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Lot Essay
‘Freud’s lemons, the renowned Poros lemons, are Neo-Classical fruit, glossy as stoneware in the winter brightness’ (William Feaver)
Painted on the Greek island of Poros in 1946-1947, Lemon is an exquisite still-life by Lucian Freud. A single lemon and a sprig of leaves appear on an unadorned surface. Shadows halo the fruit and leaves, every undulation and gleam made vivid in Mediterranean light. Freud’s practice crystallised during his four months on Poros. Lemon is among a handful of jewel-like pictures of lemons, pomegranates and sun-bleached bones that he made there, alongside the celebrated self-portraits Still Life with Green Lemon (1946-1947) and Man with a Thistle (Self-portrait) (1946, Tate, London). The painting bears exceptional provenance. Freud’s early patron Ian Gibson-Smith purchased it from his joint 1947 exhibition with John Craxton; it was later owned by the noted Francis Bacon collector Keith Lichtenstein and subsequently by Simon Sainsbury, whose 2006 bequest to the National Gallery and the Tate was one of the greatest gifts of art to the nation in British history.
After the end of the Second World War, Freud longed to leave England. With his friend Craxton, he spent the summer of 1945 on the Isles of Scilly, at one point trying—and failing—to stow away to France on a Breton fishing boat. Craxton made it to Paris early the following year, and Freud followed a few months later, thrilled to experience the atmosphere of a new city. Craxton had also spent time in Zurich, where he met Lady Norton, wife of the British ambassador to Greece. Thanks to her efforts, he was able to travel to Poros. Freud set sail to meet him at the end of August 1946. The two young artists rented rooms in the home of the Mastropetrou family, where—stimulated by the clear light and the metaphysical quality of island life—Freud would produce what Craxton later called ‘some of his most limpid and luminous paintings’ (J. Craxton, quoted in W. Feaver, The Lives of Lucian Freud: Youth 1922-1968, London 2019, p. 240).
The Greek pictures, write David Dawson and Martin Gayford, ‘inaugurated a new era in Lucian’s work. The combination of solitude and the intense light of Greece had put him into a state of heightened visual concentration—and pleasure’ (D. Dawson & M. Gayford (eds.), Love Lucian: The Letters of Lucian Freud 1939-1954, London 2022, p. 266). Freud conveyed this pleasure in a letter to Craxton from January 1947, when the latter had left for a series of voyages around the Aegean. He reported the completion of ‘my Portrait’—likely referring to Still Life with Green Lemon—and another ‘mikro Ikona’, or small picture. ‘I am really sent swoony by the Lemongroves and specially detached Lemonsprigs with their curly Leaves’, he wrote. ‘Looking from Grey Green, umber-grey-brown Olive Land to the dark green and luminous yellow Lemongrove is more satisfying than any meal!’ (L. Freud quoted in ibid., p. 264). His delight is palpable in the bright colours of the present work.
Freud had a lemon tree outside his window, and he and Craxton would also find inspiration further afield. ‘They took long walks on the island and across the water on the Peloponnese where the lemon groves were,’ recounted a friend of the Mastropetrou children: ‘they stopped at shepherds’ huts where they were offered cheese, milk and egg pasta to eat there or to take away and were astonished at this hospitality … Craxton explained that in England a shepherd would have released his dogs at the sight of them. Apart from these food gifts they also brought back thistles, prickly pears and seasonal citrus fruits—lemons, oranges, mandarins—that they would later draw and paint.’ As Catherine Lampert observes, ‘Freud painted fruit and flowers at other times in his life, but the concentration on light and shadows in these works, their glowing colour and the absence of any sense of decay is unique to these Greek paintings’ (C. Lampert and T. Treves, Lucian Freud: Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, London 2025, vol. 2, p. 102).
Freud had brought a limited supply of materials with him and used them sparingly, eventually writing to his mother with a request for more paint. These circumstances contributed to the pictures’ sense of concentration. The board support of Lemon is likely a book cover, several of which he and Craxton pilfered for such purposes. Freud employed countless small brushstrokes to create his finely detailed compositions: his interest in small, charged images was also informed by the icons he had seen on Poros and in the Byzantine Museum in Athens. ‘One remembers the little pictures as sharpened by their minuteness, as if to pierce the eye and haunt it’, wrote Lawrence Gowing of Freud’s Greek paintings. ‘Sharpened equally by the penetrating authenticity, which made them irresistible and captivating’ (L. Gowing, Lucian Freud, London 1982, p. 24). Lemon is emblematic of this visionary quality in Freud’s early work, and sees his powers of observation come into astringent, sunlit focus.
Painted on the Greek island of Poros in 1946-1947, Lemon is an exquisite still-life by Lucian Freud. A single lemon and a sprig of leaves appear on an unadorned surface. Shadows halo the fruit and leaves, every undulation and gleam made vivid in Mediterranean light. Freud’s practice crystallised during his four months on Poros. Lemon is among a handful of jewel-like pictures of lemons, pomegranates and sun-bleached bones that he made there, alongside the celebrated self-portraits Still Life with Green Lemon (1946-1947) and Man with a Thistle (Self-portrait) (1946, Tate, London). The painting bears exceptional provenance. Freud’s early patron Ian Gibson-Smith purchased it from his joint 1947 exhibition with John Craxton; it was later owned by the noted Francis Bacon collector Keith Lichtenstein and subsequently by Simon Sainsbury, whose 2006 bequest to the National Gallery and the Tate was one of the greatest gifts of art to the nation in British history.
After the end of the Second World War, Freud longed to leave England. With his friend Craxton, he spent the summer of 1945 on the Isles of Scilly, at one point trying—and failing—to stow away to France on a Breton fishing boat. Craxton made it to Paris early the following year, and Freud followed a few months later, thrilled to experience the atmosphere of a new city. Craxton had also spent time in Zurich, where he met Lady Norton, wife of the British ambassador to Greece. Thanks to her efforts, he was able to travel to Poros. Freud set sail to meet him at the end of August 1946. The two young artists rented rooms in the home of the Mastropetrou family, where—stimulated by the clear light and the metaphysical quality of island life—Freud would produce what Craxton later called ‘some of his most limpid and luminous paintings’ (J. Craxton, quoted in W. Feaver, The Lives of Lucian Freud: Youth 1922-1968, London 2019, p. 240).
The Greek pictures, write David Dawson and Martin Gayford, ‘inaugurated a new era in Lucian’s work. The combination of solitude and the intense light of Greece had put him into a state of heightened visual concentration—and pleasure’ (D. Dawson & M. Gayford (eds.), Love Lucian: The Letters of Lucian Freud 1939-1954, London 2022, p. 266). Freud conveyed this pleasure in a letter to Craxton from January 1947, when the latter had left for a series of voyages around the Aegean. He reported the completion of ‘my Portrait’—likely referring to Still Life with Green Lemon—and another ‘mikro Ikona’, or small picture. ‘I am really sent swoony by the Lemongroves and specially detached Lemonsprigs with their curly Leaves’, he wrote. ‘Looking from Grey Green, umber-grey-brown Olive Land to the dark green and luminous yellow Lemongrove is more satisfying than any meal!’ (L. Freud quoted in ibid., p. 264). His delight is palpable in the bright colours of the present work.
Freud had a lemon tree outside his window, and he and Craxton would also find inspiration further afield. ‘They took long walks on the island and across the water on the Peloponnese where the lemon groves were,’ recounted a friend of the Mastropetrou children: ‘they stopped at shepherds’ huts where they were offered cheese, milk and egg pasta to eat there or to take away and were astonished at this hospitality … Craxton explained that in England a shepherd would have released his dogs at the sight of them. Apart from these food gifts they also brought back thistles, prickly pears and seasonal citrus fruits—lemons, oranges, mandarins—that they would later draw and paint.’ As Catherine Lampert observes, ‘Freud painted fruit and flowers at other times in his life, but the concentration on light and shadows in these works, their glowing colour and the absence of any sense of decay is unique to these Greek paintings’ (C. Lampert and T. Treves, Lucian Freud: Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, London 2025, vol. 2, p. 102).
Freud had brought a limited supply of materials with him and used them sparingly, eventually writing to his mother with a request for more paint. These circumstances contributed to the pictures’ sense of concentration. The board support of Lemon is likely a book cover, several of which he and Craxton pilfered for such purposes. Freud employed countless small brushstrokes to create his finely detailed compositions: his interest in small, charged images was also informed by the icons he had seen on Poros and in the Byzantine Museum in Athens. ‘One remembers the little pictures as sharpened by their minuteness, as if to pierce the eye and haunt it’, wrote Lawrence Gowing of Freud’s Greek paintings. ‘Sharpened equally by the penetrating authenticity, which made them irresistible and captivating’ (L. Gowing, Lucian Freud, London 1982, p. 24). Lemon is emblematic of this visionary quality in Freud’s early work, and sees his powers of observation come into astringent, sunlit focus.