Lucian Freud: The Painter's Etchings

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Lucian Freud (British [born Germany], 1922–2011). Kai, 1991–92. Etching; plate: 27 1/2 x 21 5/8 in. (69.9 x 54.9 cm), sheet: 31 1/8 x 25 in. (79.1 x 63.5 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Bequest of William S. Lieberman, 2005 (2007.49.590)

I once attended a life drawing session in which Sue Tilley – the model in Freud’s painting Benefits Supervisor Resting and related etchings – answered questions from the audience as she modelled, inspired in part by her experience of chatting to Freud during her sittings. I found it almost impossible to draw her. Only later did I remember that in most of Freud’s portraits of Tilley she is asleep. The talking is indicative, however. It would take Freud several months and many sittings to complete a single etching, and in that period he was coming to understand the person’s features in motion over time. That hadn’t always been the case. Michael Wishart, the son of Freud’s lover Lorna Wishart, said that when Freud was young, you couldn’t blink while he was painting your thumb or he became ‘distressed’. The majority of Freud’s prints, made three and a half decades later, were part of a different way of working. ‘I was puzzled that he did not draw verifiably from a fixed position,’ Gowing reported after sitting for one of Freud’s first etchings. Freud explained: ‘I take readings from a number of positions because I don’t want to miss anything that could be of use to me. I often put in what is round the corner from where I see it.’ This accounts for the strange torsion in some of the etched portraits. They look at first like mangled bits of realism but are in fact stealthy works of cubism: many selves, many facets, many moments in one. They display two kinds of time: the time it took to make the work, and the person the portrait anticipates as a result of that long observation.In the early 1990’s I started my career in the art world, post University at Lumley Cazalet in London. They held an exhibition of a prominent and well-connected artist of the time, who had also briefly taught Lucian Freud. Lucian attended the opening, deferring to his tutor by also not staying long, thus not detracting the attention away from the artist. Lucian Freud was by this time arguably one of the greatest living artists, and now considered to be one of the major figurative painters of the 20 th century. Feaver, William (1996). Lucian Freud: Paintings and Etchings. Abbot Hall Art Gallery. ISBN 0-9503335-7-3 Gruen, John (1991). The Artist Observed: 28 Interviews with Contemporary Artists. a cappella books. ISBN 1-55652-103-0 These large-scale works exemplify the character of Freud’s prints as a whole. At first they seem bleak, merciless; after a while they begin to suggest a more compassionate inquiry, recalling Bernard’s observation that Freud’s work tests, but ultimately increases, our capacity to bear reality.

When I think of the work of Lucian Freud, I think of Lucian’s attention to his subject. If his concentrated interest were to falter he would come off his tightrope; he has no safety net of manner. Whenever his way of working threatens to become a style, he puts it aside like a blunted pencil and finds a procedure more suited to his needs. Freud died in London on 20 July 2011 and is buried in Highgate Cemetery. Archbishop Rowan Williams officiated at the private funeral. [44] Art market [ edit ] Jones, Jerene (24 April 1978). "Is Lucian Freud's Relationship with Mother Odd, or Is It Art?". People . Retrieved 22 July 2011.It was through Bowery that Freud met Sue Tilley, a British unemployment officer, in 1990. Tilley, known as "Big Sue," posed for Freud numerous times between 1993 and 1996, and soon became one of his most recognizable subjects. Freud had planned to make a painting of Tilley, but when she arrived at his studio badly sunburnt (a violation of the artist's rule that all his subjects avoid the sun during the time they pose for him), he decided to make the etching Woman with an Arm Tattooinstead. Freud was part of a group of figurative artists later named "The School of London". This was more a loose collection of individual artists who knew each other, some intimately, and were working in London at the same time in the figurative style (but during the boom years of abstract painting). The group was led by figures such as Francis Bacon and Freud, and included Frank Auerbach, Michael Andrews, Leon Kossoff, Robert Colquhoun, Robert MacBryde, Reginald Gray and Kitaj himself. He was a visiting tutor at the Slade School of Fine Art of University College London from 1949 to 1954.

Freud briefly studied at the Central School of Art in London, and from 1939 to 1942 with greater success at Cedric Morris' East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing in Dedham, relocated in 1940 to Benton End, a house near Hadleigh, Suffolk. He also attended Goldsmiths' College, part of the University of London, in 1942–43. He served as a merchant seaman in an Atlantic convoy in 1941 before being invalided out of service in 1942. Blond Girl’ and ‘Man Posing’ [ P77182] belong to a group of six etchings which Freud made in 1984–5. The other prints which Freud made at this time are: ‘Ib’, ‘Thistle’, ‘Girl Holding Her Foot’ and ‘Bruce Bernard’. With the exception of ‘Ib’, which was made in 1984, all these prints are dated 1985. A charming Christmas card of three boats Freud is thought to have made as a schoolboy and a striking study of a woman’s head that he decided not to publish are among pieces that will appear in the study. Other works in Lucian Freud: Catalogue Raisonné of the Prints, published by Modern Art Press on 24 May, show how Freud, who died in 2011, reworked compositions, erasing and revising areas that he did not like. It was Freud's practice to begin a painting by first drawing in charcoal on the canvas. He then applied paint to a small area of the canvas, and gradually worked outward from that point. For a new sitter, he often started with the head as a means of "getting to know" the person, then painted the rest of the figure, eventually returning to the head as his comprehension of the model deepened. [26] A section of canvas was intentionally left bare until the painting was finished. [26] The finished painting is an accumulation of richly worked layers of pigment, as well as months of intense observation. [26] 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 Smith, Roberta (14 December 2007). "Lucian Freud Stripped Bare". The New York Times . Retrieved 22 July 2011.Lucian Freud (British [born Germany], 1922–2011). The Egyptian Book, 1994. Etching; plate: 11 3/4 x 11 3/4 in. (29.8 x 29.8 cm), sheet: 16 3/4 x 18 1/2 in. (42.5 x 47 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Reba and Dave Williams Gift, 1995 (1995.146) Lucian Freud was a British artist, famous for his portraits and self-portraits painted in an expressive neo-figurative style. He was born in Berlin, the grandson of the revolutionary psychologist Sigmund Freud, and the son of an architect Ernst Freud and an art historian Lucie Brasch. Etching 695 × 545 (27 3/8 × 21 1/2) on Somerset Satin paper 883 × 715 (34 3/4 × 28 1/8); plate-mark 695 × 545 (27 3/8 × 21 1/2); printed by Terry Wilson at Palmtree Editions and published by James Kirkman Ltd, London and Brooke Alexander Inc., New York in an edition of 50 plus 15 artist's proofs

This phase of printmaking activity followed a series made three years earlier, which marked Freud's return to making prints after a gap of thirty-four years. In 1982 it had been suggested to Freud that he make a number of etchings to accompany a limited edition of Lawrence Gowing's monograph, Lucian Freud, published in the same year. As a result of this suggestion, Freud executed fourteen etchings. All these prints are portraits, mainly studies of heads seen in close-up. Freud's concern with this motif was continued in this second of phase of printmaking in 1984–5 (‘Ib’ and ‘Head of Bruce Bernard’ are both portraits). However, he also extended his range of subject matter to include botany (in ‘Thistle’) and, as ‘Blond Girl’ and ‘Man Posing’ demonstrate, to full-length studies of the naked human body. In this respect P77182 and P77183 both exemplify the principal subject of Freud's painting and are related to specific paintings. ‘Blond Girl’ relates to ‘Blond Girl, Night Portrait’, 1980–5 (repr. Bevan 1986, p.339), while ‘Man Posing’ is associated with ‘Painter and Model’, 1986–7 (repr. Lucian Freud Paintings, exh. cat., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 1987, pl.99 in col.). However, these prints are in no sense reproductions of the unique works. The prints were drawn from life at separate sittings from the related paintings and in both cases Freud commenced the paintings before the prints. Also, as comparison of the prints with the paintings reveals, there are differences in the treatment of the motif. In the case of ‘Blond Girl’, the print isolates the figure, omitting the settee which appears in the painting. In ‘Man Posing’, the spreadeagled male figure is the central subject of the print, whereas in the painting the same male figure is depicted in a similar pose but as part of a composition which also includes a standing female figure. Freud does not consider the identity of the models in either of these prints to be relevant to an appreciation of these works. Although all his images of people are taken from life, he draws a distinction between his studies using anonymous models and portraits of individuals whose identities are known or are revealed.My favourite etching, however, is the monumental head of Freud’s stepson, Kai, an image of overpowering proportions that conveys an air of proximate sorrow. Kai’s head is at least ten, if not twenty, times larger than the viewer’s. His gaze is cast towards the floor and the light catches his lashes. His shoulders have been adjusted but not cleaned up, leaving the remnant of a shrug along with a good few scratches on the plate. It’s a statue and a sketch at the same time. The more you look at it, the more compelling it becomes to try to resolve its irregularity. How is the liquidity in his face achieved? How do the random-seeming dashes on either side of his forehead amount to that contoured effect? Why this patterning on his shirt collar here and a different patterning there? And – lest you think it’s anything other than acutely observed – the angle of his eyeballs is a model of precision. Mark Brown, "Lucian Freud's final work to be shown in 2012 National Portrait Gallery show", The Guardian, 20 September 2011. Retrieved 29 January 2012. Dawson was Freud’s assistant and model from 1990 until the artist’s death in 2011. He posed regularly for Freud and appears in paintings such as Sunny Morning–Eight Legs 1997 (Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago). Dawson was himself a painter and a photographer who frequently photographed Freud at work. In a 2004 interview Dawson described how their relationship evolved: But Freud didn’t do any of that. He worked for months at a time on plates whose outcome was impossible to predict. If he didn’t like the final result, he would often ditch the plate altogether, sometimes sabotaging a year’s worth of work. ‘I suggested printing it differently,’ Marc Balakjian recalled of Naked Man on a Bed, jettisoned in 1987, ‘but he said it could not be saved; that what was wrong was the drawing.’ After the early foray of the 1940s, Freud never touched acid or ink himself, relying on printers such as Balakjian. Nor was he interested in any of the distinctive textural techniques etching offered. ‘I could do aquatint and lots of things but I don’t want to get into it that deep,’ he told Feaver. In a sense, Freud wasn’t really a printmaker at all. He was a gambler. The appeal of etching was that it allowed him to leave a great deal to chance. It’s easy to imagine him hovering in Balakjian’s studio, waiting to see how the print would come out. ‘He derives a mild satisfaction from winning,’ one of his sitters, Arnold Goodman, wrote, ‘but an absolutely perverse delight from losing.’ Freud normally covered all of a subject's tattoos, as he believed they distracted from the figure, yet ironically, he had great experience with them. He gave tattoos to numerous people, including the sailors he met when he was in the Navy and the supermodel Kate Moss, whose naked and pregnant portrait he painted in 2002.