Lucian Freud subject says late painter was a ‘perfectionist’

By Press Association Reporters

The subject of one of Lucian Freud’s portraits has described the late artist as a “perfectionist” who would stab his leg with a brush when things went wrong, as the painting goes up for auction for an estimated £35 million.

Sue Tilley sat for the artist three times a week for approximately nine months as he painted Sleeping By The Lion Carpet, which has been hailed as one of his “defining masterpieces”.

The portrait, which was painted from 1995 to 1996 and shows Tilley slouched on a leather couch fully naked, will go up for sale for the first time as part of The Lewis Collection from Sotheby’s in June.

It has been estimated to sell for between £25 and £35 million.

Speaking to the Press Association, Tilley said it is “bizarre” knowing the portrait might fetch that much money, but said she is “kind of used to it” having been the subject of four paintings by Freud.

She said: “It’s still so exciting, and it’s hard to understand and comprehend why that happened to me.”

Freud was introduced to Tilley through their friend the late Leigh Bowery, the performance artist and fashion designer who also featured in several of his early paintings from the 1990s.

Tilley said that she was “told off half way through” the painting process by Freud after she got sunburned while visiting an exhibition in the south of France.

She explained that before travelling, he told her not to go in the sun, but said that the weather was “so glorious” that she forgot and ended up with a sunburned chest.

She recalled that Freud “stormed out the room” when he saw she was red upon her return to work. She added that he had not shouted at her and had instead blamed his daughter Bella who was also on the trip.

Tilley added: “There was a break of about three months painting it while my chest subsided.”

Asked what Freud was like when he was painting, she said: “He took it very seriously, and he just stared.

“He had very scary eyes … and if it went wrong, he’d get the paint brush and stab himself in the thigh and swear continuously the F word.

“But it wasn’t my fault, he was angry with himself because what he was trying to do wasn’t working out – because he was such a perfectionist in what he wanted to do.”

In a previous conversation with PA, Tilley said being his subject was “very pleasurable” as it involved her sitting, eating and “being in the presence of the most important artist in the world”.

Speaking about the portrait, she said: “It shows all those skinny girls that big girls can do well as well. I feel like I’m an example for big women to show themselves off.

“It’s good that it’s different. If everyone looked the same, it’d be boring, wouldn’t it?”

Tilley hopes audiences will see the portrait and appreciate Freud as a “marvellous painter” especially for the way he “observed humans as they are”.

She added: “That’s what I’m like and that’s what you have to accept, that all humans are different.

“Everyone’s got different things about them and they should be championed rather than brushed under the carpet.

Tilley said Freud would not paint any of it without her there because her presence would make a difference on the space and the way the light reflected on different aspects of the room.

Freud painted four monumental canvases of Tilley between 1993 and 1996, with the auction house describing the final portrait as one of Freud’s “defining masterpieces” and the “final and most ambitious work” in the painter’s quartet of portraits of the former benefits supervisor.

It will be the first time the painting appears at an auction after it was bought from the artist at the time it was painted.

The last time a major painting from this series came to auction, it made history. His 1995 portrait Benefits Supervisor Resting sold for £35.9 million, breaking a record at the time – not only for Freud but for any living artist, according to the auction house.

The painting unveiled on Friday will be put on display from June 10 until June 23 as part of Sotheby’s The Lewis Collection exhibition which includes works by Klimt, Modigliani and Matisse.

Following the exhibition the pieces will go up for sale from June 24-25 with a combined estimated sale exceeding £150 million, making it the “most valuable collection ever offered in the UK”, according to Sotheby’s.

Oliver Barker, Sotheby’s Europe chairman, said: “If figuration is the beating heart of The Lewis Collection, then Freud is its lifeblood.

“Intimate and monumental in equal measure, drawing on the great traditions of the past but at the same time radically new and inventive, full of emotional and painterly complexity, Sleeping By The Lion Carpet is a masterpiece by any measure.

“It is, quite simply, one of the greatest portraits of the 20th century, if not in the entire history of Western art – the Mona Lisa of the modern age.”