{"id":48659,"date":"2025-10-13T18:16:43","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T16:16:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/husbands-paris.com\/en\/?p=48659"},"modified":"2025-10-13T18:16:43","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T16:16:43","slug":"lucian-freud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpadmin.husbands-paris.com\/en\/journal\/lucian-freud\/","title":{"rendered":"LUCIAN FREUD"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Baudelaire described the \u2018aristocratic pleasure of displeasing.\u2019 Lucian Freud, his daughter Bella recalls, \u2018often looked glamorous, though sometimes he looked like a tramp: clothes full of holes. When he wore Savile Row suits and grey flannel it was always with a scarf rather than a tie. He never tried to blend in. He pleased himself.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still a teenager, he borrows a friend\u2019s father\u2019s suit: \u2018dark-grey flannel, horrible pinstriped. We called it \u201cThe Suit\u201d. There was a pub in Shepherd\u2019s Market that I was turned out of; I asked the man why: no reason given. That\u2019s why I wore The Suit.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later, he preferred Huntsman. His biographer William Feaver notes the years of his orders: 1973, 1978, 1993 and 1995. A picture taken in 1975 shows him next to his children, Ali and Rose. They wear dungarees, fur, long hair. Freud prefers a thin white scarf, and a double-breasted flannel suit. \u2018My father\u2019s clothes in the picture are rakishly conventional. Even the checked chef\u2019s trousers that he wore for work \u2013 bought from Denny\u2019s in Soho, belted at the waist and covered in paint \u2013 were stylish and elegant.\u2019 \u2018Lunchtime. He changed out of his chef\u2019s trousers behind a chair and emerged in a green cord suit.\u2019 He did not always change. Carnera, head-cutter at Huntsman, recalls finding paint smears on the artist\u2019s suits: Freud\u2019s taste was for soft flannel, wool and worsteds; for coats, cashmere or heavy wool. Few vents, and on occasion, few pockets. Even then, he felt hesitant about wearing suits immediately after their delivery: \u2018I\u2019ve got some clothes made five or six years ago, the last time I was at the tailor\u2019s, that I still haven\u2019t worn. It\u2019s exactly like\u2026moving into a new place.\u2019 Later still, he loosened into Zilli leather, cotton or shetland sweaters, a grey, white, or patterned jacquard scarf, baggy white trousers, and brown boots, without laces. In Painter Working, Reflection <\/em>(1992), those are all he wears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His grey suit struck those who met him. It appears in his self-portraits: shiny in Self-Portrait in Reflection<\/em> (1965), weathered in Self-Portrait <\/em>(2002). According to one of his students at the Slade School of Fine Art: \u2018You could sense his presence in the corridors of the Slade before you saw him. He always wore grey suits and white shirts and his belt always looked very tight around his slim waist. Somehow or other he managed to be almost painfully nervous and menacing at the same time. When people imitated him they raised an imagined Gauloise to their lips\u2019 (Freud did not smoke).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He declared \u2018When I paint clothes I am really painting naked people who are covered in clothes.\u2019 Several portraits are marked out by clothing: Man in a Blue Shirt<\/em>, Girl in a Beret<\/em>, Man in a Blue Scarf<\/em>. During a session for the latter, Freud is upset, repeats \u2018There must be something wrong with me; I don’t know why I can’t mix this blue color today.\u2019 It is only when he returns home that the sitter noticed his scarf that day was not his usual. Freud liked to agree on clothes: of a shirt, \u2018 \u201cas soon as I had put it in I began to see how it could work structurally.\u201d I am not quite sure what he means by that, except that one of my ear lobes soon turned the very same pink.\u2019 Elsewhere: chunky brown brogues, a waistcoat with the last button undone, a signet ring, the top of a pocket square, an intricate tweed. A sitter recalls choosing a Timothy Everest suit, a Volpe shirt and a Turnbull & Asser tie: \u2018it was very frayed by the time he finished.\u2019 To his biographer, Freud confessed: \u2018I want the person looking to say not ‘who’s that in a blue shirt?’ but ‘who’s that? Oh, they’re wearing a shirt.’ Which is different isn’t it?’ <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A late documentary is called Small Gestures in Empty Rooms<\/em>: Freud drives fast through Notting Hill, looks at a bird in Hampstead. The images of his falconry recall an early profile for Vogue. Wearing a Merchant Navy sweater, kept from his service (SS Baltrover), he sat for photographer Clifford Coffin in his Paddington room. On his hand, one of the two sparrowhawks he lived with then. \u2018If you touch wild birds, it\u2019s a marvelous feeling.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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LATEST<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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\"COFFIN,<\/span>
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COFFIN, Clifford, phot. FREUD, Lucian, paint. Paddington, London. 1947.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\"DAWSON,<\/span>
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DAWSON, David, phot. FREUD, Lucian, paint. 2005.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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\"FARSON,<\/span>
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FARSON, Daniel, phot. FREUD, Lucian, paint. Dublin. 1952<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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\"FREUD,<\/span>
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FREUD, Lucian, paint. BLACKWOOD, Caroline, writ. 1953.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\"DIAMOND,<\/span>
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DIAMOND, Harry, phot. FREUD, Lucian, paint. BOYT, Rose, writ. BOYT, Ali. London. 1975<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\"Lucian<\/span>
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Lucian paint. Reflection with two children self portrait. 1965.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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\"PARKER<\/span>
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PARKER BOWLES, Andrew, off. FREUD, Lucian, paint. Paris. 2003<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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\"Patterns<\/span>
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Patterns used to make suits for Lucian Freud at Huntsman<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\"Lord<\/span>
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Lord SNOWDON, phot. FREUD, Lucian, paint. Paddington, London. 1963.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n