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Lucian Freud’s Sleeping by the Lion Carpet, 1995 to 96, comes to auction for the first time at Sotheby’s London this June with an estimate of £25 million to £35 million ($33 million to $45 million). It is the final and most ambitious work in the artist’s celebrated quartet of monumental portraits of the ‘benefits supervisor’ Sue Tilley, painted between 1993 and 1996, and has been described by the art critic and historian Martin Gayford as “the most important work that Freud has ever painted.”
Though widely exhibited in major museum surveys of the artist’s work, the painting has never before appeared on the open market, having resided in the Lewis collection since 1996, when it was bought directly from Freud’s gallerist Bill Acquavella. The last time a major painting from this series came to auction it made history: in 2015, Benefits Supervisor Resting, 1995, sold for $56.2 million (£35.9 million), then a record for Freud and for any living artist.
A radically modern artist, Freud was also deeply influenced by the great achievements of the past. So strong was his interest in the works of Titian, Rubens, Velázquez and Manet that he was granted his own personal set of keys to London’s National Gallery, enabling him to study its masterpieces after the crowds had departed. That influence is evident in Sleeping by the Lion Carpet: the flash of blue in the carpet above Sue Tilley’s head recalls the vivid blue that lights the background of Titian’s paintings. Knowing he needed a shock of blue to lift the work, Freud found a ‘ Lion Carpet’ on a stall on Portobello Road, and back in the studio he waited until everything else was done before adding it.
The subject, Sue Tilley, a local government benefits supervisor from London, was introduced to Freud by his friend Leigh Bowery, the performance artist and fashion designer. While she worked at the local job centre during the day, Tilley also worked nights at Bowery’s nightclub Taboo. The sittings were long and intense. Over the nine months it took Freud to paint the work, Tilley would sometimes ask whether she might take a break, but Freud insisted she be present at all times, telling her, “I just can’t do it when you’re not here. I need your aura, your presence affects everything.” She often fell asleep while he painted, as she does here, slumped in a leather armchair, her body nearly filling the eight-foot canvas.
Freud renders every curve, fold and contour of her flesh with forensic scrutiny, using a full spectrum of colours, from the purple of her heels to the red of her belly, and from the rose of her shoulders to the pale cream of her breasts, in a virtuoso mix of flecks, scumbling and broad brushstrokes. Just as this painting represents a turning point in the tradition of Western painting, Freud has proved influential to a new generation of artists, from Marlene Dumas to Jenny Saville.
Sleeping by the Lion Carpet will be on public view in a specially designed exhibition at Sotheby’s New Bond Street Galleries from 10 to 23 June, shown alongside some 50 further masterpieces from the Lewis Collection. The works will be offered for sale on 23 and 25 June, carrying a combined estimate in excess of £150 million, making this the most valuable collection ever offered in the United Kingdom. Born and raised in London’s East End, Joe Lewis felt a natural affinity with the School of London painters, and the collection ranges from Klimt, Schiele and Picasso to Caillebotte, Toulouse-Lautrec, Bacon and Freud.
(Press Release)
