Next month, a never-before-auctioned portrait by Lucian Freud will be a highlight of the Frieze October 20th/21st Century London Evening Sale at Christie’s. Ria, Nude Portrait (2006-07) could sell for up to $20 million.
“Late Masterpiece by One of the 20th Century’s Greatest Painters”
The British portrait artist Lucian Freud painted Ria, Naked Portrait shortly before he died in 2011. Hailing from a private European collection, the painting is set to make its first-ever auction appearance at Christie’s London on October 9. Christie’s estimates the Lucian Freud nude will fetch $13.3–$20 million (£10–£15 million).
“Ria, Naked Portrait is a late masterpiece by one of the twentieth century’s greatest painters,” said Katharine Arnold, Christie’s Head of Post-War and Contemporary Art in Europe. “Her translucent limbs and flushed skin pulsate with life and comprise one of Freud’s defining legacies to painting….It sits within the rich pedigree of art history and the reclining female nude including Giorgione, Titian, and Velázquez.”
Lucian Freud’s Intensive Portrait Process
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Sign up to our Free Weekly NewsletterLucian Freud was known for painting his subjects from life—requiring the model’s constant presence even when he was working on the background of a portrait. He spent sixteen months painting Ria, Naked Portrait before completing it in 2007. Ria Kirby, an art handler at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, posed nude in Freud’s studio for approximately 2,400 hours during those sixteen months.
A typical Lucian Freud portrait began with a preparatory charcoal drawing. Then, Freud would start applying paint to the canvas, gradually working outward from a small area. When depicting a new sitter, Freud usually began by painting their head as a way to “get to know” the person. Then, over months of intense observation, hours-long modeling sessions, and layers of pigment, Freud would slowly but surely bring the portrait to life, often returning to fine-tune the head and face at the end of the process.
Who Was Lucian Freud?
Lucian Freud (1922-2011) was a German-born British artist working in the 20th and early 21st centuries. He was also the grandson of the famed psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. Modernizing centuries of traditional English portraiture, Lucian Freud’s distinctive portraits are characterized by their frank realism and psychological intensity. He is especially celebrated for his evocative self-portraits and unconventional nudes.
For half a century, Lucian Freud painted portraits of family members, friends, models, and fellow artists in his studio. Over the course of his career, he was increasingly drawn toward unusual body types and adopted an impasto painting style. In 2008, Freud set a world record auction price for a living artist when his 1995 portrait Benefits Supervisor Sleeping fetched $33.6 million at Christie’s New York.
