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The Lives of Lucian Freud: Fame: 1968-2011
The first biography of the epic life of one of the most important, enigmatic and private artists of the 20th century. Drawn from almost 40 years of conversations with the artist, letters and papers, it is a major work written by a well-known British art critic.
Lucian Freud (1922-2011) is one of the most influential figurative painters of the 20th century. His paintings are in every major museum and many private collections here and abroad. William Feaver's daily calls from 1973 until Freud died in 2011, as well as interviews with family and friends were crucial sources for this book.Freud had ferocious energy, worked day and night but his circle was broad including not just other well-known artists but writers, bluebloods, royals in England and Europe, drag queens, fashion models gamblers, bookies and gangsters like the Kray twins. Fierce, rebellious, charismatic, extremely guarded about his life, he was witty, mischievous and a womanizer.
This brilliantly researched and well written book begins with the Freuds' life in Berlin, the rise of Hitler and the family's escape to London in 1933 when Lucian was 10. Sigmund Freud was his grandfather and Ernst, his father was an architect. In London in his twenties, his first solo show was in 1944 at the Lefevre Gallery. Around this time, Stephen Spender introduced him to Virginia Woolf, at night he was taking Pauline Tennant to the Gargoyle Club, owned by her father and frequented by Dylan Thomas; he was also meeting Sonia Orwell, Cecil Beaton, Auden, Patrick Leigh-Fermor and the Aly Khan, and his muse was a married femme fatale, 13 years older, Lorna Wishart. But it was Francis Bacon who would become his most important influence and the painters Frank Auerbach and David Hockney, close friends.
On Freud's first trip to Paris in 1946 he met the artists Picasso, Giacometti, Andre Breton, Alexander Calder and Balthus. Next was a trip to Greece then trips to the south of France with the Graham Sutherlands. More shows followed in London and Paris and Kenneth Clark tried to buy a painting in 1947 for the Tate, Alfred Barr did buy one for MoMa in 1948, the year Freud married his first wife Kitty Garman Epstein, the daughter of the famous sculptor, Jacob Epstein. In 1952 he eloped with Lady Caroline Blackwood to Paris where they married in 1953; there were two girls from the first marriage but he had twelve other children from his many liasons.
This is an extremely intimate, lively and rich portrait of the artist, full of gossip and stories recounted by Freud to Feaver about people, encounters, and work. Freud's art was his life--"my work is purely autobiographical"--and he usually painted only family, friends, lovers, children, though there were exceptions like the famous small portrait of the Queen. With his later portraits, the subjects were often nude, names were never given and sittings could take up to 16 months, each session lasting five hours but subjects were rarely bored as Freud was a great raconteur and mimic. This book is a major achievement, a tour de force that reveals the details of the life and innermost thoughts of the greatest portrait painter of our time. Volume I has 41 black and white integrated images, and 2 eight-page color inserts.
Lucian Freud (1922-2011) is one of the most influential figurative painters of the 20th century. His paintings are in every major museum and many private collections here and abroad. William Feaver's daily calls from 1973 until Freud died in 2011, as well as interviews with family and friends were crucial sources for this book.Freud had ferocious energy, worked day and night but his circle was broad including not just other well-known artists but writers, bluebloods, royals in England and Europe, drag queens, fashion models gamblers, bookies and gangsters like the Kray twins. Fierce, rebellious, charismatic, extremely guarded about his life, he was witty, mischievous and a womanizer.
This brilliantly researched and well written book begins with the Freuds' life in Berlin, the rise of Hitler and the family's escape to London in 1933 when Lucian was 10. Sigmund Freud was his grandfather and Ernst, his father was an architect. In London in his twenties, his first solo show was in 1944 at the Lefevre Gallery. Around this time, Stephen Spender introduced him to Virginia Woolf, at night he was taking Pauline Tennant to the Gargoyle Club, owned by her father and frequented by Dylan Thomas; he was also meeting Sonia Orwell, Cecil Beaton, Auden, Patrick Leigh-Fermor and the Aly Khan, and his muse was a married femme fatale, 13 years older, Lorna Wishart. But it was Francis Bacon who would become his most important influence and the painters Frank Auerbach and David Hockney, close friends.
On Freud's first trip to Paris in 1946 he met the artists Picasso, Giacometti, Andre Breton, Alexander Calder and Balthus. Next was a trip to Greece then trips to the south of France with the Graham Sutherlands. More shows followed in London and Paris and Kenneth Clark tried to buy a painting in 1947 for the Tate, Alfred Barr did buy one for MoMa in 1948, the year Freud married his first wife Kitty Garman Epstein, the daughter of the famous sculptor, Jacob Epstein. In 1952 he eloped with Lady Caroline Blackwood to Paris where they married in 1953; there were two girls from the first marriage but he had twelve other children from his many liasons.
This is an extremely intimate, lively and rich portrait of the artist, full of gossip and stories recounted by Freud to Feaver about people, encounters, and work. Freud's art was his life--"my work is purely autobiographical"--and he usually painted only family, friends, lovers, children, though there were exceptions like the famous small portrait of the Queen. With his later portraits, the subjects were often nude, names were never given and sittings could take up to 16 months, each session lasting five hours but subjects were rarely bored as Freud was a great raconteur and mimic. This book is a major achievement, a tour de force that reveals the details of the life and innermost thoughts of the greatest portrait painter of our time. Volume I has 41 black and white integrated images, and 2 eight-page color inserts.
593 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 19, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
July 25, 2022
I went directly from the first book to this second volume and i'm just over it. I'm offically sick Lucian Freud. The man was a selfish arsehole with the morals of an alley cat in heat. He didn't care who he hurt and he justified it all on the grounds that he was in fact an artistic genius.
I normally enjoy reading about wild bohemian art scenes and the goings on of the brilliant and talented but in this case i'm over it.
Perhaps these two books would have been better off being condensed into a single volume?
The author is obviously too much of an adoring fanboy to edit things down to a digestible level.
I normally enjoy reading about wild bohemian art scenes and the goings on of the brilliant and talented but in this case i'm over it.
Perhaps these two books would have been better off being condensed into a single volume?
The author is obviously too much of an adoring fanboy to edit things down to a digestible level.
March 14, 2021
I only read about 1/3; although billed as a history of the times through which Lucien lived, it is not that kind of book... he is a talented, and incredilbly self centered artist.. one must look up some of the referenced paintings to get a sense of his wide range of expression in his portrait work... but to sum up, the accounts of his self centered life are a bit boring, with little external focus...i didn’t think for what it describes, that the book deserved 600 pages of my reding time.....and it didn’t get it either....
April 9, 2021
This second volume of Lucian Freud's biography covers the period of his greatest recognition until his death, the many shows, retrospectives, honours, travels and the increase in his productivity as he got older. It also covers the complexity of his private live and the difficulties of maintaining reliable sitters who inspired him into the ailments of old age. As close as we'll be likely to get to this very private person. - BH.
August 22, 2022
I have to start by saying that William Feaver clearly had a long and interesting relationship with Lucian Freud, but this second volume of the biography is clearly more about FW than LF. Feaver never misses an opportunity to insert himself into the story, to express his personal (and not necessarily widely held) opinions about other artists, malign the painter Francis Bacon and secure for posterity how indispensable he was to Freud from the 1970s up to the end.
I reviewed volume one some months back. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... I conceded a star (gave four rather than three) just because of the quantity of information in the book. Not doing that this tine. The fact is that Feaver is not an accomplished writer when it comes to projects of this scale. Everything that irritated me in volume one was more irritating in volume two. Especially as Feaver as author exudes all the charm of a name-dropper trying to hit on one at some social event.
Feaver continues to simply toss long passages from Freud's letters, notes and recordings into the narrative as though Freud's memories and opinions are either correct or insightful. They are frequently neither. Feaver's style makes reading a taxing process because it is easy to lose track of who is speaking.
Feaver also periodically reminds the viewer that this is supposed to be a book about the art and not a book about Freud personally. Uh-huh. Right. And he inserts queries from Nick Serota, then Director of the Tate, and various gallerists and friends, about "how the book is coming along." Lest the reader forget that the book referenced is the one the reader is holding and, my, aren't we grateful to WF for such a gift.
On that note, Feaver constantly refers to lovers, ex-lovers, children (acknowledged and not) and grandchildren (acknowledged and not) but--presumably honoring Freud's demand that the book not be "personal"--doesn't provide an appendix or diagram that would provide a timeline and context for these names. Even Wikipedia recognizes the complexity in the partial list of offspring it provides: fourteen known, perhaps as many as forty all told. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucian_.... At an English wedding I attended back in the 1970s, the brother of the bride gave this toast: "I wish to the couple in their life together the patience of Job, the wisdom of Solomon and the children of the Tribes of Israel. It seems like Freud gave the Tribes of Israel a run for their money.
But my point is, the more names there are and the more relevant they are to the matter under discussion (Freud's daily life, the way he perceives people and sitters, and his art) the more important that the reader be able to get a grip on who they are, how old they are and how their mothers fit into the picture (pun intended). No, Freud wouldn't have wanted such a list in the book but he was dead ten years by the time it was published. Not only should Feaver have overlooked that stricture, his publisher Knopf should have thrown a few bucks to an indexer or graphic designer to put one together.
Another thing Knopf should have done was spend a little time identifying illustrations. Two small sections of color plates are nice, but there is nothing in the text that alerts the reader to those plates or to the few black-and-white figures elsewhere. Feaver goes on endlessly about a number of paintings not reproduced in the book and that is just annoying. Yes, I keep my cell phone handy so I can keep looking up works under discussion, but I don't think access to the Internet should be a prerequisite for grasping the content of a printed book.
Two books that do a really splendid job connecting the text with illustrations offer a comparison. One is "Francis Bacon" by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan, also published in 2021. Mary Beards's "The Twelve Caesars," also from 2021, is simply exemplary in terms of design. All of these books are art books and art is about things visual. Yes I know that getting permissions is a nuisance and can be inconvenient, but, hey, that's not the reader's fault.
The copyediting, moreover is sloppy. One double spread of photographs, one of which prominently features Feaver in a white shirt, omits identification of Richard Calvocoressi, then director of the Scottish National Museum and an art historian and museum professional of note. And some of those kids in the picture with Feaver belong to Calvocoressi.
Is the book useful? Yes. It has a tremendous amount of information in it, for the reader committed to developing an inclusive sense of Lucian Freud and his art. I will probably put it on my ongoing list of recommendations I might make to students and those interested in art. But it is also problematic for the way it skews understanding of Freud's peers, the art world of the period, especially the British art world, and offers a rag-rug of anecdotes when a sturdier weaving of facts is needed.
I emerged from the reading of "The Lives of Lucian Freud, Fame, 1968-2011" with, I think, less liking for Freud's art although certainly a more complete understanding of it. The unlikability of the painter is, moreover, secured more firmly in my mind.
And as for William Feaver? The circles we run in would never overlap--and I can only be grateful for that.
I reviewed volume one some months back. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... I conceded a star (gave four rather than three) just because of the quantity of information in the book. Not doing that this tine. The fact is that Feaver is not an accomplished writer when it comes to projects of this scale. Everything that irritated me in volume one was more irritating in volume two. Especially as Feaver as author exudes all the charm of a name-dropper trying to hit on one at some social event.
Feaver continues to simply toss long passages from Freud's letters, notes and recordings into the narrative as though Freud's memories and opinions are either correct or insightful. They are frequently neither. Feaver's style makes reading a taxing process because it is easy to lose track of who is speaking.
Feaver also periodically reminds the viewer that this is supposed to be a book about the art and not a book about Freud personally. Uh-huh. Right. And he inserts queries from Nick Serota, then Director of the Tate, and various gallerists and friends, about "how the book is coming along." Lest the reader forget that the book referenced is the one the reader is holding and, my, aren't we grateful to WF for such a gift.
On that note, Feaver constantly refers to lovers, ex-lovers, children (acknowledged and not) and grandchildren (acknowledged and not) but--presumably honoring Freud's demand that the book not be "personal"--doesn't provide an appendix or diagram that would provide a timeline and context for these names. Even Wikipedia recognizes the complexity in the partial list of offspring it provides: fourteen known, perhaps as many as forty all told. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucian_.... At an English wedding I attended back in the 1970s, the brother of the bride gave this toast: "I wish to the couple in their life together the patience of Job, the wisdom of Solomon and the children of the Tribes of Israel. It seems like Freud gave the Tribes of Israel a run for their money.
But my point is, the more names there are and the more relevant they are to the matter under discussion (Freud's daily life, the way he perceives people and sitters, and his art) the more important that the reader be able to get a grip on who they are, how old they are and how their mothers fit into the picture (pun intended). No, Freud wouldn't have wanted such a list in the book but he was dead ten years by the time it was published. Not only should Feaver have overlooked that stricture, his publisher Knopf should have thrown a few bucks to an indexer or graphic designer to put one together.
Another thing Knopf should have done was spend a little time identifying illustrations. Two small sections of color plates are nice, but there is nothing in the text that alerts the reader to those plates or to the few black-and-white figures elsewhere. Feaver goes on endlessly about a number of paintings not reproduced in the book and that is just annoying. Yes, I keep my cell phone handy so I can keep looking up works under discussion, but I don't think access to the Internet should be a prerequisite for grasping the content of a printed book.
Two books that do a really splendid job connecting the text with illustrations offer a comparison. One is "Francis Bacon" by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan, also published in 2021. Mary Beards's "The Twelve Caesars," also from 2021, is simply exemplary in terms of design. All of these books are art books and art is about things visual. Yes I know that getting permissions is a nuisance and can be inconvenient, but, hey, that's not the reader's fault.
The copyediting, moreover is sloppy. One double spread of photographs, one of which prominently features Feaver in a white shirt, omits identification of Richard Calvocoressi, then director of the Scottish National Museum and an art historian and museum professional of note. And some of those kids in the picture with Feaver belong to Calvocoressi.
Is the book useful? Yes. It has a tremendous amount of information in it, for the reader committed to developing an inclusive sense of Lucian Freud and his art. I will probably put it on my ongoing list of recommendations I might make to students and those interested in art. But it is also problematic for the way it skews understanding of Freud's peers, the art world of the period, especially the British art world, and offers a rag-rug of anecdotes when a sturdier weaving of facts is needed.
I emerged from the reading of "The Lives of Lucian Freud, Fame, 1968-2011" with, I think, less liking for Freud's art although certainly a more complete understanding of it. The unlikability of the painter is, moreover, secured more firmly in my mind.
And as for William Feaver? The circles we run in would never overlap--and I can only be grateful for that.
June 23, 2025
Suffers from the same issues as Volume 1. Feaver uses extensive quotes from Freud, often unedited and rambling. Freud was still picking up female students for nude modelling when he was in his 80s! Yuk
November 16, 2024
Very good indeed, even if not quite as much fun as the first volume, which is mostly the usual thing that reading about an artist’s struggles (not that Freud had many) are more interesting than their successes, but also that once William Feaver himself enters Freud’s life, early in this volume, he can’t be entirely so objective. Also the bohemian life of post war London is just more fun to read about than the 80s and 90s. As for Freud himself…he clearly was a man of great charm, or he wouldn’t have got away with being such a selfish prick for so long. What surprised me more was how analytical he was (no joke intended about his granddad). Anyone committing themselves through a lifetime of effort to achieve something hard is inherently interesting. Finally, the two volumes have given me a terrific sense that I now *know* Freud, as well as having had a great time doing it. So all in all a highly satisfying work of biography.
February 23, 2021
Brilliant!
Reaver brings Freud to life so brilliantly, relating his art to his life so well while avoiding judgment on his often insensitive treatment of friends, lovers and fellow artists.
Reaver brings Freud to life so brilliantly, relating his art to his life so well while avoiding judgment on his often insensitive treatment of friends, lovers and fellow artists.
December 5, 2023
Intimate & revealing..what a life.
Want to read
March 23, 2024SFP 3-9-22… Success!
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews