The Lives of Lucian Freud

Starred review from August 12, 2019
Art, debauchery, nightlife, and lowlifes fill out this rollicking biography of the celebrated British painter. Art critic and curator Feaver (Frank Auerbach) follows Lucian Freud (1922–2011), grandson of psychologist Sigmund Freud, through his rise to the top of Britain’s art scene, where his realist portraits thrummed with tension and suspicion, perhaps because of the marathon sittings his models endured or the pitiless depictions of flesh in his paintings. Feaver has much to say about the art— “Here are individual fingernails and individual hairs, some with split ends,” he writes of the landmark Girl with Roses, “as fully realized as the golden tresses of a Dürer”—but more about Freud’s daily picaresque: the relentless womanizing (he fathered 12 illegitimate children), the studied eccentricities (he carpeted his studio with broken glass), the gambling addiction that saddled him with debts to gangsters, and the swirl of colorful acquaintances, from nobility to famous artists to petty criminals, all of whom he painted. Feaver heavily quotes from his interviews with Freud, and the artist’s chatty, insouciant voice—“I said, ‘I’m going to pay you when I’ve got the money and if you kill me you won’t get the money,’ an argument that impressed them”—suffuses the book. The result is a riotously entertaining narrative that immerses readers in Freud’s beguiling sensibility. Photos.

Starred review from October 15, 2019
Lucian Freud, one of the last century's most acclaimed realist portraitists, captivates both with his distinctive art and his unusual life. He was deeply private, yet he provided renowned British art critic Feaver unfettered access to his inner world. This, the first of two biographical volumes, is derived from their daily phone conversations held over several decades. Lucian was born in Berlin to Ernst Freud, Sigmund Freud's youngest son, and he and his family emigrated to London as Hitler ascended to power. Lucian was a defiant child who was uninterested in school, but he possessed a penchant for art nurtured by his mother. Once he came into his own, his circle included many contemporary luminaries, such as Dylan Thomas, Virginia Woolf, Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, and even the notoriously criminal Kray twins. Freud was married twice, and was an unapologetic serial philanderer. Despite acknowledging that he fathered over a dozen children, he maintained his distance from them. His proclivity for gambling left him in mounting debt, which he often paid with his art. Freud was adamant about not viewing his wild antics through a psychological lens, instead letting his art reveal existential truths. Feaver now delivers his own masterpiece, a highly intimate and multifaceted study of a fascinating and enigmatic artist.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)