Christie's auction house will offer three early paintings by renowned British artist Lucian Freud during its London evening sale on October 15, with the collection carrying a combined estimate of £13 million to £20 million. The three works, which have remained in the same private collection for many years, showcase the evolution of Freud's distinctive painting style across three pivotal decades of his artistic career.
The paintings demonstrate Freud's artistic development from the 1940s through the 1970s, beginning with the crystalline tension evident in his wartime piece "Woman with a Tulip" (1944), progressing to "Self-portrait Fragment" (circa 1956) created during the dissolution of his marriage, and culminating with the bolder, more fluid technique displayed in "Sleeping Head" (1961-71). While Christie's has declined to reveal the identity of the current owner, the auction house confirms that all three works are currently in free circulation within the United Kingdom.
All three paintings have been featured prominently in major international exhibitions, including the touring show "Lucian Freud: Paintings" (1987-88), which traveled to Washington, Paris, London, and Berlin. They were also displayed at Freud's retrospective at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna in 2013, and more recently at "Lucian Freud: New Perspectives" at the National Gallery in London and the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid during 2022-23.
"Woman with a Tulip" (1944), estimated at £3-5 million, depicts Lorna Wishart, whom Freud once described as "the first person who meant something to me." Wishart was the famously beautiful youngest of the Garman sisters and served as the aunt to Kitty Garman, who would later become Freud's wife. She also appears in another of Freud's notable works, "Woman with a Daffodil" (1945), which is now housed in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. This meticulously painted portrait, created with the sable brushes Freud preferred in his youth, was featured in the artist's first solo exhibition at the Lefevre Gallery in 1944. The current seller acquired the painting from Freud's dealer and agent James Kirkman in 1995.
Katharine Arnold, Christie's vice-chairman of 20th/21st century art and head of post-war and contemporary art for Europe, explains the emotional depth of the early work: "This picture feels quite devotional, as opposed to the later painting of Lorna [in MoMA], which shows how the relationship had soured." The painting's stillness, intensity, and symbolic iconography clearly establish it as a stylistic precursor to Freud's other well-known early works, including "Girl with a Kitten" (1947) and "Girl with Roses" (1947-48).
By the time Freud created "Self-portrait Fragment" (circa 1956), estimated at £8-12 million, his artistic approach had undergone significant transformation. This equally intense but larger work was painted in the non finito tradition and was first exhibited at London's Marlborough Gallery in 1968, where the current vendor purchased it. Remarkably, the 2013 Kunsthistorisches Museum retrospective marked the first time the painting had been seen publicly in 45 years. During the mid-1950s, Freud had recently transitioned to using thicker hog's hair brushes and was spending considerable time with fellow artist Francis Bacon. In the 2022-23 National Gallery exhibition, this self-portrait was strategically hung next to Freud's portrait of Bacon, painted in 1956-57.
Arnold notes the artistic maturation evident in this period: "Already by 1956, you're looking at an older man—Freud is in his 30s and he is fascinated with how paint could change, how it could begin to relax." She explains that Bacon wielded significant influence over Freud's practice during this time, encouraging him to loosen his brushwork. "There's a story that, in the early period, Freud said he would sometimes see the outline of his eye on the canvas because he was staring so hard. But by 1956-7 he has started to loosen up," Arnold adds. She also observes the introspective nature of the work: "Freud is not looking at us in this picture, he is looking at himself. His relationship with his then wife Caroline Blackwood is changing, he is not in the first flush of love."
The final painting, "Sleeping Head" (1961-71), estimated at £2-3 million, represents the most expressive brushwork of the trio and is the only one to have previously appeared at auction. It was sold at Christie's London in 1971 by the 5th Marquis of Dufferin and Ava, Sheridan Dufferin, who was Caroline Blackwood's brother. First exhibited at Marlborough Gallery in 1963, this tightly cropped composition depicts a young woman whom Freud met in a Soho bar, shown dozing on the worn leather sofa that frequently appeared in works created at his Paddington studio.
Arnold describes this painting as marking another significant technical evolution: "This painting marks another transition in technique again. At this point he has just come back from Greece and he has a brief relationship with this woman. We don't know who she is, but he is painting in a very free, confident way. We don't know if that's a reflection of his personal life—he's no longer married—but he's now stepping into a very fluent, easy painting style. So, when you look at all three works together, you have this arc of painting technique."
Regarding the current market for Freud's work, Arnold explains there is substantial interest in his early pieces: "There's a high degree of curiosity in the early works, the reason being that after 1958 the technique has changed so there's only a discrete moment in time when these works were being made, therefore they are rare, especially as a lot of the great early paintings are in public institutions." She adds that collectors of these early works often have diverse tastes: "I think the buyers of these early works might just as easily be the buyer of a 1932 Picasso—they're not necessarily the sort of person who would buy a British figurative painter."
Arnold also notes that the subject matter significantly influences a work's appeal, particularly emphasizing that "a self-portrait is always a particularly interesting insight into a painter, so they tend to be the most prized—we have collectors who only buy self-portraits." In terms of geographical demand, she reports strong international interest: "Over the past year, we've sold a major painting to North America, two to Asia, we've had deep European bidding, UK buyers. So, it's universal." All three paintings have been guaranteed to sell by Christie's, ensuring their successful placement with new collectors.
