The Lives of Lucian Freud Fame

Release on 2021-01-19 | by William Feaver

His paintings are in every major museum and many private collections here and abroad. William Feaver's daily calls from 1973 until Freud died in 2011, as well as interviews with family and friends were crucial sources for this book.

Author: William Feaver
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 9780525657675
Category: Biography & Autobiography
Page: 576
View: 227

The Lives of Lucian Freud Fame

The first biography of the epic life of one of the most important, enigmatic and private artists of the 20th century. Drawn from almost 40 years of conversations with the artist, letters and papers, it is a major work written by a well-known British art critic. Lucian Freud (1922-2011) is one of the most influential figurative painters of the 20th century. His paintings are in every major museum and many private collections here and abroad. William Feaver's daily calls from 1973 until Freud died in 2011, as well as interviews with family and friends were crucial sources for this book. Freud had ferocious energy, worked day and night but his circle was broad including not just other well-known artists but writers, bluebloods, royals in England and Europe, drag queens, fashion models gamblers, bookies and gangsters like the Kray twins. Fierce, rebellious, charismatic, extremely guarded about his life, he was witty, mischievous and a womanizer. This brilliantly researched book begins with the Freuds' life in Berlin, the rise of Hitler and the family's escape to London in 1933 when Lucian was 10. Sigmund Freud was his grandfather and Ernst, his father was an architect. In London in his twenties, his first solo show was in 1944 at the Lefevre Gallery. Around this time, Stephen Spender introduced him to Virginia Woolf; at night he was taking Pauline Tennant to the Gargoyle Club, owned by her father and frequented by Dylan Thomas; he was also meeting Sonia Orwell, Cecil Beaton, Auden, Patrick Leigh-Fermor and the Aly Khan, and his muse was a married femme fatale, 13 years older, Lorna Wishart. But it was Francis Bacon who would become his most important influence and the painters Frank Auerbach and David Hockney, close friends. This is an extremely intimate, lively and rich portrait of the artist, full of gossip and stories recounted by Freud to Feaver about people, encounters, and work. Freud's art was his life—"my work is purely autobiographical"—and he usually painted only family, friends, lovers, children, though there were exceptions like the famous small portrait of the Queen. With his later portraits, the subjects were often nude, names were never given and sittings could take up to 16 months, each session lasting five hours but subjects were rarely bored as Freud was a great raconteur and mimic. This book is a major achievement, a tour de force that reveals the details of the life and innermost thoughts of the greatest portrait painter of our time. Volume I has 41 black and white integrated images, and 2 eight-page color inserts.

Language: en
Pages: 576

The Lives of Lucian Freud: Fame

Authors: William Feaver

Categories: Biography & Autobiography

Type: BOOK - Published: 2021-01-19 - Publisher: Knopf

Language: en
Pages: 13

Lucian Freud, 1996-2005

Authors: Lucian Freud, Sebastian Smee

Categories: Figurative art, British

Type: BOOK - Published: 2005 - Publisher:

At the time of the publication of Lucian Freud, the definitive monograph, by Jonathan Cape in 1996, Freud was already regarded as one of the great portrait painters of all time. His naked portraits had no parallel. His work exists outside the currents of contemporary art in a domain of

Language: en
Pages: 95

Lucian Freud

Authors: Lucian Freud, Sarah Howgate, Martin Gayford, David Hockney

Categories: Art

Type: BOOK - Published: 2012 - Publisher:

An accessible guide to the portraits of Lucian Freud, featuring the finest examples of his work

Language: en
Pages: 174

Lucian Freud

Authors: Phoebe Hoban

Categories: Art

Type: BOOK - Published: 2014 - Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

This first biography of the English painter and grandson of Sigmund Freud traces the life of this extraordinary artist who painted everyone from Kate Moss to Queen Elizabeth and whose intent was always to find and reveal the character hidden within by means of his intense visual imagination.

Language: en
Pages: 704

The Lives of Lucian Freud

Authors: William Feaver

Categories: Biography & Autobiography

Type: BOOK - Published: 2019-09-05 - Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

SELECTED AS BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE TIMES, FINANCIAL TIMES, DAILY TELEGRAPH, NEW STATESMAN, SUNDAY TIMES, TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT AND SPECTATOR SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2019 'This exceptional book is far from standard biography ... A compendium of high-grade gossip about everyone from Princess Margaret