Lot Essay
In February 1954, Lord Glenconner, then the Honourable Colin Tennant, was paging through the latest issue of Vogue magazine on his estate in Trinidad when he came upon an illustration of a painting of his friend Lady Caroline Blackwood. The portrait depicted a child-like woman in bed, a small angelic face with wide water-blue eyes, her head resting thoughtfully on her hand. The painting illustrated an article devoted to a young painter named Lucian Freud, grandson of the famous Sigmund and the husband of Lady Caroline. So beguiled was he by the picture and its mesmerising, yet vunerable gaze, that on his immediate return to England, Lord Glenconner sought out Girl in Bed and bought it for 200. His inquiries led to a meeting with the artist and the commission of this own portrait.
Freud almost never agrees to paint by commission since his probing portraiture necessitates a certain intimacy and knowledge of his subject. His technique at this time moreover was painstakingly meticulous and his output limited to a handful of paintings per year. Months of countless sittings were required for the portrait of Colin Tennant and these were combined later with excellent lunches together at Wheeler's. An unlikely friendship developed between the two despite the differences in their backgrounds.
"It was a great experience for me," recalls Lord Glenconner. "Lucian is a brilliant talker, captivating both physically and intellectually to both men and women. Lucian was exciting, always chasing after a girl, gambling, and with a reputation of existing on the fringes of gangland London. His viewpoint was refreshingly original to someone like me with a traditional and somewhat unchallenging upbringing of Eton and Oxford."
Like a surgeon with a laser, Freud probes the character of his sitter, as well as producing a disturbing likeness. He captures the gentleness and intelligence of Tennant's countenance, while the faraway stare suggests that Tennant is a dreamer with concerns beyond the mundane. The liquidity of the sad eyes, the fine hair and tender mouth bestow on him a feminine sensitivity similar in character to that so brilliantly achieved in Girl in Bed.
Lord Glenconner has always been a collector by instinct. His privilaged contact with Freud had meant that he could witness the slow progression of every painting in the artist's Paddington studio. Soon he became one of Freud's most ardent patrons and over the next two decades he bought an astonishing fourteen paintings. "I was in and out of the studio all the time and had the choice of many of his finest works," he recalls. Along with Girl in Bed, he acquired such acclaimed masterpieces as Interior with Plant, Reflection Listening (Self-Portrait), 1967-68, and Large Interior, Paddington 1968-69, housed in the Fundación Colección Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.
The enormous responsibilites of the development of his Caribbean island Mustique meant that Lord Glenconner's energies were inevitably redirected away from his activities as a collector. In 1978 a crisis in Mustique resulted in his need to raise a large sum of money quickly. He bitterly regrets today his rash decision to sell every one of his Freud paintings, except his portrait. Strangely, it is not the loss of the paintings themselves that troubles him today. "With the sale of the paintings, I lost the friendship of Lucian. It is that I regret." Perhaps Freud felt offended or betrayed, but their relationship ended shortly afterwards.
Lord Glenconner is nevertheless pragmatic about the dispersal of the paintings. "I have always been interested in a challenge and prefer the early stages of any enterprise. The problem with a collection is that it is static. I felt that it was time to move on. Now the pictures hang in museums or are scattered in major private collections. That is a nice feeling as well".
Freud almost never agrees to paint by commission since his probing portraiture necessitates a certain intimacy and knowledge of his subject. His technique at this time moreover was painstakingly meticulous and his output limited to a handful of paintings per year. Months of countless sittings were required for the portrait of Colin Tennant and these were combined later with excellent lunches together at Wheeler's. An unlikely friendship developed between the two despite the differences in their backgrounds.
"It was a great experience for me," recalls Lord Glenconner. "Lucian is a brilliant talker, captivating both physically and intellectually to both men and women. Lucian was exciting, always chasing after a girl, gambling, and with a reputation of existing on the fringes of gangland London. His viewpoint was refreshingly original to someone like me with a traditional and somewhat unchallenging upbringing of Eton and Oxford."
Like a surgeon with a laser, Freud probes the character of his sitter, as well as producing a disturbing likeness. He captures the gentleness and intelligence of Tennant's countenance, while the faraway stare suggests that Tennant is a dreamer with concerns beyond the mundane. The liquidity of the sad eyes, the fine hair and tender mouth bestow on him a feminine sensitivity similar in character to that so brilliantly achieved in Girl in Bed.
Lord Glenconner has always been a collector by instinct. His privilaged contact with Freud had meant that he could witness the slow progression of every painting in the artist's Paddington studio. Soon he became one of Freud's most ardent patrons and over the next two decades he bought an astonishing fourteen paintings. "I was in and out of the studio all the time and had the choice of many of his finest works," he recalls. Along with Girl in Bed, he acquired such acclaimed masterpieces as Interior with Plant, Reflection Listening (Self-Portrait), 1967-68, and Large Interior, Paddington 1968-69, housed in the Fundación Colección Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.
The enormous responsibilites of the development of his Caribbean island Mustique meant that Lord Glenconner's energies were inevitably redirected away from his activities as a collector. In 1978 a crisis in Mustique resulted in his need to raise a large sum of money quickly. He bitterly regrets today his rash decision to sell every one of his Freud paintings, except his portrait. Strangely, it is not the loss of the paintings themselves that troubles him today. "With the sale of the paintings, I lost the friendship of Lucian. It is that I regret." Perhaps Freud felt offended or betrayed, but their relationship ended shortly afterwards.
Lord Glenconner is nevertheless pragmatic about the dispersal of the paintings. "I have always been interested in a challenge and prefer the early stages of any enterprise. The problem with a collection is that it is static. I felt that it was time to move on. Now the pictures hang in museums or are scattered in major private collections. That is a nice feeling as well".