C oming to auction this June in Sotheby’s London’s Masterpieces from the Lewis Collection, Lucian Freud’s Sleeping by the Lion Carpet is a colossal meditation on flesh, space, and presence. This monumental work is on view in London, 10 - 23 June, with the evening auction taking place on 24 June.
Lucian Freud spent decades painting flesh, but Sleeping by the Lion Carpet feels like something else entirely. Painted in the mid-1990s, the vast portrait of Sue Tilley pushes beyond observation into construction: every stroke carrying the weight of brick, stone, or mortar until the body becomes almost architectural. Up close, the painting fractures into blues, greys, pinks, and ochres. Step back, and it holds together with astonishing force.
There’s intimacy here, but also tension. The tilted floor, the crowded surface, the riot of the lion carpet behind Sue’s sleeping figure all seem to collapse space itself. Freud once said the final blue in the carpet made the painting “start singing,” but the result is stranger and more powerful than decoration. Reality and artifice sit side by side, pressing toward us with equal intensity. Within The Lewis Collection, this monumental work stands not only as one of Freud’s greatest achievements, but as a defining moment in the history of portraiture and the nude.
Learn more about about the collection by visiting sothebys.com/lewiscollection
