Lucian Freud by ACC Art Books

First published on the occasion of the exhibition Lucian Freud: The Self-portraits Royal Academy of Arts, London 27 October 2019 – 26 January 2020 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 1 March – 25 May 2020 Exhibition organised by the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in collaboration with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Exhibition Catalogue Royal Academy Publications Florence Dassonville, Production Co-ordinator Rosie Hore, Project Editor Carola Krueger, Production Manager Peter Sawbridge, Editorial Director Nick Tite, Publisher Design: Jon Kielty Typset in Gellix and Louize Colour origination: DawkinsColour Printed in Belgium by Graphius Copyright © 2019 Royal Academy of Arts, London

Lead supporter

Generous support from

Supported by Ömer Koç This exhibition has been made possible as a result of the Government Indemnity Scheme. The Royal Academy of Arts would like to thank HM Government for providing indemnity and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and Arts Council England for arranging the indemnity.

Any copy of this book issued by the publisher is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including these words being imposed on a subsequent purchaser. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. British Library Cataloguingin-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Contents

9 Foreword 10 Acknowledgements

ISBN 978-1-912520-06-0

Artistic Director, Royal Academy of Arts, London Tim Marlow Director, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Matthew Teitelbaum Exhibition Curators Royal Academy of Arts, London David Dawson Jasper Sharp Andrea Tarsia with Rebecca Bray Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Akili Tommasino with Dakota DeVos Exhibition Organisation Royal Academy of Arts, London Elana Woodgate with Lucy Davis Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Patrick McMahon with Valentine Lescar, Jill Kennedy-Kernohan and Darcey Moore Photographic and Copyright Co-ordination Susana Vázquez Fernández

Distributed outside the United States and Canada by ACC Art Books Ltd, Sandy Lane, Old Martlesham, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 4SD Distributed in the United States and Canada by ARTBOOK | D.A.P., 155 Sixth Avenue, New York NY 10013 Editorial notes Unless otherwise stated, all illustrated works of art are by Lucian Freud (1922–2011). All dimensions are given in centimetres, height before width (before depth). Illustrations Cover: detail of cat. 39 Page 2: detail of cat. 19 Pages 4–5: detail of cat. 44 Page 8: detail of cat. 8 Page 11: detail of cat. 54 Page 12: Freud working at night, 2005. Photograph by David Dawson Page 16: Freud admiring Velázquez’s Las Meninas (1656) with Lady Jane Willoughby and William Acquavella, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, 2010. Photograph by David Dawson Page 28: detail of cat. 59 Page 40: detail of cat. 24 Page 50: detail of cat. 35 Page 134: Freud shaving, 2006. Photograph by David Dawson. Private collection

13 ‘One Must Fasten One’s Gaze’ David Dawson 17 The Presence of the Past Joseph Leo Koerner 29 Painting Oneself Inside Out: On Freud’s ‘Painter Working, Reflection’ Jasper Sharp 41 The Anarchic Idea of Coming from Nowhere Sebastian Smee 51 Catalogue 135 Chronology Rebecca Bray 144 Endnotes 146 Selected bibliography 147 List of lenders 147 Photographic credits 148 Index

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Contents

9 Foreword 10 Acknowledgements

ISBN 978-1-912520-06-0

Foreword

The tradition of artists depicting themselves in their work – in disguise, at work, as hero, genius or tormented soul – is a long one. Yet Freud is one of few painters of the twentieth century who returned to it so consistently. Born in Germany, he moved to the UK and breathed new life into portraiture, a quintessentially British genre. Against the tide of his times he painted figurative paintings at the easel and indoors, reinvigorating the tradition of the nude, of providing an equivalent for flesh in paint. It is perhaps not surprising that his engagement with self-portraiture should equally push at its boundaries. Seen retrospectively they offer biographical glimpses and are imbued with an existential charge that charts a life’s journey, from boy to old man. Yet they also possess an elusive, mischievous quality that equally distances, holding presence and absence in tantalising balance. Through them we travel to the core of Freud’s practice and process, to what he once described as ‘the absolute cheek of making art’. David Dawson, Freud’s long-time assistant, often spoke to him of bringing his self-portraits together in an exhibition. We are grateful to David for discussing the proposal with the Royal Academy, and to Tim Marlow, the Academy’s Artistic Director, who programmed the exhibition in London. We are delighted that the exhibition has provided an opportunity to strengthen the collaboration between the Royal Academy and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. It is curated by David Dawson, together with Jasper Sharp and Andrea Tarsia, assisted by Rebecca Bray at the Royal Academy, in collaboration with Akili Tommasino and Dakota DeVos at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Our strong appreciation is extended to both our institutions’ teams, in particular Elana Woodgate, assisted by Lucy Davis, and Susana Vázquez Fernández of the Royal Academy, and Edward Saywell, Patrick McMahon, Valentine Lescar, Jill Kennedy-Kernohan and Darcey Moore of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. We would like to thank Joseph Leo Koerner and Sebastian Smee for their insightful essay contributions to the catalogue and Jon Kielty for its beautiful design. The exhibition at the Royal Academy would not have been possible without generous support and we are much indebted to Phillips, Offer Waterman and Ömer Koç. Last but not least we are immensely grateful to the many lenders, both public and private, who entrusted their works to this exhibition. It is the first to focus on Freud’s self-portraits, and their generosity will do much to expand critical engagement in and enjoyment of Freud’s work.

Christopher Le Brun

Matthew Teitelbaum

President, Royal Academy of Arts, London

Director, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Foreword

Christopher Le Brun

Matthew Teitelbaum

President, Royal Academy of Arts, London

Director, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Acknowledgements

The Royal Academy of Arts, London, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, would like to acknowledge the invaluable assistance of the following individuals in the creation of this exhibition and its catalogue: William Acquavella, Oliver Barker, Katie Barkes, Judith Bradlwarter, Richard Calvocoressi, Alexander Corcoran, Elena Crippa, Fergus Duff, Tom Eddison, Jacquetta Eliot Countess of St Germans, Lucius Elliott, Jessica Fletcher, Bella Freud, Cecily Langdale, Carys Lewis, Adrian Gibbs, Michael Govan, James Holland-Hibbert, Sarah Howgate, Marlous Jens, Christina Kennedy, Jennifer King, James Kirkman, Catherine Lampert, Nicholas Maclean, Kathryn Marber, Ann Marcus, Tobias Meyer, Sandy Nairne, Pilar Ordovas, Francis Outred, Olivia PattesonKnight, Jussi Pylkannen, John Riddy, Alice de Roquemaurel, Dina Rosenhek, Pat Savage, Edward Saywell, Graham Southern, Jacqueline Tran, Toby Treves, Virginia Verran

Acknowledgements

‘One Must Fasten One’s Gaze’ David Dawson

Fig. 1 Freud working at night, 2005. Photograph by David Dawson

His choices of whom to paint were private impulses, never explained, but he always painted each sitter with great dignity and respect. As Sebastian Smee has written: ‘His interest was not in the political or even the social but merely in the artistic, human possibilities afforded by each of his subjects’ specific presences.’ 4 More often than not, his titles for his paintings do not reveal the sitter’s identity. Lucian said it gave sitters their privacy. Privacy was something he thought of as a true human quality, something to be protected. Knausgaard asks the question: The name is what joins the body to our social life, the name collects all judgements and assumptions as to a particular personality … Can we imagine a person without a name? It would certainly say something quite different about being human. Without a name the human [is] akin to animal. But we are that too.5 Lucian I think would have enjoyed this. I’ve always thought biology was a great help to me and perhaps even having worked with animals was a help.6

1 These are the words spoken by the priest at the author’s father’s funeral in The End, the final book of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle: ‘One must fasten one’s gaze.’ Knausgaard continues: I know what it means to see something without fastening one’s gaze. Everything is there, the houses, the trees, the cars, the people, the sky, the earth, and yet something is missing … This is what the meaningless world looks like … It can be beautiful, though we may wonder in relation to what … We have not fastened our gaze, we have not connected ourselves with the world … The connections that hold us back, which cause us to thrash in our chains, as it were, have to do with expectations and obligation, with what the world asks of us, and sooner or later we come to a point where we realise the imbalance of our honouring the world’s demands while the world fails to honour ours. At that point we become free, we can do as we please, but what has made us free, the meaninglessness of the world, also deprives that freedom of its meaning … The question is how we define meaning. If we take the challenge of fastening our gaze seriously, it must be the case that it is not the object itself that is important … The important thing is the eye, not what it sees … nothing means anything on its own. Only when an object is seen does it become … The eye internalises the extrinsic … It is 14

by way of this internalisation of the world that meaning becomes possible … Attaching meaning to the world is peculiar only to man, we are the givers of meaning, and this is not only our own responsibility but also our obligation.1 When he enrolled at Cedric Morris’s progressive East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing in Dedham in 1939, where the emphasis lay not in formal teaching but in a sincere pursuit of individuality, Lucian found his artistic home. There he could act on his feelings, paint on his private impulse. From his early twenties he started to get all his information solely from looking, rejecting imaginary narratives and whimsy; the doctrines of the Surrealists he found restricting. He now believed that if something worthwhile was going to emerge then it would do so as the result of concentration. This was when Lucian learnt to fasten his gaze. 2 Later, he went on to describe his approach to painting: It’s about myself and my surroundings … I work from the people that interest me and that I care about and think about in rooms that I live in and know.2 I don’t think there’s any kind of feeling you have to leave out.3

It’s to do with the feeling of individuality and the intensity of the regard and the focus on the specific. So I think portraiture is an attitude.7

object is seen does it become.’ He has shown with greater candour than anyone that he did not presume anything. Smee wrote that Freud’s late self-portraits are ‘a victory of obscurity over clarity, of deepening uncertainty over fatuous assumptions about the wisdom of old age’.10 Lucian described it thus: The task of the artist is to make the human being uncomfortable, and yet we are drawn to a great work by involuntary chemistry, like a hound getting a scent; the dog isn’t free, it can’t do otherwise, it gets the scent and instinct does the rest.11 Knausgaard gives clarity to ‘the kinship of death and art, and their function in life, which is to prevent reality, our conception of the world, from conflating with the world.’12 ‘Death, that great restorer of stillness, is outside the sphere of the human too and cannot manifest itself to us, for as it comes to us we cease to exist’.13 Lucian hated the idea of mystification, but what he has done through his portraits is to show that art is the one thing that can defy death. Now the next generation and the one after must choose to keep art alive if they want to. 4 Lucian put everything he could into his painting, everything he thought worth keeping. Here we have the chance to see this for ourselves and to bring our meanings and our self-reflective gaze to them.

Knausgaard also writes: This is the same thought Harold Bloom expresses when he writes that Shakespeare invented man. When Shakespeare’s characters step forward on the stage and reason with themselves, as if aside from the action yet still a part of it … man is then no longer merely a creature of action … but also a locus in which these emotions are confronted by a reflective self.8 3 Lucian wanted his sitters just to be; he wanted to observe and watch their unselfconscious actions, hoping to register them with greater intensity occupying their own bodies. His work is not about giving us answers to knowing the person, much more to do with the affinity one feels with that person. It makes room for honesty. Robert Hughes said of Lucian’s portraits, ‘they bypass decorum while fiercely preserving respect.’9 Lucian did not paint completely objective art but rather art seen through a temperament. His own. Yet he did not spare himself, and for the first time here we have the chance to bring all his self-portraits together in one book. He once told me he thought it only right that he too should put himself through what he asks of his sitters. ‘Only when an 15

Fig. 1 Freud working at night, 2005. Photograph by David Dawson

It’s to do with the feeling of individuality and the intensity of the regard and the focus on the specific. So I think portraiture is an attitude.7

The Presence of the Past Joseph Leo Koerner

40 Self-portrait Reflection, Fragment, c. 1965 Oil and graphite on canvas, 89.7 × 89.7 cm Private collection London only

41 Small Interior, 1968–72 Oil on canvas, 22.2 × 26.7 cm Private collection London only

100

42 Interior with Hand Mirror (Self-portrait), 1967 Oil on canvas, 25.5 × 17.8 cm Private collection

101

41 Small Interior, 1968–72 Oil on canvas, 22.2 × 26.7 cm Private collection London only

100

42 Interior with Hand Mirror (Self-portrait), 1967 Oil on canvas, 25.5 × 17.8 cm Private collection

101

43 Hand Mirror on Chair, 1966 Oil on canvas, 18 × 13 cm Private collection London only

102

44 Interior with Plant, Reflection Listening (Self-portrait), 1967–68 Oil on canvas, 121.8 × 121.8 cm Private collection

103

43 Hand Mirror on Chair, 1966 Oil on canvas, 18 × 13 cm Private collection London only

102

44 Interior with Plant, Reflection Listening (Self-portrait), 1967–68 Oil on canvas, 121.8 × 121.8 cm Private collection

103

45 Self-portrait, 1974 Gouache and pencil on paper, 35.5 × 25.4 cm Private collection

104

46 Self-portrait, 1974 Watercolour and pencil on paper, 34.8 × 25.2 cm UBS Art Collection London only

47 Self-portrait, 1974 Watercolour and pencil on paper, 33 × 24 cm Private collection

48 Self-portrait, 1974 Watercolour on paper, 32.7 × 23.5 cm The Gibson Family Collection London only

105

45 Self-portrait, 1974 Gouache and pencil on paper, 35.5 × 25.4 cm Private collection

104

46 Self-portrait, 1974 Watercolour and pencil on paper, 34.8 × 25.2 cm UBS Art Collection London only

47 Self-portrait, 1974 Watercolour and pencil on paper, 33 × 24 cm Private collection

48 Self-portrait, 1974 Watercolour on paper, 32.7 × 23.5 cm The Gibson Family Collection London only

105

49 Two Irishmen in W11, 1984–85 Oil on canvas, 172.7 × 142.2 cm Private collection. On loan to the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin

106

107

49 Two Irishmen in W11, 1984–85 Oil on canvas, 172.7 × 142.2 cm Private collection. On loan to the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin

106

107

The first to focus on Lucian Freud’s self-portraits, this book provides a fascinating insight into the psyche of this enigmatic yet extremely private artist. These works, which include paintings, drawings, sketchbooks and personal letters, provide the viewer with a constant reminder of the artist’s overwhelming presence, even though in some he appears only as a shadow or reflection. Expert authors, including those who knew him well, reflect on Freud’s place within the history of self-portraiture and the role self-portraits play within his wider oeuvre. These powerful works document Freud’s changing style as he scrutinised his body with no less intensity than that he afforded his other models. David Dawson is a painter and photographer and Freud’s former studio assistant. Joseph Leo Koerner is the Thomas Professor of History of Art and Architecture and Senior Fellow of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. Jasper Sharp is Adjunct Curator for Modern and Contemporary Art at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Sebastian Smee is a Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic.