He was on the threshold of his ‘disturbing’ or ‘hallucinatory’ period, which led Herbert Read, the critic and co-founder of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, to describe him as ‘the Ingres of existentialism’. It was a compliment that Lucian enjoyed, Ingres being one of the painters he most admired.
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Freud was a great divider. He allowed few of us to see any of the others. The central crossroads in his later life were his painting studio and Clarke’s. Everyone important to him in his final years met there.
He was entrenched in life-study portraiture and he made it provocative. ‘It is the only point of getting up every morning: to paint, to make something good, to make something even better than before, not to give up, to compete, to be ambitious,’ he said.
Lucian had been remarkably fast out of the starting blocks in his teens and early twenties (the Museum of Modern Art in New York had bought a picture in the 1940s), but then there was a very long period when his paintings sold only to a small number of English people and he enjoyed almost no international recognition. In the early days of their relationship Freud was encouraged by Bacon and eventually he followed his more reckless, free-style approach, abandoning his Germanic tightness of line and fine surfaces.
His hobby was reading people. Some people wondered why he would sit with a young girl, a model or one of his grandchildren and not speak much. It was because his eyes were swivelling round reading people’s movements and looks. It was what he did professionally,’ said Doherty.
D’Offay’s relationship with Freud had started in the 1960s through an introduction by a bright young art expert called James Kirkman, the son of a general, who worked for Marlborough Fine Art and looked after Lucian there. Marlborough, part-owned by the Duke of Beaufort, was the most prestigious British contemporary gallery, representing Francis Bacon, Henry Moore and Graham Sutherland, as well as Lucian. But Lucian felt ignored and sidelined compared to his friend Bacon, who in 1962 had a show at the Tate Gallery and was rapidly gaining a global reputation. ‘Lucian was by no means a star then. He was actually thought to be something of a has-been,’ said Kirkman. ‘No one was really interested in figurative art, especially what he did. Pop art and kinetic art was what modern art collectors desired. All that passed Lucian by, making him seem traditional, even old-fashioned, but still with an ability to shock with his raw nudes. He was doing pictures that were considered less attractive, that were not really appealing to anyone. It sounds strange now but that was the reality and how he was received and perceived.