A large painting of a large woman is expected to bring in large amounts of moolah at an auction next month. The painting is by none other than Lucien Freud, the British painter who paints people as they are, with no sign of idealism whatsoever. So what if a few rolls of fat make their way onto the portrait, or you just don’t look as beautiful as you thought? This painter is a painter of reality how he sees it.
Freud is known for his impasto paintings with neutral tones often depicting nudes and sleeping people. His unforgiving portraits make no effort to hide physical features or unsightliness, and his realistic portrayals will leave no wart or blemish undepicted. In fact, you might say his paintings are borderline exaggerated, and may resemble caricatures. His portrait of the queen was met with a little hostility for not making her more beautiful. Is that a five o’clock shadow?
The painting above is called Benefits Supervisor Sleeping and is expected to be bring in $36 million at Christie’s Auction House in New York. This would be a record for the largest sum paid for a painting by a living artist, beating the previous record of $23.5 million for a Jeff Koons painting last year. The model is a London civil worker named Sue Tilley, who Freud affectionately calls “Big Sue.” She represents his propensity for painting people of odd proportions and big figures. She claims Freud chose her as a model because he could get the highest value for his money- more pounds of model for his pounds sterling.
Leave a comment