The trials and tribulations of putting together Lucian Freud’s catalogue raisonné – The Art Newspaper

The British artist Lucian Freud (1922-2011) was famously non-public—he communicated principally by telephone however hardly ever gave out his quantity, which he modified typically—so the duty of cajoling him to conform to the investigative calls for of a list raisonné proved difficult.

Whereas the artist was amenable to serving to piece collectively his works in chronological order, he had little want to assemble an archive in his personal lifetime. “I don’t need to look behind,” he as soon as instructed the artwork historian and Freud skilled Catherine Lampert, “I need to look forward.” Freud pulled the rug from underneath the primary effort in direction of the realisation of {the catalogue} raisonné undertaking in 2005 however supplied Lampert his blessing to edit the e-book posthumously.

Now, 14 years after his dying, {the catalogue} raisonné of Freud’s oil work has been revealed. Co-authored by Lampert and the artwork historian Toby Treves, Lucian Freud: Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Work is a formidable four-volume compendium protecting nicely over a thousand pages, with every hardback quantity held in a canvas protecting and all housed collectively in a sublime royal blue slipcase. It was David Dawson, Freud’s assistant and director of his archive, who selected Fashionable Artwork Press because the writer, which was run on the time by Treves.

The primary quantity options a wonderful quintet of thematic essays, together with an interesting account of Freud’s supplies by Jacob Simon; an eagle-eyed studying by Treves of Brassaï’s {photograph} of the artist and his second spouse Girl Caroline Blackwood in Paris, which additionally touches on Freud’s fantastical The Painter’s Room (1944), from his short-lived Surrealist interval; and Lampert’s essay on sculpture, a “first and final love” of Freud’s, particularly in relation to his favorite sculptor, Auguste Rodin.

The size and of scholarly analysis that has gone into producing this catalogue raisonné is uncommon. Lampert noticed all however 47 of the 507 works within the flesh, scrutinising the framing and the place potential the verso of items up shut for clues of provenance. She even tracked down the worn-out shutters featured within the breakthrough Man with a Thistle (Self-Portrait) (1946) in Poros, Greece, the place Freud, already gaining a world status in his mid-20s, was then portray alongside John Craxton. Utilizing the “bible”—a roving archive of sources put collectively by Freud’s agent James Kirkman—in addition to gross sales books from the Hanover Gallery, the authors tracked down furtive work. The enterprise was hampered by the truth that Freud made a behavior of promoting off his footage for quick money to mates or to settle playing money owed.

The fraught authentication processes of Freud’s canvases—and the lengths the artist would go to retrieve previous darlings—has develop into the stuff of legend. He would encourage tales that he put heavies to work on retrieving previous work that he regretted letting out of his studio. In accordance with one such story, one in every of Freud’s daughters, Rose Boyt, prevaricated over sending her father a portray for authentication as a result of she was terrified that he would smash it up as a substitute. Followers of the BBC TV collection Faux or Fortune? will probably be delighted, then, to find {that a} previously contested portrait of a younger man with a black scarf, from Freud’s scholar interval on the East Anglian College of Portray and Drawing, has now been authenticated. (Treves had disputed the piece in 2017 on account of being unable to belief “essentially the most fallible of schools, reminiscence”—together with Freud’s). When the portray is seen alongside Freud’s portrait of Cedric Morris, his formative early trainer, it’s clear that the 2 faces had been made by the identical hand.

Nonetheless, different contested works haven’t been included, amongst them a naturalistic portrait of a unadorned man purchased by a north African collector for lower than SFr 100,000 in 1997 ($145,000 on the time). Freud allegedly discovered the collector’s quantity on eBay and supplied him double what he had paid to have it returned. On the authenticity of that work, William Feaver, Freud’s biographer, was categorical: “There’s nothing prefer it in Lucian’s work ever, wherever, to outlive … Each single certifiable one is basically fairly totally different from this relatively cautious, painstaking, right factor.” that portray, it’s clearly not a Freud.

One other check for the authors is over the query of “unfinished” work, in addition to the artist’s course of of creating three or 4 makes an attempt for every completed image, earlier than making certain that the deserted efforts had been “destroyed destroyed”, in accordance with Lampert. A compelling unfinished work, Head of a Man (round 1956), of the physicist and mathematician Peter Burton, which had not been revealed nor exhibited beforehand, has been catalogued. The expressive brushwork resembles Freud’s second portrait of Francis Bacon, his subsequent portray in sequence, which was additionally unfinished (most likely as a result of Bacon discovered sitting to be excruciatingly boring). “Years later, in want of cash to repay a debt,” Lampert explains within the accompanying notes to the aborted Bacon image, “Freud offered the portray to the artwork supplier William Darby however then instantly misplaced the £600 he had acquired in a betting store.”

Commissioned by Time journal in 1960, a portrait in profile of the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman was additionally left uncompleted, partly after Bergman refused to sit down on Freud’s remaining day in Stockholm, and partly as a result of Freud resented the concept of getting one in every of his works reproduced and reprinted within the hundreds of thousands. “I did one thing which was solely what a hack does and I used to be handled like one,” Freud stated a lot later, after Time had fulfilled the phrases of the contract however paid solely half the charge on account of the portrait going unfinished. Freud gave the deserted work to the esteemed radiologist Oliver Scott as a part of his reimbursement of a debt.

Freud resisted the sort of forensic scrutiny of his personal life and work that he demanded of his sitters. He was dedicated, rash and possessive, all of which fed his notoriety. This catalogue raisonné, with its near-faultless execution of forensic scrutiny, is the closest look we could ever get at this most controversial, and most good, of post-war British painters.

• Catherine Lampert and Toby Treves, Lucian Freud: Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Work, Fashionable Artwork Press, 1,200pp, 566 illustrations, £500 (hb)