"Hotel Bedroom" (1954) by Lucian Freud, oil on canvas. Collection of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery.
Enveloped in crumpled white sheets, Lady Caroline Hamilton Temple Blackwood looks anything but comfortable in her bed at the Hotel La Louisiane in Paris. The 22-year-old Guinness brewery heiress awkwardly rests her left hand on her pale cheek and gazes listlessly to the viewer’s left. Lucian Freud stands behind his new wife, hands in pockets, a glowering, tenebrous silhouette in stark contrast with the natural light pouring into the room.
Years later, Freud’s wife of five years criticized her depiction in the double portrait Hotel Bedroom (1954), saying she “was dismayed, and others were mystified as to why he needed to paint a girl, who at that point still looked childish, as so distressingly old.” Blackwood, who in the 1960s became a noted writer, was the subject of many Freud portraits, such as Girl in Bed (1952), which captures her wide-eyed, rosy-cheeked youthful beauty.
Ann Fleming, the wife of James Bond series author Ian Fleming, introduced Blackwell and Freud, who was a decade Blackwell’s senior and freshly divorced from his first wife of only four years, in Paris in 1952. The two quickly eloped, and their marriage quickly began crumbling, making Hotel Bedroom a realistic representation of the couple’s volatile dynamic.
The oil on canvas Hotel Bedroom is among more than 40 works on canvas, paper and etching plate created between the 1940s and the early 21st century in the exhibit Lucian Freud: The Self-Portraits, on view at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, from March 1 to May 25. Regarded as one the 20th century’s leading portraitists, the grandson of Sigmund Freud was influenced by surrealism, but shifted toward realism by the early 1950s, relying on large hog’s-hair brushes to build texture with thick coats of paint, or impasto.
By examining the evolution of Freud’s rare self-portraits, the MFA places him in context with artists from 15th-century German painter Albrecht Dürer to Dutch master Rembrandt. Freud was known for subjecting his sitters to excruciatingly long sessions, often capturing their discomfort in portraits. Models included fellow artists Frank Auerbach and Francis Bacon and performance artist Leigh Bowery.
“In this unprecedented exhibition, visitors can trace Lucian Freud’s career through his shifting visage. We are thrilled to bring the self-portraits of this virtuosic painter, who relentlessly mined the human condition, to the MFA, a museum whose treasures include works by artists deeply important to his development,” said Akili Tommasino, associate curator of modern and contemporary art at the MFA.
"Man with a Feather" (1943) by Lucian Freud, oil on canvas. Private collection.
Freud was 21 years old when he painted Man with a Feather (1943), his first recorded self-portrait, exhibited at his inaugural one-man exhibition at the Lefevre Gallery in 1944. The highly stylized portrait plays with light and reflection, a reference to the Northern Romantic tradition and a foreshadowing of his maturing artistic style.
"Man with a Thistle (Self-Portrait)" (1946), oil on canvas. Tate, purchased 1961.
Freud evokes Old Master paintings of the Northern Renaissance in Man with a Thistle (1946), portraying himself peering through a window at a prickly thistle perched on a ledge and emblematic of his conflicted persona.
"Man's Head (Self‑portrait I)" (1963), Lucian Freud (English, 1922–2011), oil on canvas. The ... [+]
Moving away from flattened portraits, Freud delves into the complexity of flesh with Man’s Head (1963), largely influenced by his friendship with Bacon, who in the 1940s painted a series of male heads isolated in rooms or suspended in geometric shapes. At the same time, Freud began painting standing upright rather than seated, enabling him to apply thicker, more emotional brushstrokes.
"Self‑portrait, Reflection" (2002), Oil on canvas. Private collection.
Painted nine years before his death, Reflection (2202) blends his visage into the background. His left hand clutches his loosely fastened scarf, his gaze veering to his left.
"Interior with Plant, Reflection Listening, (Self‑portrait)" (1967–1968), Lucian Freud, oil on ... [+]
Freud had been blending and fading his face into the background of self-portraits using a variety techniques dating back to the 1950s. His head and bust are relegated to a detail, floating in the upper left corner and drowned in plant leaves in Interior with Plant, Reflection Listening (1967-1968). It’s more an interior painting than a self-portrait. Freud described his focus on plants in about 100 rarely displayed paintings as a “really biological feeling of things growing and fading.”
Organized in collaboration with the Royal Academy of Arts, Lucian Freud: The Self-portraits opened in London on October 27, 2019, and is on view there through January 26.
