During his lifetime, the great contemporary painter always denied having created this youthful painting. The Garden Museum in London, which is showing it to the public for the first time, is convinced of the opposite.
A refusal to recognize paternity? This Man with black scarfrepresenting a certain John Jameson, Lucian Freud (1922-2011) repeated that he did not realize it. Experts of his work believe, on the contrary, that this painting dates from his studies at Benton End, an artist and botanist’s residence located in Suffolk, England.
The Garden Museum in London resurrects this art school, the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing, which hosted Freud from 1939 to 1942. Around his eighteenth year. Among other works, the exhibition shows for the first time to the public the painting that Lucian Freud could not see in painting. Without fear of putting his name on the cartel.
Also read
Lucian Freud, beautiful in his mirror
Skip the ad
“Irrefutable proof”
“The work was officially attributed to Freud following the discovery, in 2018, of the attendance register of students at the East Anglian School (…). This register mentioned the exact date on which John Jameson had posed for a portrait course attended by Freud (…) in October 1939 »we read in the exhibition press release, which is delighted to be able to attribute the work “after years of uncertainty”. The museum evokes a « preuve irréfutable ».
Already in 1985, the auction house Christie’s had identified the painting as a work by Freud, before retracting in the face of the artist’s denials. During a private conversation in 2006, he admitted having created part of the work. The specialists gathered in 2016 in “Fake or Fortune”, a BBC program, disagreed. For them, the web has only one author.
Estate of Richard Chopping and Denis Wirth-Miller
According to theGuardianthe reason would be to be found in a quarrel between Freud and a former studio friend, Denis Wirth-Miller, owner of the painting. He would have sought to depreciate the value of the work because of their enmity.
Auctions expected at Sotheby’s
D’après le New YorkerLucian Freud also found it difficult to tolerate the imperfections of his minor or early works returning to the auction room. Legend has it that the painter offered himself the services of thieves to recover a painting, a failure in his eyes, from a private individual. Pure chimera, no doubt, which the Briton did not seek to contradict.
For three years, between 2008 and 2011, Lucian Freud was the most expensive living artist in the world when one of his works was sold for $34 million. A great figurative artist, friend and rival of Francis Bacon, the grandson of the inventor of psychoanalysis, pursued a long study of bodies and faces. Those of his friends, of whom he sought to uncover an intimate truth On June 24, Sotheby’s will go under the hammer.Sleeping by the Lion Carpet  (1996), a large format estimated at up to 35 million pounds (approximately 40.5 million euros).
