Christie’s will promote three early Lucian Freud work from the identical assortment in its London night sale on 15 October, with a mixed estimate of £13m to £20m.
The works present Freud’s type evolving over three a long time: from the crystalline rigidity of the wartime Lady with a Tulip (1944), to Self-portrait Fragment (round 1956), painted as his marriage was dissolving, to the bolder fluency of Sleeping Head (1961–71).
The work have all been in the identical non-public assortment for a few years and, though Christie’s declines to touch upon the id of the proprietor, the works are presently in free circulation within the UK. They’ve all been exhibited extensively in main exhibits such because the touring exhibition Lucian Freud: Work (1987–88), which travelled to Washington, Paris, London and Berlin, his Kunsthistorisches Museum retrospective in Vienna in 2013, and Lucian Freud: New Views, on the Nationwide Gallery, London and the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, in 2022-23.
Lucian Freud, Lady with a Tulip (1944)
Courtesy Christie’s Photographs 2025
Lady with a Tulip (1944, est. £3m-£5m) depicts Lorna Wishart, whom Freud described as “the primary one who meant one thing to me”. Wishart, the famously lovely youngest Garman sister and the aunt of Kitty Garman, who later grew to become Freud’s spouse, additionally seems in one other of Freud’s works, Lady with a Daffodil (1945), now within the Museum of Fashionable Artwork in New York.
Exactly painted with the sable brushes Freud favoured in his youth, this icon-like portray was exhibited in Freud’s first solo present on the Lefevre Gallery in 1944 and, in its stillness, depth and use of iconography, is clearly a stylistic precursor to well-known work comparable to Woman with a Kitten (1947) and Woman with Roses (1947-48). It has been within the vendor’s assortment because it was purchased from Freud’s vendor and agent James Kirkman in 1995.
“This image feels fairly devotional, as opposed the later portray of Lorna [in Moma], which exhibits how the connection had soured,” says Katharine Arnold, the vice-chairman twentieth/twenty first century artwork, and head of post-war and modern artwork, Europe at Christie’s.
Freud had moved on by the point he painted Self-portrait Fragment (round 1956, est. £8m-£12m), an equally intense however bigger work painted within the non finito custom, which was first proven at London’s Marlborough Gallery in 1968, the place the seller purchased it (the Kunsthistorisches Museum retrospective in 2013 was the primary time it was seen in public for 45 years). Within the mid-Fifties, Freud had simply transitioned to utilizing thicker, hog’s hair brushes and was spending a whole lot of time with Francis Bacon—within the 2022-23 Nationwide Gallery exhibition, this work was hung subsequent to his portrait of Bacon, portray in 1956–57.
Lucian Freud, Sleeping Head (1961-71)
Courtesy Christie’s Photographs 2025
“Already by 1956, you’re taking a look at an older man—Freud is in his 30s and he’s fascinated with how paint might change, the way it might start to loosen up,” Arnold says. “At this level, Bacon has an essential affect over Freud’s follow and it’s with some encouragement from Bacon that Freud decides to loosen up his brushwork. There’s a narrative that, within the early interval, Freud mentioned he would typically see the define of his eye on the canvas as a result of he was staring so exhausting. However by 1956-7 he has began to loosen up.” She provides: “Freud just isn’t taking a look at us on this image, he’s taking a look at himself. His relationship along with his then spouse Caroline Blackwood is altering, he isn’t within the first flush of affection.”
The brushstrokes get thicker and extra expressive nonetheless in Sleeping Head (1961–71, est. £2m-£3m), the one one of many trio to have beforehand appeared at public sale—at Christie’s London in 1971, when it was bought by the fifth Marquis of Dufferin and Ava, Sheridan Dufferin, Blackwood’s brother. First proven at Marlborough Gallery in 1963, the tightly cropped work depicts a younger girl, who met Freud in a Soho bar, dozing on the oft-depicted shabby leather-based couch in his Paddington studio.
“This portray marks one other transition in method once more,” Arnold says. “At this level he has simply come again from Greece and he has a short relationship with this girl. We don’t know who she is, however he’s portray in a really free, assured approach. We don’t know if that’s a mirrored image of his private life—he’s not married—however he’s now entering into a really fluent, simple portray type. So, whenever you take a look at all three works collectively, you will have this arc of portray method.”
Available on the market for Freud’s work, Arnold says: “There’s a excessive diploma of curiosity within the early works, the reason is that after 1958 the method has modified so there’s solely a discreet second in time when these works had been being made, subsequently they’re uncommon, particularly as a whole lot of the nice early work are in public establishments.” She provides: “I believe the patrons of those early works may simply as simply be the customer of a 1932 Picasso—they’re not essentially the kind of one who would purchase a British figurative painter.” The sitter additionally performs a job in a works attraction and, Arnold provides, “a self-portrait is at all times a very attention-grabbing perception right into a painter, in order that they are usually probably the most prized—we’ve collectors who solely purchase self-portraits.”
As for geographical demand, Arnold says: “Over the previous yr, we’ve bought a significant portray to North America, two to Asia, we’ve had deep European bidding, UK patrons. So, it’s common.”
The work have been assured to promote by Christie’s.
