Lucian Freud

Harold Rose Collection, London
Sale: Sotheby's London, 15 December 1965, Lot 125
Acquired directly from the above and gifted to the present owner

Cardiff, National Museums & Galleries of Wales, An Art-Accustomed Eye: Art appreciation in Wales 1945-1996, 2004, p. 71, illustrated in colour
London, Blain Southern; NewYork, Acquavella Galleries, Lucian Freud Drawings, 2012, p. 212, no. 30, illustrated in colour

 

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition. The work is laid down on the backing board.
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Very rarely seen in reproduction and having resided in the same collection since it was acquired from Sotheby's in 1965 and gifted as a wedding present, Lucian Freud’s remarkable Chicken on a Bamboo Table is a magnificent demonstration of the artist’s highly celebrated corpus of early drawings: a body of work widely considered the most successful from the artist’s formative career. Extraordinarily full in compositional resolve and depicting one of the artist’s trademark subjects, Chicken on a Bamboo Table truly epitomises the razor-sharp economy of line and frank aesthetic from which Freud's inimitably uncompromising painting of the human form would later develop. Across more than six decades following the execution of this drawing, Freud charted a course as one of the leading figurative artists of our times. With hindsight it is perhaps possible to trace the venerable tracts of his subsequent canon to the crucial early development of draughtsmanship that would always underpin his art. 

Belonging to the career-defining year surrounding Freud's very first exhibition in the winter of 1944, the breathtaking observational analysis of the present work consummately exemplifies Freud’s status as one of the Twentieth Century's most gifted draughtsman. Indeed, according to Timothy Clifford, "It is clear that by 1945 Freud had found his own individual voice: tough, direct, unsettling" (Timothy Clifford cited in: Exhibition Catalogue: Edinburgh, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Early Works: Lucian Freud, 1997, p. 7).  Very much allied to the interrelation of Freud's biography with his artistic practice, the abundance of bird imagery during the 1940s, a subject of his early drawings depicted on more occasions than any other, denotes a pronounced fascination: "a painter's tastes must grow out of what so obsesses him in life that he never has to ask himself what is suitable for him to do in art" (Lucian Freud, 'Some thoughts on painting', Encounter, July 1954, Vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 23-4). Famously Freud kept two sparrow hawks in his Paddington studio and by his own account maintained a profound fondness for birds throughout his life. As the artist explained to William Feaver in 2002: "I was always excited by birds.  If you touch wild birds it's a marvellous feeling" (the artist cited in: William Feaver, 'Lucian Freud: Life into Art', in: Exhibition Catalogue, London, Tate Britain, Lucian Freud, 2002, p. 23). Pointedly evident in the present drawing, and with a dedication equal to that of his human subjects, dead birds and animals are treated to the same penetrating and psychological scrutiny. 

Although known to have studied the animals in London Zoo, studies from cadavers and taxidermy constitute the mainstay of Freud's animal subjects. Akin to his sleeping girls and reclining boys, these entities were chosen for their placid stillness and deathly inertia. Freud procured dead monkeys from Palmers Pet Stores in Camden, while the stuffed animals, including the famous zebra head, were "bought for him at Rowland Ward's, the taxidermists, by his married girlfriend Lorna Wishart" (William Feaver, Lucian Freud, New York 2007, p. 16).  Aunt to Kitty Garman, the daughter of Jacob Epstein and Freud's future wife, Wishart also bought from her country home the impressively emblematic dead heron of Freud's famous 1945 painting. Also pervading his illustrations for Nicholas Moore's anthology of poems, The Glass Tower published in 1944, birds come to represent a veritable trademark during these early years. With precise linear clarity akin to the deliberate quality of etching (Freud owned a book of animal engravings at the time of this work's creation), Chicken on a Bamboo Table epitomizes the prodigious skill and assuredness of execution that prompted Freud to admit: "I very much prided myself in my drawing" (the artist cited in: Richard Calvocoressi, 'The Graphics of Lucian Freud, in: Lucian Freud: On Paper, London, 2008, p. 19).

Evocative of this idiosyncratic candour, Freud's remarkably intricate depiction of a dead chicken laid atop a small table possesses a graphic intensity of empirical observation unique to the artist's virtuoso draughtsmanship. The beautiful detailing of the feathers, the exceptionally elaborate herringbone patternation of the tabletop, and delicate tonal treatment of colour posit this drawing as among the most fully articulated produced by the artist. Calmly restrained yet simultaneously scrutinising and imbued with a certain pathos, Freud’s Chicken on a Bamboo Table broadcasts an outstanding formal resolve that uniquely draws out the artist’s utterly unrivalled and emphatic engagement with subject. Indeed, by no means a preparatory sketch and not in the least subordinate to Freud's contemporaneous painting, the early graphic works represent a wholly independent discipline – if not the principal concern – for Freud throughout the crucially formative 1940s.