Lucian Freud: The Painter's Etchings

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As Freud became an international star towards the turn of the millennium, he took his practice to bold new heights. The extraordinary figures of Leigh Bowery and the ‘benefits supervisor’ Sue Tilley gave rise to some of his most ambitious portraits. Elsewhere, he painted icons ranging from Queen Elizabeth II to Kate Moss. His self-portraits — a constant thread throughout his practice — became increasingly poignant, charting the passage of life across his ageing form. Works from this period, including Benefits Supervisor Resting (1994), Benefits Supervisor Sleeping (1995) and The Brigadier (2003–04), have all achieved top prices at Christie’s. This work was one of two etchings made as a response to the painting The Young Schoolmistress by Jean-Siméon Chardin in the National Gallery, London. In Large Head, Freud closely cropped the image and depicted Bowery with his eyes closed, as if sleeping, to create an extraordinarily intimate and powerful image. In both his paintings and etchings, Freud sought to capture what he described as the "inner life" of his subjects as well as his relationship with or reaction to each person, as opposed to a performance or behavior that had been altered in some way. Currently on view in the Robert Wood Johnson, Jr. Gallery are works on paper by Lucian Freud and Brice Marden. Although these artists are widely acclaimed for their work in other media, prints play a critical role in their oeuvres. Both artists avidly explored possibilities for printmaking, often developing ideas and innovations that they then applied to work in other media. Their engagement with printmaking—etching in particular—was not only important for the artists, but also had a significant impact on the medium itself by offering up new possibilities. Tania Sutton, a director at the gallery and member of staff for over 25 years, has chosen Lucian Freud’s portrait of his daughter, Bella.

Freud returned to etching in 1982, after a thirty-four-year hiatus. His etching of his stepson Kai shows his deep interest in capturing the various physical and emotional states of his subjects. Since Freud demanded such a deep commitment from his subjects, requiring almost daily portrait sessions that could last for up to six hours at a time over a period of many months, he refused almost all commissions. Instead, he chose to portray people who were close to him or who intrigued him in some way. The catalogue raisonné will include an essay that Balakjian had been commissioned to write about his collaboration. He described the challenges, including working on Freud’s self-portrait prints: “The first one was a small plate, which he did not like. He scratched scribbling lines on the face to cancel the plate before it was etched.” At the time, Freud was making precise line drawings in pencil, conté or ink. His conté drawing of Lorna Wishart in an ocelot coat, his ink drawings of a dead monkey and of sea holly (all 1944) and more obviously his self-portrait in ink, Man at Night, from 1947, all suggest that a transition to hard-ground etching would have been logical. The minute dots with which he composed the shading in his ink portraits, and his almost fetishistic way with fine strands of hair, would have lent themselves to drawing with a needle. For a short while, that seems to have been the case. He made six etchings between 1946 and 1948, half of which – all portraits of Kitty Garman – were in this vein. His Girl with Fig Leaf, etched in Aix in 1947 using tools given to him by Graham Sutherland, is a close relation of his paintings and drawings of Garman at the time. Among the best-known of these are his strange strangling sitter Girl with a Kitten (1947, in oil) and the petrified-looking Girl with Leaves (1948, conté and pastel).

Staff Feature: Lucian Freud – Bella, 1987

Lauter, Rolf (2000), Lucian Freud: Naked Portraits. Works from the 1940s to the 1990s, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, 29.09.2000-04.03.2001. ISBN 3-7757-9043-8 ISBN 9783775790437 As with his paintings, Freud did not work from preparatory sketches when making these prints. Instead, they were executed direct on the plate, working in front of the model. Having first established the basic image on the etching plate in white chalk, Freud then developed the motif using an etching needle only. As with all his etchings, Freud obtained effects of tone and texture through the use of line and cross-hatching alone. At the time they were completed, ‘Blond Girl’ and ‘Man Posing’ were most the ambitious etchings the artist had made. They were larger than any of his earlier prints, and ‘Man Posing’, in particular, was more heavily worked than his previous essays in etching, the dense cross-hatching and all-over treatment of detail establishing a precedent in Freud's printmaking oeuvre. Lucian Freud (British [born Germany], 1922–2011). The Egyptian Book, 1994. Etching; plate: 11 3/4 x 11 3/4 in. (29.8 x 29.8 cm), sheet: 16 3/4 x 18 1/2 in. (42.5 x 47 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Reba and Dave Williams Gift, 1995 (1995.146) Lucian Freud made his first etching in Paris in 1946, using the wash-basiz in his hotel room as an acid bath. Five small-scale etchings date from this decade, following which Freud ceased printmaking for thirty-four years. Thereafter, beguiled by its ‘element of danger and mystery’, he steadily created an impressive contribution to the medium.1 London Exhibition Showcases the Best of Bryanston Art and Design". Bryanston Art: Past and Present. Bryanston School. 12 October 2008. Archived from the original on 28 September 2011 . Retrieved 25 July 2011.

Starr Figura, Lucian Freud: The Painter’s Etchings, exhibition catalogue, Museum of Modern Art, New York 2007, pp.30, 137, print from the main edition of forty-six reproduced cat.78, pl.108. In contrast to the attention Freud devoted to composing his images, the production of these prints was rather rudimentary. Freud, working alone, etched images on prepared copper plates and used a sink in his hotel room for the acid bath. A local printer, found with the help of Picasso's nephew Javier Vilato, pulled the proofs. Craig Hartley, ‘Freud and Auerbach Recent Work’, Print Quarterly, Vol. 9, No. 1 (March 1992), p. 5.; also Hartley, The etchings of Lucian Freud: a catalogue raisonné 1946-1995 (Marlborough Graphics, 1995), p. 22. This is one of a group of 143 state, trial and cancellation proofs of etchings by Lucian Freud (1922-2011) which came from the collection of Marc Balakjian (1938-2017) of Studio Prints. Balakjian was Freud’s printer from 1985 and worked closely with him on the production of his etchings. Lucian Freud was a British artist, famous for his portraits and self-portraits painted in an expressive neo-figurative style. He was born in Berlin, the grandson of the revolutionary psychologist Sigmund Freud, and the son of an architect Ernst Freud and an art historian Lucie Brasch.It was through Bowery that Freud met Sue Tilley, a British unemployment officer, in 1990. Tilley, known as "Big Sue," posed for Freud numerous times between 1993 and 1996, and soon became one of his most recognizable subjects. Freud had planned to make a painting of Tilley, but when she arrived at his studio badly sunburnt (a violation of the artist's rule that all his subjects avoid the sun during the time they pose for him), he decided to make the etching Woman with an Arm Tattooinstead. Brown, Mark (10 July 2021). "Exhibition brings to light young Freud's love triangle". The Guardian. London. p.25. a b Spurling, John (13 December 1998). "Portrait of the artist as a happy man". The Independent . Retrieved 19 June 2010.

This version, subtitled 'small plate' to distinguish it from the larger version which showed the whole composition, was made to focus on what Freud described as 'the most beautiful ear in art', and to draw attention to an overlooked detail - the girl's earring. The term "views" connotes doorways, much like his series of paintings made during this time entitled Thira, or Greek for "door," an impression that is reinforced by the divided plane and its suggestion of openings such as windows, doors, and the spaces between columns. Within the suite, which was named after Marden's goddaughter, the repetition of forms—seven vertical columns with a single horizontal element positioned like an architrave—and the mirroring structures create a sense of a unity and equilibrium.Lucian Freud, in Starr Figura (ed.), Lucian Freud: The Painter’s Etchings (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2008), p. 15. This is however, in no way a sentimental portrait of a much-loved daughter. The angle is unflattering, the expression dispassionate and disengaged. Yet, by revealing the effects of time, perhaps even the cost of living life across her face, Freud has given his sitter a gravitas, an intensity, hinting with respect at the strength of character that lies beneath and imbueing the image with a sense of timelessness.

Lauter, Rolf (2001). "Lucian Freud, naked portraits". collections.britishart.yale.edu . Retrieved 4 February 2020. Frank Auerbach wrote pertinently and beautifully about Freud in the Tate exhibition catalogue in 2002: At the time I bumped into Esther Freud I was interested in figuring out how her father worked on his etching plates. They were so built up – and he kept on at each of them for so long – that I assumed he must have drawn a faint sketch first and bitten it in acid before recoating the plate and working on the portrait layer by layer. This is what Rembrandt did, overwhelming his initial drawing with successive richer ones. Or perhaps, like Morandi, he controlled the depth of his etched lines very carefully, rendering pallor or darkness with acid as he would with shades of paint.

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Feaver, William (2021). The Lives of Lucian Freud: Fame: 1968-2011. New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. p.155. ISBN 978-0-525-65767-5. Born in Berlin, Freud was the son of a German Jewish mother, Lucie (née Brasch), and an Austrian Jewish father, Ernst L. Freud, an architect. He was a grandson of Sigmund Freud, and elder brother of the broadcaster, writer and politician Clement Freud (thus uncle of Emma and Matthew Freud) and the younger brother of Stephan Gabriel Freud. Freud was born in Berlin in 1922. His father was the Jewish architect Ernst Freud; his grandfather was psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. In 1933 the family fled to Britain. Freud studied at the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing in Dedham, as well as Goldsmith’s College in London. His early work had a sharp, surreal quality, often consisting of still lifes and landscapes.