Freud's 'Ria, Naked Portrait' set to sell for over 10M pounds in London auction

The Manila Times

Freud's 'Ria, Naked Portrait' set to sell for over 10M pounds in London auction  Lucian Freud's 'Ria, Naked Portrait' is set to be a highlight at Frieze's '20th/21st Century: London Evening Sale' at the British auction house, Christie's on Oct. 9, 2024. The painting, which is being offered at auction for the first time, is estimated to sell for between 10 million and 15 million pounds. Co-head of the Evening Sale, Anna Touzin, said that in this artwork and others, Freud 'doesn't want to portray a perfect idolized view of the body,' adding that he is 'really trying to paint people as they are.'  AFP VIDEO  Subscribe to The Manila Times Channel - https://tmt.ph/YTSubscribe  Visit our website at https://www.manilatimes.net    Follow us:  Facebook - https://tmt.ph/facebook  Instagram - https://tmt.ph/instagram  Twitter - https://tmt.ph/twitter  DailyMotion - https://tmt.ph/dailymotion    Subscribe to our Digital Edition - https://tmt.ph/digital  Sign up to our newsletters: https://tmt.ph/newsletters   Check out our Podcasts:  Spotify - https://tmt.ph/spotify  Apple Podcasts - https://tmt.ph/applepodcasts  Amazon Music - https://tmt.ph/amazonmusic  Deezer: https://tmt.ph/deezer  Tune In: https://tmt.ph/tunein   #themanilatimes #worldnews #painting #art

Transcript

00:00So it's a top lot of the sale at 10 to 15 million pounds.

00:28It's quite a late masterpiece by him.

00:31It was painted between 2006 and 2007.

00:35It's been in the same collection since it was made, so just one private collection.

00:42And it's the first time that it's coming to the market, which is really exciting.

00:46The sitter is Ria Kirby, who met Freud at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

00:51He was working on an exhibition with Frank Auerbach at the time, and she just went up

00:55to him and started speaking to him.

00:58And from there, started sitting for this portrait, and it took him 16 months to paint it.

01:06And she was sitting for him pretty much on a daily basis for nearly five hours each day,

01:11so a really long process.

01:12And I think it shows Freud's relationship with his sitters, the kind of dedication that

01:18they would give to him, but that he also gave to them, painting them.

01:23And I think looking at the painting more closely, you can see the kind of layering

01:26and the attention that he's giving not only to her skin, to her kind of translucent skin

01:33color, but also to the bedspread or to the radiator in the background.

01:39It's really a fantastic work.

01:43He doesn't want to portray a kind of perfect, idolized view of the body, but he's really

01:49trying to paint people as they are.

01:51And I think we see that especially in the smaller portrait, Head of a Woman, which was

01:55in his own private collection for 10 years, and one of the few paintings that hung actually

01:59in his house.

02:00So he wanted to live with this work, and he's painted this really intimate moment between

02:05himself and the sitter.

02:07And I think that's where his skill comes, for painting people as they are, instead of

02:13trying to create an idolized version of them.

02:21For more information, please visit the U.S. Embassy in the U.S., or visit our website at

02:23www.theembassy.org.

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