Lucian Freud was always looking for some kind of truth in the human form. He had a very unconventional approach to portraits and towards the subjects he would paint. He would visit local pubs, restaurants and some of
the darkest places in London to find interesting subjects.
However, while he always tried to know his subjects as much as he could, he never let his own emotions seep into his portraits. He would make his subjects sit through these long sessions, where he would analyse their body sitting behind the easel. And he would paint, layer after layer, until he was satisfied. And this satisfaction again was very different from what any other artists had. That was Lucian, who passed away on July 22 at his London residence.
The British portrait artist’s innate desire to find the truth and study it was probably something he inherited directly from his grandfather, the popular Austrian psychologist Sigmund Freud. While Sigmund spent his life trying to understand the human mind, Lucian spent his studying the human form. He would say that his role as an artist is more as a god who keeps himself emotionally detached from his subjects, and yet sees the truth in them. And he would work for days and months on a single painting, until he could see the real person in it. “A painting is not complete unless I see somebody else in it,” Lucian used to say.
“Perhaps it was hard for Lucian to keep his emotions out of his paintings, and that’s why he tried to make them as outrageous as possible,” says artist Brinda Miller, adding, “He was known to people as an eccentric person, and that comes out in his paintings as well. He subjects are not beautiful models sitting coyly on a sofa, but fat, ugly women, who are nonetheless comfortable in their position. This evokes a lot of psychological imbalance in the viewer’s mind.”
Born on December 8, 1922 in Germany, Lucian was the son of an Austrian Jewish father, Ernst Ludwig Freud, an architect, and a German Jewish mother, Lucie née Brasch. While most people called him The Cat Who Walked Alone, even as a child, Lucian never followed anyone else’s wishes.
Art curator and historian Neena Pillai says, “He did what he wanted, and this trait remained with him till his death. He never took any commissioned work, and painted what he liked, be it drawings on paper, or paintings. Lucian did things as he liked and when he liked. He didn’t care what people thought of his work and was least bothered to be present at his own shows. And whenever he did, he would do so without anyone knowing of his presence.”
Lucian was not just careless with his work, but with everything. Although he turned into a recluse at a later stage in his life, he was known for his extravagant lifestlye, and his adventures with women, and even in his old age, younger women found him really attractive. He married two women and fathered 12 children — the rumours are that the exact number could be even more. His studio was always dirty, under heated and filled with rags, as shown in the painting Standing by the Rags.
Lucian didn’t care much about things, including even criticism for his work. “He never allowed anyone to dictate terms when it came to painting. He painted the way he wanted and when he wanted, even if it involved the Queen of England, Elizabeth II. As an artist, he always held that it’s important to stick to his own style and form. And he always did that,” says Roshni Vadehra, director, Vadehra Art Gallery, which recently held an exhibition of Lucian’s work in 2008, along with his contemporaries like Francis Bacon, F.N. Souza and Tyeb Mehta, in collaboration with the Grosvenor Gallery of London. His portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II received significant criticism in the British media. The Sun described the portrait as “a
travesty”.
However, what makes Lucian’s work really important, says Vadehra, was his unconventional treatment of his subjects. “He didn’t like romanticising the human form, instead he glorified the old age, the obesity or other blemishes to such an extent that it created a certain intimacy between the viewer and the portrait. He liked to present them in their raw form, with all their bodily flaws,” she says.
Pillai says that Lucian was very fond of lines, which finds prominence in all his works, be it that of women, children or men. “He was also very interested in his own face, no wonder there’s a huge body of his works that include self-portraits. And while he mostly painted human figures, some of his earlier works were of horses, an artistic portrayal of his love for horse riding. In fact the first sculpture he created as a child was that of a horse,” she says.
Lucian’s works made many people uncomfortable, but they all admired them, including the people who sat for him. His subjects always disliked the long sessions in which he would make them sit in front of him for a portrait, but despite all that hatred for the session, they would always come back for it. “This was the magic of the artist, they hated him, but they loved to sit for him,” says Pillai.
“With Lucian’s death, there’s a huge void left in the British portraiture, and among his contemporaries who included Bacon and Frank Auerbach, only Aurebach is still around,” says Vadehra, adding, “His
passing is a huge loss to not only portraiture but the general British art scene as well.” While an artist’s work’s prices have always risen after his death, Lucian lived to see the value of his works soaring new heights. In 2008, his portrayal of a large, naked woman on a couch — Benefits Supervisor Sleeping — sold at an auction for £17million, a record price for the work of a living artist ever.