LUCIAN FREUD | A Butcher's Shop

John Craxton, London (acquired directly fromthe artist)
Private Collection (by descent from the above)
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate although the overall tonality is slightly warmer and deeper in the original. Condition: This work is in good and original condition. The sheets are attached verso to the backing mount in several places and are joined verso with masking tape. Some of the sheets are irregularly cut, and there are artist's pinholes in places to all edges. There are some spots of media accretion in places throughout the composition. There is evidence of handling, with some associated creases, lifting to the edges of some of the sheets from previous folding, and a few minute nicks and tears in places on the edges. There are two small spots of superficial paint loss to the white crosses towards the centre and centre left of the composition.
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Having resided in the collection of John Craxton for over seventy years, A Butcher’s  Shop represents an anthology of Lucian Freud's formative interests; “Freud had a yen for organic things that were past movement” (Nathan Kernan cited in: Exh. Cat., New York, Robert Miller Gallery, Lucian Freud: Early Works, 1993, pp. 26-27). It is a work of singular accomplishment across the artist's corpus of remarkable early drawings and is prophetic of the many iconic depictions of dead animals that were to shortly follow. The composition and repeated pattern was executed, somewhat uniquely, originally for the purpose of a fabric design. In the 1940s, the British textile company Ascher engaged leading artists of the time such as Alexander Calder, Henry Moore and Henri Matisse and commissioned a series of design fabric. For Freud, who was possibly introduced to this concept by the patron Peter Watson, a butcher’s shop was the perfect subject. From an early age Freud maintained a profound keenness for animals, and particularly birds: "I have always been excited by birds. If you touch wild birds it's a marvelous feeling" (Lucian Freud cited in: William Feaver, 'Lucian Freud: Life into Art', in: Exh. Cat., London, Tate Britain, Lucian Freud, 2002, p. 23). Between the years of 1939 and 1942 Freud intermittently attended the programme founded by the British painters Arthur Lett-Haines and Cedric Morris, and it was the influence of the latter that profoundly impacted the artist's early style. The present work was completed when he returned to London and living in rented studios at Abercorn Place in St. John’s Wood with fellow artist John Craxton. It was in Craxton’s collection that this extraordinary work remained for over seventy years.

The composition of A Butcher’s Shop has been meticulously planned; constructed with four sheets of thick paper, each sheet connected to form the shape of a cross. A carefully laid out background is composed of lilac and ochre rectangles, which represent the white tiles that typically line the walls of a butcher’s shop. A pheasant, identifiable by the spotted markings to its body, is positioned between two dark gold forks. Below the pheasant, are sausages displayed in long curved lengths and bookended by cuts of meat. A small pastry pie is visible to the left of the coiled sausage, and below to the right what appears to be a small suckling pig wrapped in bacon. Finally, at the bottom of the repeating design, are three butcher’s hooks and a scale for weighing the food. As evident in this extraordinary work, in these early years, Freud demonstrated in only a short span, the discovery of “most of the themes that would later pre-occupy him: the vitality, even personality, of animals and plants; figures and objects viewed frontally and at close range” (Richard Calvocovessi, Ed., Exh. Cat., Edinburgh, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Lucian Freud: Early Works, 1997, p. 10).