Cache of seven postcards written to Felicity Hellaby, two with hand-drawn illustrations

‘[Lucian was] very, very funny, incredibly charming, and there was something about him that made me think, even then, that he was going to do extraordinary things’ (Felicity Hellaby, quoted in G. Grieg, Breakfast with Lucian, London, 2013, p. 64).

The following fourteen postcards written from Freud to his first girlfriend, Felicity Hellaby in the early 1940s offer a captivating insight into Freud’s early work and life in his early twenties. Addressed to his ‘Darling Felicity’ and some with charming pen and ink doodles by the artist, Freud regales humorous anecdotes from his travels to Greece with fellow artist John Craxton, and run ins with gangsters, and trips to the Ritz. However, this intensely personal correspondence also provides a fascinating and significant insight into the artist's dedication towards his practice early on in his career. The postcards are peppered with various references to paintings he is currently working on: Freud tells of an early ‘very large self-portrait’; a ‘cactus picture’, a painting of quinces and a drawing of a shark.

Felicity Hellaby met Freud at the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing. Following a fire at the school, it relocated to a new premises at Benton End, in Suffolk in 1940. Felicity and Freud would paint and draw one another, indeed, Felicity was the subject of one of Freud’s first full-scale portraits Girl on the Quay, 1941, sold in these Rooms, 8 February 2006, lot 37. This private correspondence has remained in Felicity’s family’s possession for over seventy years and until the publication of William Feaver’s biography in 2019, have never before been published.