COLLECTION NAME:
Visual Resources Teaching Collection
mediaCollectionId
ArtArtHiAAH~7~7
Visual Resources Teaching Collection
Collection
true
Image Record ID:
aahi0001781
image_record_id
aahi0001781
Image Record ID
false
Work Title (display):
Girl with Leaves
Image Title:
full view
Work Dates (display):
1948
Work Dates type:
creation
Work Creator (display):
Lucian Freud (British, 1922-2011)
Work Creator gender:
male
work_creator_or_agent_gender
male
Work Creator gender
false
Work Creator notes (display):
British painter and draughtsman. He was the son of the architect Ernst Freud (18921970) and the grandson of Sigmund Freud. His family moved to England in 1932, and in 1939 he became a naturalized British subject and enrolled at the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing, Dedham, run by Cedric Morris. Apart from a year in Paris and Greece, Freud spent most of the rest of his career in Paddington, London, an inner-city area whose seediness is reflected in Freud's often sombre and moody interiors and cityscapes. In the 1940s he was principally interested in drawing, especially the face, as in Naval Gunner (1941; priv. col., see Gowing, pl. 22), and occasionally using a distorted style reminiscent of George Grosz, as in Page from a Sketchbook (1941; priv. col., see Gowing, pl. 17). He began to turn his attention to painting, however, and experimented with Surrealism, producing such images as the Painter's Room (1943; priv. col., see Gowing, pl. 26), which features an incongruous arrangement of objects, including a stuffed zebra's head, a battered chaise longue and a house plant, all of which survived his Surrealist phase and appeared separately in later paintings. He was also loosely associated with Neo-Romanticism, and the intense, bulbous eyes that characterize his early portraits show affinities with the work of other artists associated with the movement, such as John Minton, whose portrait he painted in 1952 (London, Royal Coll. A.). He established his own artistic identity, however, in meticulously executed realist works, imbued with a pervasive mood of alienation. He was dubbed by Herbert Read 'the Ingres of existentialism' (Contemporary British Art, Harmondsworth, 1951, rev. 1964, p. 35) because of such images as those of his first wife, Kitty (the daughter of Jacob Epstein), nervously clutching a rose in Girl with Roses (19478; London, Brit. Council). Two important paintings of 1951 established the themes and preoccupations that dominated the rest of Freud's career: Interior in Paddington (Liverpool, Walker A.G.) and Girl with a White Dog (London, Tate). In the former an archetypal 'angry young man' figure (the sitter was photographer Harry Diamond who would pose again for Freud), in dishevelled raincoat, cigarette in one hand, the other fist clenched, is placed in claustrophobic proximity to a meticulously executed man-sized potted plant in an anonymous interior space. Girl with a White Dog is a virtuoso handling of fabrics and textures, juxtaposing the smooth hairs of the bulldog, the wool of the sitter's dressing-gown and the silk bedspread on which she sits, but of more enduring interest is the expressive, staged quality of the composition, the way the model supports an exposed breast on her wrist and stares resolutely beyond her canine companion. Both paintings demonstrate an eagerness to establish a highly charged situation, in which the artist is free to explore formal and optical problems rather than expressive or interpretative ones. Later poses of comparable theatricality include Naked Man with Rat (1977; priv. col., see Gowing, pl. 175) and Naked Girl with Egg (198081; London, Brit. Council; see England, fig. 24). By the late 1950s Freud had lost interest in achieving a meticulous sheen on the surface of his pictures: brushmarks became spatial as he began to describe the face and body in terms of shape and structure, for example in Pregnant Girl (196061; priv. col., see Gowing, pl. 90), and often in female nudes the brushstrokes help to suggest shape. By the time of the tautly modelled Reflection (Self-portrait) (562×512 mm, 1985; priv. col., see 1987 exh. cat., pl. 82), attention to tonal detail had become so acute, however, that paint was built up in concentrations devoid of any compositional function. Throughout his career Freud's palette remained distinctly muted. A close relationship with sitters was often important for Freud. His mother sat for an extensive series in the early 1970s after she was widowed, and his daughters Bella and Esther modelled nude, together and individually. Such artists as Frank Auerbach and Francis Bacon, and such patrons as Lord Goodman and Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza, sat for portraits. The performance artist Leigh Bowery posed for an extensive series of nude pictures in the early 1990s. Although the human form dominated his output, Freud also executed cityscapes, viewed from his studio window, and obsessively detailed nature studies, such as Two Plants (197780; London, Tate). The 1980s and early 1990s were marked by increasingly ambitious compositions in terms of both scale and complexity, such as the Large Interior, W11 (After Watteau) (1.86×1.98 m, 19813; priv. col., see 1991 exh. cat., p. 64), which involves five sitters, including family members and his then mistress, the artist Celia Paul (b 1959), arranged in homage to Watteau's Pierrot Content (1712; Lugano, Col. Thyssen-Bornemisza). http://www.groveart… (accessed 2008-06010)>
Work Style Period:
Realist (modern European fine arts styles)
work_styleperiod
Realist (modern European fine arts styles)
Work Style Period
false
Work Style Period:
20th century
work_styleperiod
20th century
Work Style Period
false
Work Subject:
alienation (philosophy)
subject
alienation (philosophy)
Work Subject
false
Work Subject:
leaves (plant material)
subject
leaves (plant material)
Work Subject
false
Work Subject:
figures
subject
figures
Work Subject
false
Work Subject:
girls
subject
girls
Work Subject
false
Work Worktype:
drawings
work_type
drawings
Work Worktype
false
Work Category (VRC classification):
drawings
work_category__ucbaahvrc_classification_
drawings
Work Category (VRC classification)
false
Work Material and Technique (display):
pastel on gray paper
Work Measurements (display):
48 cm (H) x 42 cm (W)
Work Location (Repository or Site) name:
Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.)
Work Location (Repository or Site) role:
repository
Work Location (Repository or Site) refid:
240.1948
Work Location (Geographic) name:
New York, New York
Image Rights (display):
© Museum of Modern Art, New York. Licensed for educational use via Scholars Resource: Davis Art Images
Work Rights (display):
unknown
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Holding Institution:
University of Colorado at Boulder
Collection:
Art and Art History Visual Resources Collection
Collection info and contact:
For information about this collection, see