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Naked Portrait: A Memoir of Lucian Freud
‘Towards the end of the summer of 2016 I found an old diary in a cardboard box, hundreds of typed pages, the first dated 9 September 1989. I put the diary away without reading it; I had lost my father, my mother had died only three months earlier, and it was not the right time to think about anything. I was heartbroken.
As I remembered it the diary was about sitting again, an easy portrait this time, fully clothed, the manuscript mainly a record of my father’s remarkable stories. I imagined all his stories were amusing, uncontentious, but even if that had been true I still would not have been ready. It is unclear to me now how I was able so effectively to distort reality.’
In Naked Portrait Rose Boyt explores her complicated relationship with her beloved father, Lucian Freud, through the diary and other accounts of sitting for him, naked or otherwise. Enthralled by his genius, it was only after his death that she began to question the version of events she had come to accept. The shock of the truth is profound but what emerges is her love and compassion not just for herself as a vulnerable young woman, but for the man himself, who is shown in all his brilliant complexity.
As I remembered it the diary was about sitting again, an easy portrait this time, fully clothed, the manuscript mainly a record of my father’s remarkable stories. I imagined all his stories were amusing, uncontentious, but even if that had been true I still would not have been ready. It is unclear to me now how I was able so effectively to distort reality.’
In Naked Portrait Rose Boyt explores her complicated relationship with her beloved father, Lucian Freud, through the diary and other accounts of sitting for him, naked or otherwise. Enthralled by his genius, it was only after his death that she began to question the version of events she had come to accept. The shock of the truth is profound but what emerges is her love and compassion not just for herself as a vulnerable young woman, but for the man himself, who is shown in all his brilliant complexity.
417 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 30, 2024
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604 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
June 14, 2024
Mixed feelings. I think the book was very well written and the parts where the author actually writes are excellent. I hated the lengthy regurgitation of her diaries in her twenties. Everybody’s diaries are boring to others even if your dad is Lucian Freud
July 13, 2025
really love her writing style, but I hated the diary intros, they put me off almost to the point of dnf-ing the book
January 4, 2025
Rose Boyt’s memoir is an indispensable guide to the art of Lucian Freud (1922-2011), whose paintings and graphic works are a source of both shock and delight. Indispensable but, as a biographical narrative, the Memoir is a mess. The Kindle edition is completely without editorial paratext or guidance for the reader. There is neither preface nor introduction. The 25 chapters are numbered but without descriptive or chronological headings. There is no list of contents or table of illustrations and there is no index of names or places or works. I assume that the hardcover version is equally deficient as the electronic one. Pan Macmillan appears to have counted on the promise of scandalous content in the title, Naked Portrait, to induce readers to pay the inflated prices of the print and electronic versions and correspondingly cut their editorial expenses to the minimal requirements of bare literacy.
I listened to the Memoir of Lucian Freud as an audiobook before reading the Kindle version. Rose Boyt reads her memoir in a clear, pleasantly accented, matter-of-fact voice. The audio version is in some ways preferable to the print version, if only because one can easily tune in or tune out, depending on the interest of the content. The book includes long stretches of her diary, written many years ago, of people, places and events, often unexplained, who will be of small interest to most people interested in Lucian Freud. But the account of her father’s life as a painter and his collaborative relationship with his children, lovers and friends who were his models, is an intimate and penetrating exploration of his work
An outline of the structure of the memoir will make it a little more accessible. Rose Boyt is one of the 14 known children of Lucian Freud, born between 1948 and 1984 from his marriages, relationships and liaisons. Many of these children appear during the memoir without adequate identification. For readers who might want to identify them, a helpful list of Lucian Freud’s children and their mothers can be found in the Wikipedia entry for his grandfather, Sigmund Freud, which includes a family tree. The title of Rose Boyt’s memoir refers to the central importance in her life and aesthetically of her portrait, painted by her father in 1977-78, when she was 17-18. Shocked appreciation of its beauty and the consummate craft of the painter are inseparable impressions on a first encounter with the portrait. Rose is displayed as a muscular and beautiful young woman, naked and completely exposed in a pose of apparently abandoned relaxation on a couch in her father’s studio. For no apparent reason the portrait, which provides a kind of frontispiece to the Memoir, is printed in black and white rather than colour. The opening chapters, probably the most engaging part of the Memoir, relate the intensive experience Rose spent with her father in his studio over what seems to have been a year of exhausting sittings for the portrait. These opening chapters also relate the story of her turbulent childhood with her mother and siblings. Chapters 4–20 change direction. They incorporate extended passages with accompanying commentary from a typewritten diary beginning on September 4, 1989 and ending a little more than a year later, on 15 October 1990. She describes it as her ‘sitting diary’, lost and rediscovered by chance in 2016. It is an extended record of a busy, name-dropping social life during which Rose was struggling to complete Sexual Intercourse, her second novel and agreed to endure another year of extended sittings for a new portrait by her father. It was begun sometime in September 1989 and completed in mid-October 1990, when the diary ends. This portrait, in which Rose is clothed, is not illustrated in the Memoir. It is, she says, a picture of a ‘boyish young woman….quite lovely in [its] own way but nothing to write home about’. The remaining chapters, 21-25, resume the disjointed story of her life which includes another protracted series of sittings in 1996-98 for a family portrait of Rose, her husband Mark, their daughter Stella and Alex, Mark’s son by an earlier marriage. The last chapters relate her mother and father’s death, a chapter for each of them, conciliatory and forgiving of their failure as parents.
Freud’s self-absorption, Rose calls it selfishness, was complete and centred on his intense involvement with the medium of his art: ‘Talking about his work he said he hoped that the paint would become flesh rather than just representing it, the paint itself felt more deeply than anything else in his life, obsessed as he was by the potential of the subject, its possibilities. The transubstantiation he tried for was not about creating personality….He said he wanted to paint a person, not their likeness – he was making flesh, but for me the true beauty and truth of the portraits is experienced in the way the paint surface reveals how he saw his subjects, their specificity under his gaze, from his perspective, and how he felt, not just how much he loved and admired his sitters, but how much he loved and hated to be caught up, that ambivalence’.
That strange equation of paint and flesh is apparent in their discussion of what he was to call the naked portrait that provides the title of her book. He was going to call it, The Artist’s Daughter. Rose objected that his choice ‘would make anybody think of incest’. He yielded to her insistence that he should simply call the portrait Rose. A better title she writes, ‘less misleading’, and one that recognised her separate being.
I listened to the Memoir of Lucian Freud as an audiobook before reading the Kindle version. Rose Boyt reads her memoir in a clear, pleasantly accented, matter-of-fact voice. The audio version is in some ways preferable to the print version, if only because one can easily tune in or tune out, depending on the interest of the content. The book includes long stretches of her diary, written many years ago, of people, places and events, often unexplained, who will be of small interest to most people interested in Lucian Freud. But the account of her father’s life as a painter and his collaborative relationship with his children, lovers and friends who were his models, is an intimate and penetrating exploration of his work
An outline of the structure of the memoir will make it a little more accessible. Rose Boyt is one of the 14 known children of Lucian Freud, born between 1948 and 1984 from his marriages, relationships and liaisons. Many of these children appear during the memoir without adequate identification. For readers who might want to identify them, a helpful list of Lucian Freud’s children and their mothers can be found in the Wikipedia entry for his grandfather, Sigmund Freud, which includes a family tree. The title of Rose Boyt’s memoir refers to the central importance in her life and aesthetically of her portrait, painted by her father in 1977-78, when she was 17-18. Shocked appreciation of its beauty and the consummate craft of the painter are inseparable impressions on a first encounter with the portrait. Rose is displayed as a muscular and beautiful young woman, naked and completely exposed in a pose of apparently abandoned relaxation on a couch in her father’s studio. For no apparent reason the portrait, which provides a kind of frontispiece to the Memoir, is printed in black and white rather than colour. The opening chapters, probably the most engaging part of the Memoir, relate the intensive experience Rose spent with her father in his studio over what seems to have been a year of exhausting sittings for the portrait. These opening chapters also relate the story of her turbulent childhood with her mother and siblings. Chapters 4–20 change direction. They incorporate extended passages with accompanying commentary from a typewritten diary beginning on September 4, 1989 and ending a little more than a year later, on 15 October 1990. She describes it as her ‘sitting diary’, lost and rediscovered by chance in 2016. It is an extended record of a busy, name-dropping social life during which Rose was struggling to complete Sexual Intercourse, her second novel and agreed to endure another year of extended sittings for a new portrait by her father. It was begun sometime in September 1989 and completed in mid-October 1990, when the diary ends. This portrait, in which Rose is clothed, is not illustrated in the Memoir. It is, she says, a picture of a ‘boyish young woman….quite lovely in [its] own way but nothing to write home about’. The remaining chapters, 21-25, resume the disjointed story of her life which includes another protracted series of sittings in 1996-98 for a family portrait of Rose, her husband Mark, their daughter Stella and Alex, Mark’s son by an earlier marriage. The last chapters relate her mother and father’s death, a chapter for each of them, conciliatory and forgiving of their failure as parents.
Freud’s self-absorption, Rose calls it selfishness, was complete and centred on his intense involvement with the medium of his art: ‘Talking about his work he said he hoped that the paint would become flesh rather than just representing it, the paint itself felt more deeply than anything else in his life, obsessed as he was by the potential of the subject, its possibilities. The transubstantiation he tried for was not about creating personality….He said he wanted to paint a person, not their likeness – he was making flesh, but for me the true beauty and truth of the portraits is experienced in the way the paint surface reveals how he saw his subjects, their specificity under his gaze, from his perspective, and how he felt, not just how much he loved and admired his sitters, but how much he loved and hated to be caught up, that ambivalence’.
That strange equation of paint and flesh is apparent in their discussion of what he was to call the naked portrait that provides the title of her book. He was going to call it, The Artist’s Daughter. Rose objected that his choice ‘would make anybody think of incest’. He yielded to her insistence that he should simply call the portrait Rose. A better title she writes, ‘less misleading’, and one that recognised her separate being.
July 17, 2024
Ya deffo got to read between the lines of what’s presented, but a really interesting insight into a very b a d man
September 6, 2025
i think this is a good comparison to patti smith’s memoir and it is a good that i read this after smith. i found smith’s fascinating, despite not knowing who she or robert were before starting and their relationship and how it was portrayed, their life together and their work appeared innately special and magical. i only found boyt’s text compelling because i already had an interest in freud himself, without that i do not think i would have finished it. i think there was an attempt at replicating the intimacy of the relationship found in smiths but unsuccessfully done: it came across unwaveringly mundane and not deserving of advertisement.
i feel calling this a memoir of freud is misleading. there are certainly interesting and valuable moments of insight into him but for the most part i found it a self-indulgent, self-pitying text with an unwelcome moralising tone. i was perhaps confused by the chronology - the diary entries moving forwards linearly but her reflections of her father and her life sporadic, uncertain from which period of either life they were coming from.
so much of the diary entries were unnecessary. for a memoir of freud, there was little of that which actually dealt with him, at least 50 pages of entries such as ‘Saw Bridges, cried. Anger. Pam and Lucy for lunch’ could and should have been omitted. Boyt straddled this odd stance of seemingly blaming her parents for so much of her life and mentality but trying to alleviate them from any blame, yet firmly establishing herself as a victim who did/does little wrong. i found she interrupted the narrative too often, telling a reader what to think about auerbach’s misogyny, freud’s attitude to money and sex; media literacy is dead apparently and a reader cannot be trusted. perhaps guilt for revealing such intimate moments with a father who trusted you? but then why write it?
having said all that - still enjoyable and would recommend although would perhaps advise someone to tone down their expectations. the first half and last two chapters were undoubtedly better than the middle section of the book - ripe with insight into a complicated man and the world in which he worked and thrived from a unique POV of his illegitimate daughter.
i feel calling this a memoir of freud is misleading. there are certainly interesting and valuable moments of insight into him but for the most part i found it a self-indulgent, self-pitying text with an unwelcome moralising tone. i was perhaps confused by the chronology - the diary entries moving forwards linearly but her reflections of her father and her life sporadic, uncertain from which period of either life they were coming from.
so much of the diary entries were unnecessary. for a memoir of freud, there was little of that which actually dealt with him, at least 50 pages of entries such as ‘Saw Bridges, cried. Anger. Pam and Lucy for lunch’ could and should have been omitted. Boyt straddled this odd stance of seemingly blaming her parents for so much of her life and mentality but trying to alleviate them from any blame, yet firmly establishing herself as a victim who did/does little wrong. i found she interrupted the narrative too often, telling a reader what to think about auerbach’s misogyny, freud’s attitude to money and sex; media literacy is dead apparently and a reader cannot be trusted. perhaps guilt for revealing such intimate moments with a father who trusted you? but then why write it?
having said all that - still enjoyable and would recommend although would perhaps advise someone to tone down their expectations. the first half and last two chapters were undoubtedly better than the middle section of the book - ripe with insight into a complicated man and the world in which he worked and thrived from a unique POV of his illegitimate daughter.
July 7, 2025
At first I wanted to rate this book 1 star but decided to rethink the way I view the book. And before reading I think you should too. This book IS NOT A MEMOIR of Lucian Freud it’s a memoir of the author his daughter. If you read the book expecting an insightful and interesting window into the mind and life of Lucian Freud you will be extremely disappointed. Boyt writes entire chapters where he is barely mentioned or isn’t even mentioned at all. However if you reframe the book to be a memoir of one of his children the book is considerably more tolerable. In that frame of mind and changing of expectations the book is now an interesting window into the mind and life of one of his daughters and what her life was like having Freud as a father.
August 29, 2025
This isn't a memoir of Lucien Freud. What it is, however, is an insight into how this extraordinary family did/didn't work through the lens of a late coming of age story from Rose Boyt. At times you wade though pages of Bridget Jones MKII , however there are some really interesting insights beyond those and as a whole the book stands up.
February 8, 2026
An interesting insight into Lucien Freud’s daughter’s relationship with him and her mother. The book was s bit stretched out and I got lost a few times with all the people. The diary entries were superfluous at times. Felt very sad at the end. Rose managed her life against an horrendous childhood and neglect.
July 22, 2025
I forced myself to finish this book. Amazing that it was published…probably only because the author is a daughter of Lucian Freud. William Feaver’s two volume biography is infinitely more readable and informative if Freud is your interest. The Freud bits in this book are mostly vapid and unflattering. The rest is stone cold boring.
February 6, 2026
A compelling, absorbing, impressively honest and self-analysed account by Rose Boyt of her precarious family life, her journey through adulthood as she comes to terms with living as the daughter of the selfish, self-driven, talented artist, Lucien Freud, navigating the world he inhabits.
January 28, 2025
I enjoyed this book immensely. I particularly enjoyed the diary entries, much more so than the recently written bits, they’re a bit too self aware. Gossipy and chatty.
February 23, 2025
Loved it! An amazing and sometimes harrowing and fascinating account of the lives and loves of Rose Boyt and her father Lucian Freud.
July 13, 2025
it was dull and confirmed what i already knew.
May 2, 2025
Lucian Freud is my all-time favorite artist... his paintings genuinely make me feel something. I picked up Naked Portrait hoping for a deeper look into his life and work, especially given his complicated reputation. But it ended up feeling more like a personal diary of his daughter’s life than a true exploration of him. Interesting, yes... but also a bit disappointing.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews