Lucian Freud: The Painter's Etchings

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Freud was one of a number of figurative artists who were later characterised by artist R. B. Kitaj as a group named the "School of London". [11] [12] This group was a loose collection of individual artists who knew each other, some intimately, and were working in London at the same time in the figurative style. The group was active contemporaneously with the boom years of abstract painting and in contrast to abstract expressionism. Major figures in the group included Freud, Kitaj, Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, Michael Andrews, Leon Kossoff, Robert Colquhoun, Robert MacBryde, and Reginald Gray. Freud was a visiting tutor at the Slade School of Fine Art of University College London from 1949 to 1954. While on a trip to Paris in 1946, Freud made his first etching and, although he only produced six prints before 1949, at which time he abandoned the medium for several decades, these works play an important role in his oeuvre . Ill in Paris, perhaps the masterpiece of this period, depicts Kitty Garman, Freud's first wife and a frequent subject from this period, as she stares at the graceful yet potentially dangerous form of the thorny long-stemmed rose beside her. Freud, who the critic Herbert Read referred to as "the Ingres of Existentialism," portrayed in meticulous detail the various textures and forms found in this tightly cropped, compressed space. Feaver, William (1996). Lucian Freud: Paintings and Etchings. Abbot Hall Art Gallery. ISBN 0-9503335-7-3

Lucian Freud, in Starr Figura (ed.), Lucian Freud: The Painter’s Etchings (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2008), p. 15. The paintings live because their creator has been passionately attentive to their theme, and his attention has left something for us to look at. It seems a sort of miracle.’₄ Although Lucian Freud, the grandson of Sigmund Freud, worked in an era largely dominated by nonobjective art and more conceptual practices, he avoided abstraction and chose instead to create work that would challenge notions of what representational art could be. He considered all of his works to be portraits, whether they were of people, books, landscapes, dogs, or horses; this expansive definition allowed him to redefine and revitalize the genre throughout a career spanning seven decades.

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This version, subtitled 'small plate' to distinguish it from the larger version which showed the whole composition, was made to focus on what Freud described as 'the most beautiful ear in art', and to draw attention to an overlooked detail - the girl's earring. In the early 1990’s I started my career in the art world, post University at Lumley Cazalet in London. They held an exhibition of a prominent and well-connected artist of the time, who had also briefly taught Lucian Freud. Lucian attended the opening, deferring to his tutor by also not staying long, thus not detracting the attention away from the artist. Lucian Freud was by this time arguably one of the greatest living artists, and now considered to be one of the major figurative painters of the 20 th century. Craig Hartley, ‘Freud and Auerbach Recent Work’, Print Quarterly, Vol. 9, No. 1 (March 1992), p. 5.; also Hartley, The etchings of Lucian Freud: a catalogue raisonné 1946-1995 (Marlborough Graphics, 1995), p. 22.

This is one of a group of 143 state, trial and cancellation proofs of etchings by Lucian Freud (1922-2011) which came from the collection of Marc Balakjian (1938-2017) of Studio Prints. Balakjian was Freud’s printer from 1985 and worked closely with him on the production of his etchings. It was through Bowery that Freud met Sue Tilley, a British unemployment officer, in 1990. Tilley, known as "Big Sue," posed for Freud numerous times between 1993 and 1996, and soon became one of his most recognizable subjects. Freud had planned to make a painting of Tilley, but when she arrived at his studio badly sunburnt (a violation of the artist's rule that all his subjects avoid the sun during the time they pose for him), he decided to make the etching Woman with an Arm Tattooinstead. Lauter, Rolf (2000), Lucian Freud: Naked Portraits. Works from the 1940s to the 1990s, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, 29.09.2000-04.03.2001. ISBN 3-7757-9043-8 ISBN 9783775790437 Catalogues raisonnés often prove unsatisfactory reading experiences…but this one is a pleasure to read. The essays are approachable, the catalogue entries are thorough, with good commentaries. The works develop logically, with some surprises and tours de force. The large size of the book (35 x 30 cm) allows substantial and detailed illustrations, all of which seem to be newly photographed. This certainly whets the appetite for catalogues of the paintings and drawings and reassures readers that the task is entrusted to safe hands. Publisher and authors have done admirably by one of Britain’s most distinguished artists with this impeccable, rigorous and beautiful book.’ – Alexander Adams, The British Art Journal, vol. XXIII, no. 2, Autumn 2022In the mid-1940s Graham Sutherland, an influential British artist, gave his friend Lucian Freud a set of his own etching tools as a gift. Freud had made two linocuts in 1936, and a single pen lithograph in 1944: they were not notable successes. Sutherland, who was a keen sponsor of the young Freud’s work, thought Freud’s draughtsman-like, direct, almost miniaturist style was much more suited to the etching plate. Freud began tentatively, his first etching was produced in the modest edition size of only 3 copies, his second only 4. By 1948, he had executed just 6 etchings, a mere 30 prints in total. Surprisingly, that would remain the case for another 34 years. By the early 1950s, Freud had arrived at the conclusion that his advancement as an artist was being hampered by his overtly linear style, which was also the defining manner of his paintings. Freud blamed his drawing, and as an extension of that, his etching. From that time, until 1982, Freud worked solely as a painter. Freud was part of a group of figurative artists later named "The School of London". This was more a loose collection of individual artists who knew each other, some intimately, and were working in London at the same time in the figurative style (but during the boom years of abstract painting). The group was led by figures such as Francis Bacon and Freud, and included Frank Auerbach, Michael Andrews, Leon Kossoff, Robert Colquhoun, Robert MacBryde, Reginald Gray and Kitaj himself. He was a visiting tutor at the Slade School of Fine Art of University College London from 1949 to 1954. The catalogue raisonné will include an essay that Balakjian had been commissioned to write about his collaboration. He described the challenges, including working on Freud’s self-portrait prints: “The first one was a small plate, which he did not like. He scratched scribbling lines on the face to cancel the plate before it was etched.”

A charming Christmas card of three boats Freud is thought to have made as a schoolboy and a striking study of a woman’s head that he decided not to publish are among pieces that will appear in the study. Other works in Lucian Freud: Catalogue Raisonné of the Prints, published by Modern Art Press on 24 May, show how Freud, who died in 2011, reworked compositions, erasing and revising areas that he did not like. Freud made his first etching in Paris the year after the war ended. He was 23. A girl he knew from art school in East Anglia was staying at the same hotel, and she gave him a small prepared copper plate to try. The process of hard-ground etching involves drawing with a needle on a plate that has been coated with a mixture of beeswax, rosin and asphalt. The lines of exposed copper become grooves once they are bathed (or ‘bitten’) in acid; when the surface is inked, it can be printed again and again. In Paris, Freud tied a sewing needle to the side of a pencil and drew a shape he called a Chelsea bun, though it could be a softened seashell, or a sunken rose. He persuaded a local chemist to sell him some nitric acid and used it to bite the plate in the sink in his room – but he didn’t have anywhere to print it. On his way to the cinema one day, he bumped into Picasso’s nephew Javier Vilató, who told him about a printer on the Quai Voltaire. The printer made an edition of four. Starr Figura, Lucian Freud: The Painter’s Etchings, exhibition catalogue, Museum of Modern Art, New York 2007, pp.30, 137, print from the main edition of forty-six reproduced cat.78, pl.108.Gayford, Martin (2010). Man with a Blue Scarf: On Sitting for a Portrait by Lucian Freud. Thames & Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-23875-2 Lucian Michael Freud OM CH [1] ( / f r ɔɪ d/; 8 December 1922– 20 July 2011) was a British painter and draughtsman, specialising in figurative art, and is known as one of the foremost 20th-century English portraitists. He was born in Berlin, the son of Jewish architect Ernst L. Freud and the grandson of Sigmund Freud. Freud got his first name "Lucian" from his mother in memory of the ancient writer Lucian of Samosata. His family moved to England in 1933, when he was 10 years old, to escape the rise of Nazism. He became a British naturalized citizen in 1939. From 1942 to 1943 he attended Goldsmiths' College, London. He served at sea with the British Merchant Navy during the Second World War. Many of these images were among more than 140 trial proofs amassed by the printmaker Marc Balakjian, who died in 2017, having worked closely with Freud for many years. In 2019, in lieu of estate duty, the collection went to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, which plans to exhibit some of them next year. Smith, Roberta (14 December 2007). "Lucian Freud Stripped Bare". The New York Times . Retrieved 22 July 2011. Feaver, William (2021). The Lives of Lucian Freud: Fame: 1968-2011. New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. p.155. ISBN 978-0-525-65767-5.