Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1922 Berlin, Germany

Died: 2011 London, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1933

Biography

Painter and draughtsman Lucian Freud was born into a Jewish family in Berlin, Germany in 1922, the son of architect Ernst Freud and grandson of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. Following Hitler's accession to Chancellorship in 1933, the family moved to Britain to escape racial persecution. Freud was educated at Dartington Hall, a liberal boarding school in Totnes, Devon (1933-36), Dane Court Preparatory School and, finally, Bryanston School (an independent public school in Devon), where he became a leading member of the Oil Painting Club. He became a naturalised British citizen in 1939. Between 1938 and 1939 he briefly attended the Central School of Arts and Crafts, before enrolling at the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing in Dedham, Essex, run by Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett-Haines (1939-42). In 1939 a self-portrait by Freud was published in Horizon, the literary magazine founded by poet and novelist Stephen Spender and Cyril Connolly.

In March 1941 Freud sailed for Halifax aboard the SS Baltrover before being discharged at Liverpool and classified as unsuitable for military service. He subsequently shared rooms in Abercorn Place, Maida Vale with fellow painter John Craxton before moving to rooms in Delamere Terrace, Paddington. His first solo show took place at the Alex Reid and Lefevre Gallery in November 1944. Post-war travel restrictions meant that it was not until the summer of 1946 that Freud found himself in Paris, where he met Picasso and Giacometti, before joining Craxton on Poros, Greece. On returning to England in 1947 his work was exhibited alongside Craxton’s at the London Gallery. Soon afterwards Freud embarked on a series of paintings of Kitty Garman, daughter of the sculptor Jacob Epstein and Kathleen Garman and also took up etching, using tools given to him by Graham Sutherland. He married Kitty on 3 July 1948 and moved to 28 Clifton Hill, St. John’s Wood. He exhibited at the Hanover Gallery in 1950 and in 1951 won the Arts Council prize at the Festival of Britain for Interior at Paddington, 1951. In 1954 he shared the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale with fellow painters Francis Bacon and Ben Nicholson.

As a visiting tutor at the Slade School of Fine Art Freud taught intermittently between 1948 and 1958 during which time, he began a relationship with Lady Caroline Blackwood (the subject of Hotel Bedroom, 1954) whom he married on 9 December 1953 following his divorce from Kitty Garman. The marriage broke up in 1957 and they divorced the following year. In 1958, 1963 and 1968 his paintings and drawings were exhibited in solo shows at the Marlborough Gallery. He worked slowly and almost always from life, reflecting that: ‘I didn’t want to get just a likeness […] but to portray them, like an actor. As far as I’m concerned the paint is the person. I want it to work for me just as flesh does’ (Gowing, p.190-91). Aside from anonymous sitters, self-portraits, portraits of his lovers and a series of his mother, Freud also painted a number of eminent figures: Charles Clore, the Duke of Devonshire and Jacob Rothschild. In 1974, the Arts Council staged a retrospective of Freud’s work at the Hayward Gallery which included portraits of his friend and fellow painter Frank Auerbach. During this period, he also repeatedly painted his son Ali and daughters Rose, Isobel and Susie Boyt, as well as Bella and Esther Freud, his daughters with Bernardine Coverley. In the 1980s he resumed etching (initially to provide prints to help pay for the production costs of Lawrence Gowing’s monograph on him) and acquired 138 Kensington Church Street, where he filled the garden with ‘entanglements of buddleia and bamboo’ that served as a motif, devised with the advice of his close friend Susanna Chancellor, who was also an ‘exceptionally animated sitter’ (William Feaver, Lucian Michael Freud, Oxford DNB).

In 1987–8 the British Council organised Freud's first international retrospective at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC. In his catalogue introduction the critic Robert Hughes pronounced Freud 'the greatest living realist painter' (Hughes, p.8). The tour that followed, to the Hayward Gallery, the Centre Pompidou, Paris, and the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, brought Freud widespread attention. Recent Work at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1993 was followed by a retrospective at Tate Britain in 2002 to mark his 80th birthday. Lucian Freud Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery, London, in 2012, planned for his 90th year, became his memorial exhibition.

In the 1990s Freud produced a number of large paintings of Australian performance artist Leigh Bowery and Sue Tilley, manager of a branch of the Department of Health and Social Security, the subject of Benefits Supervisor Resting,1994 and Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, 1995, which in 2008 sold at auction for £17.2 million to become, for a while, the most expensive painting by a living artist sold at auction. Freud, unlike Francis Bacon, accepted honours. He was appointed Companion of Honour in 1983, and a member of the Order of Merit in 1993. Partly to show his appreciation but more as a self-imposed challenge he undertook to paint HM Queen Elizabeth II, 2001, now in the Royal Collection. Lucian Freud died at his home in London, England on 20 July 2011 and is buried in Highgate Cemetery. His work is held in numerous UK public collections including the Arts Council Collection, the British Council Collection, the National Portrait Gallery, the Tate and the V&A.

Related books

William Feaver, The Lives of Lucian Freud: Youth 1922-1968 (London: Bloomsbury, 2019)
Peter Wakelin, Refuge and Renewal: Migration and British Art (Bristol: Sansom and Company, 2019)
Mark Holborn and David Dawson eds., Lucian Freud: a Life (London: Phaidon, 2019)
Giovanni Aloi, Lucian Freud Herbarium (London: Prestel, 2019)
Lucian Freud: The Self-Portraits (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2019)
Martin Gayford, David Dawson and Mark Holborn eds., Lucien Freud, 2 Vols. (London: Phaidon, 2018)
Martin Gayford, Modernists and Mavericks: Bacon, Freud, Hockney and the London Painters (London: Thames and Hudson, 2018)
David Dawson and Philippe de Montebello, Lucian Freud: Naked Portraits (London: Rizzoli, 2018)
Christina Kennedy and Johanne Mullan, Lucien Freud (Dublin: Irish Museum of Modern Art, 2016)
Peter Doig, Michael Juul Holm, Anders Kold and Stephen McCoubrey, Lucian Freud: a Closer Look (Humlebæk: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2015)
Phoebe Hoban, Lucian Freud: Eyes Wide Open (New Harvest, Amazon Publishing, 2014)
David Dawson, a Painter's Progress: a Portrait of Lucian Freud (Alfred A. Knopf, 2014)
Catherine Lampert, Tanja Pirsig-Marshall and Hermann Arnhold, Bare Life: Bacon, Freud, Hockney and Others: London Artists Working From life 1950-80 (Munich: Hirmer Verlag, 2014)
Sarah Howgate ed., Lucian Freud Portraits (London: National Gallery, 2012)
Martin Gayford, Man with a Blue Scarf: On Sitting for a Portrait by Lucian Freud (London: Thames and Hudson, 2010)
Cécile Debray, Lucian Freud: The Studio (Munich: Hirmer Verlag, 2010)
Anthony Astbury, Three Chance Meetings: Francis Bacon - Lucien Freud - Diego Giacometti (London: Mailer Press, 2010)
Lucian Freud, Richard Calvocoressi, Lucian Freud On Paper (London: Jonathan Cape, 2008)
Lucien Freud: Recent Prints (Edinburgh: Eye Two in association with Marlborough Graphics, 2004)
Nicholas Penny and Robert Flynn, Lucian Freud: Works on Paper (London: Thames and Hudson, 1989)
Alistair Hicks, The School of London: the Resurgence of Contemporary Painting (Oxford: Phaidon, 1989)
Johnson William Sansom, The Equilibriad (with illustrations by Lucien Freud) (London: Hogarth Press, 1948)

Public collections

Related organisations

Bryanston School (student)
Central School of Arts and Crafts, London (student)
Dartington Hall School (student)
East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing (student)
Goldsmiths College (student)
Slade School of Fine Art (visiting tutor)

Selected exhibitions

Lucian Freud: New Perspectives, The National Gallery (2022)
Lucian Freud: Real Lives, Tate Liverpool (2021)
Freud, Minton, Ryan: Unholy Trinity, Victoria Art Gallery (2021)
Lucian Freud: The Self-Portraits, Royal Academy (2019)
Friends and Influences, Ben Uri Gallery & Museum (2019)
All Too Human: Bacon, Freud and a Century of Painting Life, Tate Britain (2018)
Finchleystrasse: German Artists in Exile in Great Britain and Beyond, 1933-45, Ben Uri at German Embassy, London (2018)
Lucian Freud: Early Works, Pallant House Gallery (2017)
Lucian Freud as a Child, Freud Museum (2014)
Lucian Freud Portraits, National Portrait Gallery (2012)
Lucian Freud Etchings, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (2004)
Lucian Freud: Latest Paintings, The Wallace Collection (2004)
Lucian Freud in the Studio: Photographs by David Dawson, National Portrait Gallery (2004)
Lucian Freud, Tate Britain (2002)
The School of London and Their Friends: The Collection of Elaine and Melvin Merians, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven (2000)
Ben Uri Story, Ben Uri at Philips (2000)
Lucian Freud
Some New Paintings, Tate (1998)
Lucian Freud, Early Works, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (1997)
Lucian Freud: Paintings and Etchings, Abbot Hall Art Gallery (1996)
Lucian Freud: Recent Paintings, Anthony D'Offay, London (1978)
Lucian Freud, Arts Council of Great Britain at Hayward Gallery (1974)
Lucian Freud: Recent Work, Marlborough Fine Art (1968)
Lucian Freud, Marlborough Fine Art (1958)
Venice Biennale (1954)
Festival of Britain (1951)
Lucian Freud, Hanover Gallery (1950)
Lucian Freud and John Craxton, London Gallery (1947)
Lucian Freud, Alex Reid and Lefevre Gallery (1944)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Lucian Freud]