This painting as a very interesting story behind it. Shortly after it sold at an estate auction in the late 1990s as a Lucian Freud work, Freud offered the new owner twice what he had paid for it. When the owner refused, Freud denied he had ever painted it, and Freud's estate continued to deny it after his death. Twenty years later, a team of experts (art detectives would be a better term) authenticated it as Freud's. They even established that it was a nude self portrait done by Freud for his friend Francis Bacon's Geneva apartment, a center of gay society in the 50s. The form is said to be based on an Eadweard Muybridge motion study, and it certainly looks it.
Of all his considerable talents, I think Lucian Freud's greatest strengths was his ability to paint skin. Here he catches the different qualities of the skin on a body that has been lived in for a while.
ReplyDeleteOne of his more controversial portraits was that of the late Queen Elizabeth from 2001. Freud usually painted big but this is a mere 9½ x 6 inches and is one enormous, crowned head. The controversy was that he painted her with very heavy features, looking very masculine. With hindsight, there was something of the prophetic about it because within a decade she did indeed look like that as she descended into great old age.
I have to confess that I don't like some of Lucian Freud's work, but this is nice.
DeleteYes, very Muybridge.
ReplyDeleteSomething tells me Lucian Freuds wouldn't win a Miss Congeniality contest.
ReplyDeleteSB Dan
Correction: Freud.
DeleteSB Dan
Or Mr. Congeniality either.
DeleteHeh.
DeleteHim being male was my implication by calling him Miss.