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Lot Essay
Gifted by the artist to the present owner, and never before seen in public, the present work is a rare self-portrait by Lucian Freud. Painted circa 1986, at the height of his powers, it is contemporaneous with masterworks such Reflection (Self-Portrait) (1981-1982) and Reflection (Self-Portrait) (1985), as well as the relatedSelf-Portrait (Fragment) (circa 1985), held in the National Portrait Gallery, London. Charting his likeness from the ages of seventeen to eighty-nine, Freud’s self-portraits represent one of art history’s most remarkable and sustained bodies of work. Among over seventy produced during his lifetime, the present work is one of around ten unfinished examples on canvas known to exist. Working from a mirror, Freud depicts his head, upper torso and left arm. Every muscular contour is intricately rendered; rich modulations of colour and texture chart the play of light and shadow across his skin. It is an intimate window onto the artist’s method, and a remarkable snapshot of a master at work.
For Freud, painting itself was an act of self-reflection. His canvases were vehicles for recording his view of the world, and affirming—through their hawk-eyed rigour—his unshakeable presence within it. Painting himself, in this regard, brought complex challenges: ‘you’ve got to try to paint yourself as another person’, he once observed (L. Freud, quoted in W. Feaver, Lucian Freud, New York, 2007, p. 31). His lifelong commitment to the genre, nonetheless, was extraordinary, chronicling—like Rembrandt, van Gogh and others before him—every stage of his evolving life and art. By the time of the present work, he had taken his place among the masters: his career-defining touring retrospective in 1987 would lead critics to hail him as the finest living realist painter. His self-portraits during this time spoke directly to this period of professional triumph, their bare shoulders and virtuosic depiction of ageing flesh simmering with fearless candour. In the lower half of the canvas, the present work also seems to hint at the outline of the rest of Freud's body, perhaps foreshadowing his full-length nude self-portrait Painter Working, Reflection (1993).
Freud’s unfinished paintings represent a fascinating strand of his oeuvre. Among their number are some of his most intriguing works, with certain commentators invoking the non finito technique popularised during the Renaissance. Works such as Francis Bacon (1956-1957) and Last Portrait (1976-1977, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid) are made all more powerful by the passages of raw canvas offsetting their subjects’ intimately-observed features. These works testify to Freud’s preference for building his compositions in detail from the centre outwards. Martin Gayford notes that ‘the sections he paints look fairly “finished” from early on, surrounded by blank white canvas’ (M. Gayford, quoted in N. Cullinan, ‘“Finishing Well”: Lucian Freud’, in Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible, exh. cat. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 2016, p. 107). In the present work, Freud charts the curve of his shoulder bone and the shadow-filled crevices of his face with exquisite precision. At the same time, its bare, smudged ground is as much a relic of his process as the meticulous strokes of his hog’s hair paintbrush. In a portrait of his own likeness, Freud simultaneously lays bare his artistry, his piercing gaze palpable in every fibre of the canvas.
For Freud, painting itself was an act of self-reflection. His canvases were vehicles for recording his view of the world, and affirming—through their hawk-eyed rigour—his unshakeable presence within it. Painting himself, in this regard, brought complex challenges: ‘you’ve got to try to paint yourself as another person’, he once observed (L. Freud, quoted in W. Feaver, Lucian Freud, New York, 2007, p. 31). His lifelong commitment to the genre, nonetheless, was extraordinary, chronicling—like Rembrandt, van Gogh and others before him—every stage of his evolving life and art. By the time of the present work, he had taken his place among the masters: his career-defining touring retrospective in 1987 would lead critics to hail him as the finest living realist painter. His self-portraits during this time spoke directly to this period of professional triumph, their bare shoulders and virtuosic depiction of ageing flesh simmering with fearless candour. In the lower half of the canvas, the present work also seems to hint at the outline of the rest of Freud's body, perhaps foreshadowing his full-length nude self-portrait Painter Working, Reflection (1993).
Freud’s unfinished paintings represent a fascinating strand of his oeuvre. Among their number are some of his most intriguing works, with certain commentators invoking the non finito technique popularised during the Renaissance. Works such as Francis Bacon (1956-1957) and Last Portrait (1976-1977, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid) are made all more powerful by the passages of raw canvas offsetting their subjects’ intimately-observed features. These works testify to Freud’s preference for building his compositions in detail from the centre outwards. Martin Gayford notes that ‘the sections he paints look fairly “finished” from early on, surrounded by blank white canvas’ (M. Gayford, quoted in N. Cullinan, ‘“Finishing Well”: Lucian Freud’, in Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible, exh. cat. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 2016, p. 107). In the present work, Freud charts the curve of his shoulder bone and the shadow-filled crevices of his face with exquisite precision. At the same time, its bare, smudged ground is as much a relic of his process as the meticulous strokes of his hog’s hair paintbrush. In a portrait of his own likeness, Freud simultaneously lays bare his artistry, his piercing gaze palpable in every fibre of the canvas.