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Lot Essay
“I paint people not because of what they are like… but how they happen to be.” -Lucian Freud
Lucian Freud’s Naked Portrait in a Red Chair is a highly intuitive painting that speaks to what the artist believed to be the fundamentals of portraiture. For Freud, painting was not a process of recording his subject’s physical appearance or even their psychological state; it was more a way of recording their presence. Produced over the course of several months at the end of 1998 and into 1999, the present work was executed during a particularly prolific period for the artist. The sitter is Jean Wilcock, the mother of another of Freud’s sitters and a woman with whom he became acquainted after her daughter wrote to Freud while studying art at college. Freud unapologetically presents his sitter in a vulnerable pose, his highly considered brushwork probing and investigating every inch of her body and her surroundings. With this striking honest portrait, Freud fulfills his ambition to “paint people not because of what they are like…but how they happen to be” (L. Freud, quoted by S. Smee, “Lucian Freud 1996-2005,” in Lucian Freud 1996-2005, 2005, p. 5).
In a large red leather armchair, Freud’s subject sits exposed. With her left leg pulled up underneath her right leg, and with one arm resting on her stomach, her pose is one of comfort, but also one that allows for scrutiny: the scrutiny of the viewer, but also more importantly, the scrutiny of the painter himself. Freud’s intense and prolonged study results in one of the most faithful depictions of human flesh in the history of art. Not only are the flaws and blemishes that are present in all of us rendered in sharp detail, but also the myriad shades of human skin presented in exquisite detail. In the present work, Freud takes Willem de Kooning’s statement that “Flesh was the reason why oil painting was invented” to its ultimate conclusion (W. de Kooning, quoted in Willem de Kooning Drawings Paintings Sculptures, exh. cat., Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1983, p. 115). In addition, unlike any artist since Titian and Reubens, Freud renders the physical properties of human flesh with a degree of attention that is unmatched by any modern painter. As the critic Sebastian Smee writes, “Even as he scrutinizes his models, with the utmost intensity, Freud powerfully registers their unknowability. In doing so, he grants them a great depth of human freedom; this in turn provokes an impulse to the viewer to accord them a genuine, a believable reality” (S. Smee, “Lucian Freud 1996-2005,” in Lucian Freud 1996-2005, 2005, p. 7).
Freud became acquainted with his sitter after her daughter wrote to the artist asking for help with a school project. Louisa Wilcock would eventually sit for two paintings, the clothed Louisa, 1997-98, and a painting titled Naked Portrait with a Red Chair, 1998-99. Eventually, Jean herself met Freud and he broached the subject of her sitting for him herself. Initially she was hesitant, but after several months of pressing her, she eventually went to his studio in Kensington Church Street in London and the painting was begun.
Sittings would take place over a period of several months from late 1998 into the early months of 1999, often in the evenings. Other of Freud’s sitters have commented that the process of being painted by the artist was an intense one. Sue Tilley, the subject of four paintings (Evening in the Studio, 1993, Benefits Supervisor Resting, 1994, Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, 1995, and Sleeping by the Lion Carpet, 1996) described the often-arduous nature of these sessions. “Every Saturday and Sunday, and then usually [he] would bribe me to take a couple of days off work in the week…and that was for nine months… [I had] to be there at half past seven. Depending on the time of year, because it all depends on the light and things like that, so in the winter I could get there a little bit later and then usually stay until about half past three” (S. Tilley in an unpublished interview with P. Ordovas, Christie’s, April 2008).
Because of the length of time each sitting took, Freud was careful to arrive at a pose that was both visually interesting and practical—something that his sitters could sustain for many hours. “It’s difficult to say how a pose comes about with my portrait,” he admitted. “It just happens. We come to an agreement. I usually ask them to hold a pose based on something I see that seems new or odd to me. It’s usually not what they think I’m looking at. I suppose you might say we exploit each other. I am allowed to make a painting based on their presence in my studio, and they make that presence known in many different ways. …You cannot make a person stand or sit exactly as you want or as you think you want. They will do it their own way, even it is subtle. They are communicating with their body. I look for those things I haven’t seen before; what he did with the arm or that leg, trying to identify why it is different. Sometimes it takes a very long time to see it, but despite my slowness I will eventually see it” (ibid., pp. 209-213).
In many respects, Naked Portrait in a Red Chair has two subjects: Jean Wilcock and the chair in which she is sitting. This seemingly innocuous piece of furniture features in a number of paintings from the period, including two where it is the sole subject (Armchair by the Fireplace and Flowers on a Red Chair, both 1997). Freud acquired it when he moved into his Kensington Church Street studio, and it came to be a very special object for him, “I love this chair. It may be to do with who sat in it. The life it’s led. Slightly feeling of sweat.” (L. Freud, quoted by S. Smee, “Lucian Freud 1996-2005,” in Lucian Freud 1996-2005, 2005, p. 11). For the artist, these ostensibly incidental objects can carry great emotional weight and, as Smee notes, the artist repeatedly inserts objects such as chairs, sofas, beds, drapes, and blankets into his compositions in order to unsettle the viewer’s perception. “Inert objects become the hinges over which the imagination folds” (S. Smee, ibid., p. 11). Both in the present work, and the portrait of her daughter Louisa, the chair seems to tip the sitter forward, making for a dramatic encounter, as if the sitter is entering the viewer’s own personal space.
As with the very best of his portraits, in Naked Portrait in a Red Chair Lucian Freud captures his sitter with striking honesty. This notion of truth lies at the heart of Freud’s paintings, as despite his notable ancestry (his grandfather was Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis), Lucian Freud professed that his paintings were not meant to provide any particular psychological insight into his sitters, just an honest reflection of what he saw before him. “My work is purely autobiographical,” Freud admitted. “It is about myself and my surroundings. I work from people that interest me and that I care about, in rooms that I know. …When I look at a body it gives me a choice of what to put in a painting, what will suit me and what won’t. There is a distinction between fact and truth. Truth has an element of revelation about it. If something is true, it does more than strike one as merely being so” (L. Freud, as quoted by S. Figura, Lucian Freud: The Painter’s Etchings, exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2007). In work such as the present example, Freud has taken this “revelation of truth” to its ultimate conclusion, resulting in a definitive portrayal of the human character. As Bruce Bernard concludes “…he must be one of the greatest portrayers of the individual human being in European Art—and therefore in the whole of painting” (B. Bernard, “Thinking About Lucian Freud,” in B. Bernard & D. Birdsall (eds.), Lucian Freud, New York, 1996, p. 7).
Lucian Freud’s Naked Portrait in a Red Chair is a highly intuitive painting that speaks to what the artist believed to be the fundamentals of portraiture. For Freud, painting was not a process of recording his subject’s physical appearance or even their psychological state; it was more a way of recording their presence. Produced over the course of several months at the end of 1998 and into 1999, the present work was executed during a particularly prolific period for the artist. The sitter is Jean Wilcock, the mother of another of Freud’s sitters and a woman with whom he became acquainted after her daughter wrote to Freud while studying art at college. Freud unapologetically presents his sitter in a vulnerable pose, his highly considered brushwork probing and investigating every inch of her body and her surroundings. With this striking honest portrait, Freud fulfills his ambition to “paint people not because of what they are like…but how they happen to be” (L. Freud, quoted by S. Smee, “Lucian Freud 1996-2005,” in Lucian Freud 1996-2005, 2005, p. 5).
In a large red leather armchair, Freud’s subject sits exposed. With her left leg pulled up underneath her right leg, and with one arm resting on her stomach, her pose is one of comfort, but also one that allows for scrutiny: the scrutiny of the viewer, but also more importantly, the scrutiny of the painter himself. Freud’s intense and prolonged study results in one of the most faithful depictions of human flesh in the history of art. Not only are the flaws and blemishes that are present in all of us rendered in sharp detail, but also the myriad shades of human skin presented in exquisite detail. In the present work, Freud takes Willem de Kooning’s statement that “Flesh was the reason why oil painting was invented” to its ultimate conclusion (W. de Kooning, quoted in Willem de Kooning Drawings Paintings Sculptures, exh. cat., Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1983, p. 115). In addition, unlike any artist since Titian and Reubens, Freud renders the physical properties of human flesh with a degree of attention that is unmatched by any modern painter. As the critic Sebastian Smee writes, “Even as he scrutinizes his models, with the utmost intensity, Freud powerfully registers their unknowability. In doing so, he grants them a great depth of human freedom; this in turn provokes an impulse to the viewer to accord them a genuine, a believable reality” (S. Smee, “Lucian Freud 1996-2005,” in Lucian Freud 1996-2005, 2005, p. 7).
Freud became acquainted with his sitter after her daughter wrote to the artist asking for help with a school project. Louisa Wilcock would eventually sit for two paintings, the clothed Louisa, 1997-98, and a painting titled Naked Portrait with a Red Chair, 1998-99. Eventually, Jean herself met Freud and he broached the subject of her sitting for him herself. Initially she was hesitant, but after several months of pressing her, she eventually went to his studio in Kensington Church Street in London and the painting was begun.
Sittings would take place over a period of several months from late 1998 into the early months of 1999, often in the evenings. Other of Freud’s sitters have commented that the process of being painted by the artist was an intense one. Sue Tilley, the subject of four paintings (Evening in the Studio, 1993, Benefits Supervisor Resting, 1994, Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, 1995, and Sleeping by the Lion Carpet, 1996) described the often-arduous nature of these sessions. “Every Saturday and Sunday, and then usually [he] would bribe me to take a couple of days off work in the week…and that was for nine months… [I had] to be there at half past seven. Depending on the time of year, because it all depends on the light and things like that, so in the winter I could get there a little bit later and then usually stay until about half past three” (S. Tilley in an unpublished interview with P. Ordovas, Christie’s, April 2008).
Because of the length of time each sitting took, Freud was careful to arrive at a pose that was both visually interesting and practical—something that his sitters could sustain for many hours. “It’s difficult to say how a pose comes about with my portrait,” he admitted. “It just happens. We come to an agreement. I usually ask them to hold a pose based on something I see that seems new or odd to me. It’s usually not what they think I’m looking at. I suppose you might say we exploit each other. I am allowed to make a painting based on their presence in my studio, and they make that presence known in many different ways. …You cannot make a person stand or sit exactly as you want or as you think you want. They will do it their own way, even it is subtle. They are communicating with their body. I look for those things I haven’t seen before; what he did with the arm or that leg, trying to identify why it is different. Sometimes it takes a very long time to see it, but despite my slowness I will eventually see it” (ibid., pp. 209-213).
In many respects, Naked Portrait in a Red Chair has two subjects: Jean Wilcock and the chair in which she is sitting. This seemingly innocuous piece of furniture features in a number of paintings from the period, including two where it is the sole subject (Armchair by the Fireplace and Flowers on a Red Chair, both 1997). Freud acquired it when he moved into his Kensington Church Street studio, and it came to be a very special object for him, “I love this chair. It may be to do with who sat in it. The life it’s led. Slightly feeling of sweat.” (L. Freud, quoted by S. Smee, “Lucian Freud 1996-2005,” in Lucian Freud 1996-2005, 2005, p. 11). For the artist, these ostensibly incidental objects can carry great emotional weight and, as Smee notes, the artist repeatedly inserts objects such as chairs, sofas, beds, drapes, and blankets into his compositions in order to unsettle the viewer’s perception. “Inert objects become the hinges over which the imagination folds” (S. Smee, ibid., p. 11). Both in the present work, and the portrait of her daughter Louisa, the chair seems to tip the sitter forward, making for a dramatic encounter, as if the sitter is entering the viewer’s own personal space.
As with the very best of his portraits, in Naked Portrait in a Red Chair Lucian Freud captures his sitter with striking honesty. This notion of truth lies at the heart of Freud’s paintings, as despite his notable ancestry (his grandfather was Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis), Lucian Freud professed that his paintings were not meant to provide any particular psychological insight into his sitters, just an honest reflection of what he saw before him. “My work is purely autobiographical,” Freud admitted. “It is about myself and my surroundings. I work from people that interest me and that I care about, in rooms that I know. …When I look at a body it gives me a choice of what to put in a painting, what will suit me and what won’t. There is a distinction between fact and truth. Truth has an element of revelation about it. If something is true, it does more than strike one as merely being so” (L. Freud, as quoted by S. Figura, Lucian Freud: The Painter’s Etchings, exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2007). In work such as the present example, Freud has taken this “revelation of truth” to its ultimate conclusion, resulting in a definitive portrayal of the human character. As Bruce Bernard concludes “…he must be one of the greatest portrayers of the individual human being in European Art—and therefore in the whole of painting” (B. Bernard, “Thinking About Lucian Freud,” in B. Bernard & D. Birdsall (eds.), Lucian Freud, New York, 1996, p. 7).