The subject of one of Lucian Freud's 'defining masterpieces' has expressed hope that the portrait will demonstrate that 'big girls can do well' as the painting goes up for auction with an estimated value of up to £35 million.
Painting Details and Auction
The artwork, titled Sleeping by the Lion Carpet, will be offered for sale for the first time as part of Sotheby's The Lewis Collection in June. Painted between 1995 and 1996, the portrait depicts Sue Tilley slouched on a leather couch in the nude. It is expected to sell for between £25 million and £35 million.
The painting required nearly nine months to complete, with Tilley posing for the late artist approximately three times a week when she was in her late 30s. She described the experience as 'very pleasurable,' involving sitting, eating, and 'being in the presence of the most important artist in the world.'
Tilley's Perspective
Speaking to the Press Association, Tilley remarked: 'It shows all those skinny girls that big girls can do well as well. I feel like I'm an example for big women to show themselves off.' She added, 'It's good that it's different. If everyone looked the same, it'd be boring, wouldn't it?'
Tilley hopes audiences will appreciate Freud as a 'marvellous painter' for his ability to 'observe humans as they are.' She stated, 'That's what I'm like and that's what you have to accept, that all humans are different. Everyone's got different things about them and they should be championed rather than brushed under the carpet.'
Freud's Artistic Approach
Regarding Freud's method, Tilley noted: 'He was just devoured by it and I think people make up stories about what he meant by his paintings, but all these paintings really are him testing himself. Sometimes the feet look really big, or the hand, because that's perspective from your eyes, and he was testing himself all the time to make himself better and be able to do that better, and understand people.'
She emphasized that Freud would not paint any part without her presence, as her presence affected the space and the way light reflected on different aspects of the room.
Series and Record Sales
Freud painted four monumental canvases of Tilley between 1993 and 1996. The auction house describes the final portrait as one of Freud's 'defining masterpieces' and the 'final and most ambitious work' in his quartet of portraits of the former benefits supervisor. This will be the first time the painting appears at auction, having been acquired directly from the artist at the time it was painted.
The last major painting from this series to come to auction, Benefits Supervisor Resting (1995), sold for £35.9 million, setting a record at the time for both Freud and any living artist, according to Sotheby's.
Introduction to Freud
Freud was introduced to Tilley through their mutual friend Leigh Bowery, the late performance artist and fashion designer, who also featured in several of Freud's early 1990s paintings.
Exhibition and Sale
The painting was unveiled on Friday and will be on display from June 10 to June 23 as part of Sotheby's The Lewis Collection exhibition, which includes works by Klimt, Modigliani, and Matisse. Following the exhibition, the pieces will go up for sale from June 24 to 25, with a combined estimated sale exceeding £150 million, making it the 'most valuable collection ever offered in the UK,' according to Sotheby's.
Oliver Barker, Sotheby's Europe chairman, commented: 'If figuration is the beating heart of The Lewis Collection, then Freud is its lifeblood. Intimate and monumental in equal measure, drawing on the great traditions of the past but at the same time radically new and inventive, full of emotional and painterly complexity, Sleeping by the Lion Carpet is a masterpiece by any measure. It is, quite simply, one of the greatest portraits of the 20th century, if not in the entire history of Western art: the Mona Lisa of the modern age.'
