Lot 28
  • 28

Lucian Freud

Estimate
70,000 - 90,000 USD
Log in to view results
bidding is closed

Description

  • Lucian Freud
  • Portrait of Balthus
  • Charcoal on paper;dated in pencil in the upper left: 8 – 10 – 89
  • 327 by 248 mm; 12 7/8 by 9 ¾ in

Provenance

The artist;
with James Kirkman, London,
where acquired in 1993

Exhibited

Rome, British Council at Palazzo Ruspoli; Milan, Castello Sforzesca; Liverpool, Tate Gallery; Lucian Freud: Paintings and Works on Paper 1940-1991, 1991-1992, p. 92, no. 66, illustrated;
Tochigi, Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts; Nishinomiya, Otani Memorial Art Musuem; Tokyo, Setagaya Art Museum; Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales; Perth, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Lucian Freud, 1992 -93, p. 93, no. 62, illustrated (Tochigi, Nishinomiya, and Toyko), p. 71, no. 53, illustrated (Sydney and Perth);
New York, Davis & Langdale Company, Inc., Lucian Freud: A Selection: Paintings and Works on Paper, April – May 1996, no. 19;
New York, Acquavella Galleries, Lucian Freud Drawings, May – June 2012, p. 179, p. 218, no. 109, illustrated in color (as Head of Balthus)

Condition

Hinged to the backing in all four corners. Paper and medium in perfect condition. Sold in a dark wooden frame
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Catalogue Note

Lucian Freud’s Portrait of Balthus from 1989 magnificently captures the unwavering scrutiny and startling intensity with which Freud observed his sitters.  An intimate image of a famously complex figure, who was a great mentor and inspiration to Freud in his early career, this is one of only two portraits for which Balthus ever sat – the other done by his mother, Baladine.  Freud captures Balthus’s gentle, unflinching gaze with a supple, luminous quality that breathes light and sculptural volume into the variously taught and sagging compartments of skin and flesh. Loosely delineating Balthus’s head and shoulders with sparse gestural lines, Freud attends most closely to the forehead, eyes, nose, lips, and chin of his sitter. Here Freud smudges charcoal, softening the harsh, graphic mark of the pencil line and exploring the range of tonality between the dense, opaque graphite and the paper sheet. Fantastically illuminated by the paper’s subtle fawn tones and textured surface, Freud’s handling of charcoal pencil matches the uncompromising, sensual tonality of flesh that he achieves through oil paints. Formally trained as a draftsman prior to becoming a painter, Freud never lost sight of the importance of drawing, and his drawings underlie and inform his paintings whilst also existing as their own discrete body of work. By the late 1980s when Balthus sat for Freud, Freud had mastered his unique approach to capturing human form and in the present portrait Freud endows each charcoal line with astonishing immediacy and intimacy. In addition to his renewed fascination with drawing during the 1980s, Freud also explored etching extensively during the early part of the decade, and the influence of this comes through in the present work through Freud’s use of repeated hatch marks to contour Balthus’s face and imply three-dimensionality.

Portraiture is fundamental to Freud’s oeuvre as a means for exploring both the external contours of the human form as well as the internal corridors of the sitter’s psyche. Over the course of his career Freud painted and drew numerous other artists who influenced him both personally and professionally, including Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, and the present portrait of Balthus. A well-known painter of the previous generation and a mentor to Freud during the younger artist['s early career, Balthus was recognized in his own artistic practice for his precise handling of paint and for his portraits, which possess an enigmatic, almost troubling quality characteristic of ‘Magic Realism’. Freud’s early drawings of the 1940s, clearly influenced by Balthus, have a similarly introspective dreamlike fascination. Freud drew Portrait of Balthus in August of 1989, only a few months after one of his most valuable drawings Portrait of Francis Bacon of 1952 was tragically stolen while on exhibition at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. The theft devastated Freud, and that the present work was drawn only three months later testifies to the personal significance of Portrait of Balthus to Freud and to its art historical import. Further contributing to the emotional and historical significance of the present work, Balthus’s biographer Nicholas Fox Weber stated that Freud’s drawing is one of two portraits for which Balthus ever sat, the other done by his mother, Bernadine. Portrait of Balthus is both an homage to the older artist as well as a masterful celebration of Freud’s own artistic achievements.