean Museum - Lucian Freud 13

His Paintings of Kathleen Garman Kitty, the daughter of Jacob Epstein and Kathleen Garman, reappears in Lucian Freud's portraits over the course of five years - clutching a kitten, head under leaves or on the pillow. Girl with Kitten, 1947 -48 Oil on canvas, 105 x 74. 5 cm British Council Collection 14

Girl with Leaves, 1948 Pastel on gray paper. 15

From the outset Girl with Roses establishes a scale and ambition that is life-size. She and Freud married in February 1948. Newly pregnant, Kitty sits stiffly, her eyes averted in a dead stare. She clutches a rose, and another lies limp in her lap. A yellow-pink breed, renamed the 'Peace Rose' at the end of the war, it is more than the traditional love token and, like the glimmer of Kitty's teeth, adds a hint of menace. Girl with Roses, 1947 -48 Oil on canvas, 105 x 74. 5 cm British Council Collection 16

Girl with Roses, 1947 -48 (explanations) Kitty's grip on the rose is matched by Freud's grip on the brush. This infers a kind of passive purity in Freud's early style - the linearity, thin application of paint and cool palette - andapplauds its 'homogenous, even legibility and a sea-washed cleanliness', yet here the subject's vitality is picked out with needling precision. From the stray curls across the forehead to the tweezered eyebrows, the reflection of a sash window in each eye, the frayed cane of the chair and the birth¬mark on the raised hand, ultimately the 'girl' of the title becomes Kitty in the definite article. Freud explains, 'I was trying for accuracy of a sort. I didn't think of it as detail. It was simply, through my concentration, a question of focus. I always felt that detail - where one was conscious of detail - was detrimental. ’ Girl with Roses is as much a love portrait of Freud's painter heroes as of Kitty. It unfolds from the rose at its centre, a nod to the straightforward flower paintings of Cedric Morris, under whom Freud studied at the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing (1939 -42). Petals rebound in the pale twist of Kitty's lips, the bloom of her skirt, and finally the ochre folds in the background, which call to mind an Ingres. Freud admits, 'You get really excited about an Ingres fold in a curtain because you don't think that so much can be said in such an incisive and economical way. ’ With Kitty's sweater, its ribbed neck and cuffs and gently contoured stripes (black stippling was a tip from advertising, to make the green buzz) are defined incisively and economically - an understanding of fabric perhaps aided by a commission to create designs for dress fabrics for Asher (London) Ltd in 1946. Freud explains, 'The effect in space of two different human individuals can be as different as the effect of a candle and an electric light bulb. Therefore the painter must be concerned with the air surrounding his subject as with the subject itself. So, Kitty is viewed in prickly proximity, a halo of individual hairs reach out from her head, nervy with static. 17

This picture shows the artist’s first wife when she was pregnant. The style of the painting has roots in the smooth and linear portraiture of the great nineteenth-century French neoclassical painter, Ingres. This, together with the particular psychological atmosphere of Freud’s early work, led the critic Herbert Read to make his celebrated remark that Freud was ‘the Ingres of Existentialism’. Girl with a White Dog, 1950 -51 (appeared in 2009 paper) Oil on canvas, 95. 4 x 120 cm Tate Gallery, London The sense that Freud gives of human existence as essentially lonely, and spiritually if not physically painful, is something shared by his great contemporaries, Francis Bacon and the sculptor Alberto Giacometti. 18

Girl with a White Dog, 1950 -51 (explanations) The sitter was the artist's first wife Kathleen, daughter of Epstein and Kathleen Garman. She appears in many of his early pictures. Since the end of the Second World War, Lucian Freud has been the practitioner of a consistent realism based on working directly from the model. Yet his paintings also have an intensely personal character, an atmosphere of psychological revelation and force that goes far beyond the simple rendering of the presence of the model. (With Sigmund Freud as his grandfather, this aspect of his talent may not be surprising. ) His paintings make statements about human existence, and also, perhaps incidentally, about the nature of painting and the business of being a painter; it is that, as much as any other ingredient, that makes them such extraordinary and compelling art. Freud's career has so far fallen into two quite distinct parts. Up to about 1958 he worked in the smooth tightly focused manner exemplified in this picture. After that his handling of paint became much freer and the slight stylisations that can be detected in, for example, the treatment of the eyes and mouth of the model in 'Girl with a White Dog' disappear. This is the last of the series of portraits of his first wife, Kitty, which Freud had begun at the end of the 1940 s. It shows Kitty, her wedding ring displayed on her left hand, curled up on a striped mattress on the floor, with a white bull terrier, one of a pair they were given as a wedding present. It is painted in an extraordinarily detailed style which, combined with the emphasis on Kitty’s features, heightens the look of painful loneliness in her face. 19

His Paintings Freud won a prize for this painting, commissioned for the Arts Council’s exhibition Sixty Paintings for 51, as part of the Festival of Britain. The canvas, unusually large for the post war period when canvas was still in short supply, was provided by the Arts Council. The painting itself conveys a sense of the anxiety and want associated with the last years of rationing. A sort of double portrait, it shows Harry Diamond, an East-Ender who at the time was working as a stage-hand, standing by a potted plant. Diamond complained bitterly while posing, but Freud was stimulated by his resentful aggressiveness: ‘He said I made his legs too short: the whole thing was that his legs were too short. He was aggressive as he had a bad time being brought up in the East End and being persecuted. ’ The red carpet was bought especially for the painting, from a junk shop, and Freud was particularly proud of the way he painted it. Through the window is the Grand Union Canal and the area of London known at Little Venice. Despite its clear avoidance of the celebratory tones of the Festival of Britain, the painting was one of five awarded a £ 500 purchase prize. Interior at Paddington, 1952 Oil on canvas, 152. 4 x 114. 3 cm 20

His Paintings Francis Bacon painted a large full-length portrait of Lucian Freud in 1951, which was exhibited at the Hanover Gallery in December 1951. The two artists have been friends for many years. Francis Bacon, 1952 Oil on metal, 17. 8 x 12. 7 cm Tate Gallery, London 21

His Paintings John Minton was a painter and illustrator who taught at the Royal College of Art, where he advocated the tradition of figure painting, although by the early 1950 s, when this portrait was painted, his work had become unfashionable. He is probably now best remembered for his illustrations to Elizabeth David’s Mediterranean Food. Minton commissioned this portrait from Freud in 1952, after he had seen Freud’s portrait of Francis Bacon. His face seems full of regret, and the painting of his eyes suggests deep unhappiness. Minton committed suicide in 1957; he bequeathed this portrait to the Royal College of Art. Portrait of John Minton, 1952 Oil on canvas, 40 x 25. 4 cm Collection Royal College of Art 22

The beginning of change This painting show the change of style in Freud’s work during the 1950 s. He became impatient with his earlier habit of working sitting down, painting in great detail on fine canvas with small, soft sable brushes. Instead he began working standing up, painting in a looser style with larger, hogshair brushes. Freud said that Hotel Bedroom 1954 was ‘the last painting where I was sitting down; when I stood up I never sat down again’. This double portrait shows Freud, with his second wife, Caroline Blackwood, whom he had married in 1953; the marriage was dissolved in 1957. Hotel Bedroom, 1954 Oil on canvas, 91. 1 x 61 cm The Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Canada 23

This is a study of Bernardine Coverley, pregnant with Bella. The sofa is one of a long line of ageing pieces of furniture which have become a familiar feature of Freud’s work; he has always disliked furniture which looks brand new. Pregnant Girl, 1960 -61 Oil on canvas, 91. 5 x 71 cm Private Collection 24

His Paintings Reflection with two children (Self-Portrait), 1965 Oil on canvas, 91. 5 x 91. 5 cm Museo Thyssen. Bornemisza, Madrid 25

His Paintings Naked Girl, 1966 Oil on canvas, 61 x 61 cm Private Collection 26

His Paintings Buttercups, 1968 Oil on canvas, 27

His Paintings Naked Girl Asleep II, 1968 Oil on canvas, 55. 8 x 55. 8 cm Private Collection 28

His Paintings Large Interior, Paddington, 1968 Oil on canvas, 183 x 122 cm Collection Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid 29

His Paintings The Painter’s Mother III, 1972 Oil on canvas, 32. 4 x 23. 5 cm Private Collection 30

His Paintings Naked Man with Rat, 1977/78 Oil on canvas, 91. 5 x 91. 5 cm Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth 31

His Paintings Esther, 1980 Oil on canvas, 48. 9 x 38. 3 cm Private Collection 32

His Paintings Night Portrait, 1985 -86 Oil on linen, 92. 7 x 76. 2 cm Joseph H. Hirshhorn Purchase Fund 33

His Paintings Girl with Closed Eyes, 1986 -87 Oil on canvas, 45. 9 x 58. 7 cm Private Collection 34

His Paintings Living by the Rags, 1989 -92 Oil on canvas, 138. 7 x 184. 1 cm Astrup Fearnley Collection, Oslo Norway 35

His Paintings Nude with Leg Up (Leigh Bowery), 1992 Oil on linen, 182. 9 x 229 cm Joseph H. Hirshhorn Purchase Fund 36

What- Nude with Leg Up • Leigh Bowery was a performance and disguise artist, fashion designer and bandleader. • He died of AIDS in 1994, at the age of 33. • He sat for Freud since 1990 and the artist finds his easiness and confidence perfect to capture the essence of his subjects. • Bowery is lying on the wooden floor with his right leg resting on a green and beige striped mattress which is on a metal bed. • His right leg is bent at an angle and his body/torso is propped up with a mountain of cloth at his back. • The body is heavy but calm, while the eyes are directed towards Freud with an expressionless matter-of-fact gaze. • His wide-opened legs exposes his genitalia with “unpretentious shamelessness”, as if telling the viewer to accept it as part and parcel of nature. 37

His Paintings Naked Man Back View, 1992 Oil on linen Freud and Leigh Bowery at his studio. 38

His Painting Fat Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, 1995 Oil on canvas, 150 x 250 cm Private Collection 39

What- Benefits Supervisor Sleeping • The model is Sue Tilley, a London Jobcentre supervisor. • Freud refers her rather affectionately as ‘Big Sue’. • Her size has the capacity to render “amazing craters” as he calls it. • She is stretched over a shabby-looking sofa. And her physical presence is imposing. • This painting is a world record as the most expensive painting ever auctioned by a living artist. • It costs a whooping $33. 64 million. 40

His “After” Large Interior, W 11 (After Watteau), 1981 -83 Oil on canvas, 186 x 198 cm Private Collection Pierrot Content, 1712 Oil on canvas, 35 x 31 cm by Jean-Antoine Watteau Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid 41

His Afters Jean- Antoine Watteau (1684 - 1721) • A French Rococan painter who was recognized as the man who invented the genre of (fêtes galantesscenes of country and idyllic charm, suffused with an air of theatricality), of rich aristocrats in the 18 th C (app. 1715 -70). • Watteau earns from his private clients but he also wanted the recognition from Académie des Beaux. Arts. • The academy ranked scenes of everyday lives and portraits (paintings that are desired most by private patrons) lower than those bearing themes of history and mythology. • Watteau found his way around this by painting for patrons but placing them in scenes that looked like 42 mythical Arcadia.

After Watteau The Scale of Love, 1715 -18 Oil on canvas, 50. 8 x 59. 7 cm by Jean-Antoine Watteau National Gallery, London In Mezattin’s Costume, 1720 -21 Oil on canvas, 28 x 21 cm by Jean-Antoine Watteau The Wallace Collection, London 43

His Drawing- Early Work Palmtree, 1944 Pastel, chalk and ink on paper, 61. 5 x 43. 5 cm Freud Museum, London 44

His Drawing- Mature Work The Painter’s Mother Dead, 1989 Charcoal on paper, 33 x 24. 4 cm The Cleveland Museum of Art 45

His Etching- Mature Work Lord Goodman in his Yello Pyjamas, 1987 Etching with watercolour on paper, 31 x 40. 2 cm The Whitworth Art Gallery 46

His Etching- Mature Work Large Head, 1993 Etching, 79. 4 x 63. 5 cm Mo. MA, New York 47

Why His Background Freud was the second son of Ernst Freud, an architect who had practised art with a style that’s aligned with the Vienna Secession. His grandfather was the legendary Sigmund Freud, who was the founder of pyschoanalysis. He came from an affluent background, with his home decked with prints from Hokusai and Dürer. His grandfather brought him artworks on his visits to Berlin for medical treatment. 48

Why His Background He admires his grandfather although he claims to not know much of his grandfather’s work in later years. Freud began drawing as a child with much pride and was developing ambitions to be an artist. He was an unruly child at school who were more at ease with animals than with other children. He often slept in the stables with the horses. He is also a notorious gambler, on horses. 49

Why His Belief He believes that art should be “true to life”. The result can be horrifying and disturbing. He thought of “truthfulness as revealing and intrusive, rather than rhyming and soothing. ” (Figura, 2008). He believes that his work is autobiographical- it is about himself, and his surroundings. His relatives (wives and children) and friends (Bacon and Bowery), his studio and his dog (Eli) are subject matter of his works, with the exception of works like Her Majesty, The Queen, 2000 -2001. 50

Why- His Influence Sigmund Freud (1856 -1939) Sigmund Freud- an Austrian Jew, Lucian’s grandfather. He was a legend in the field of psychology. He’s the father of psychoanalysis- a set of theories developed on human behaviour which involves investigation methods and treatment. Some concepts of psychoanalysis cover psychosexual and psychosocial developments, the unconscious, the stages of Id, ego and super-ego, libido and drive. He believes that neurosis is based in suppressed sexual desires and repressed childhood memories. And uses hypnosis to read the deep and dark subconscious of the mind. His book Interpretation of Dreams, 1899 was a great source of inspiration to the Surrealist artists. 51

Why- His Influence Francis Bacon (1909 - 1992) An Irish-born painter who lived in England. He’s a figural painter with an expressionistic style. His works reek with death. They were violent, explosive and risky endeavours. His human figures are reduced to lumps of meat and red bloody flesh. Bacon was a friend who encouraged Freud to “think more seriously about painting. ” (Figura, 2008). Bacon proposed hog’s hair paintbrushes to Freud and suggested that he should work 52 standing up than sitting down.

Why- His Influence Three Studies for a Crucifixion, 1962 by Francis Bacon Oil with sand on canvas, 198. 2 x 144. 8 cm Guggenheim Museum, USA 53

How- Etching • He started etching since 1946 which lasted till 1948. He never etched again until the year 1982. • His etchings and paintings are closely related which construct his understanding of aesthetics. • His etchings can occupy him for many months. • They are consistently in black. He has never even used aquatint for toning in his prints. • He thinks printmaking is like drawing with the elements of risk and surprise, which is enticing to him. 54

How- Drawing and Painting His Drawings • His drawings were hard-edged linear in style and controlled before it became more painterly. His Paintings • Freud has remained firm to using an old-fashion medium at a time that witnessed consecutively, counter-realistic movements. • He works in an extremely slow pace, eg: a painting can take from several months to a year to complete. • He cleans his paintbrush after each stroke to prevent the colour from bleeding into another. Or he uses different paintbrushes for different colours. • His paintings were initially immaculately linear and smooth. 55

How- Drawing and Painting His Paintings • He painted sitting down with sable brushes. • However, under the recommendation of Francis Bacon, he started to stand while painting and use hog’s hair brush. • He begins to use thicker impasto in his paintings from the 1950 s onwards. • His style is more random, more expressive and energetic in manner. 56

Summary Overview of Style Colour Mostly raw umber and granular pigment called cremnitz white which is known to yellow because of linseed oil. Strokes Linear and controlled in his earlier works. Athletic, energetic and expressive in his more mature works. Uses impasto too. Animalistic realism His figures are crudely naked like animals unaware of their nakedness. The skin looks raw and sallow. He would often clean his paintbrush after each stroke to prevent the colour from bleeding 57

Reference Figura, S. (2008). Lucian Freud: The Painter’s Etchings. The Museum of Modern Art: New York. Smee, S. (2007). Lucian Freud. Taschen: Köln, Germany. Schjeldahl, P. (2008). Let’s See: Writings on Art from the New Yorker. Thames and Hudson: London. ; Jagger, S. (2008). Lucian Freud’s Benefits Supervisor Sleeping sells for record $33 m. Times Online: UK http: //entertainment. timesonline. co. uk/tol/arts_and_ent ertainment /visual_arts/article 3928 http: //www. arthistoryarchive. com/arthistory/contempor ary/Lucian-Freud. html 58