Building on
the success of its record-breaking Lucian Freud sale in 2008, Christie‘s
is proud to announce the auction of one of Lucian Freud’s most famous
and iconic paintings as the highlight of Christie’s Post-War and
Contemporary sale on May 13.
Benefits Supervisor Resting is
regarded as Freud’s ultimate tour de force, a life-size masterwork in
the grand historical tradition of the female nude, painted obsessively
with intense scrutiny and abiding truth. This bold and extraordinary
example of the stark power of Lucian Freud’s realism reveals his unique
ability to capture the reality of the human form in all its natural
force.
Chosen by Freud as the cover of the definitive monograph about
the artist, Benefits Supervisor Resting was included by the
artist in every major museum exhibition devoted to Freud, including Tate
Britain, London, The Museum of Modern Art, New York and the recent
survey The Facts and the Truth: Lucian Freud at the National Portrait Gallery, London. Benefits Supervisor Resting is poised to break the previous auction record for the artist achieved in 2008 with another portrait of the same sitter, Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, which sold for $33.6 million, setting a record at the time for any living artist.
“Benefits Supervisor Resting is
recognized internationally as Freud’s masterpiece and proclaims him as
one of the greatest painters of the human form in history alongside
Rembrandt and Rubens,” states Brett Gorvy, Chairman and International
Head of Post-War and Art at Christie’s. “This painting is a triumph of
the human spirit, showcasing Freud's love of the human body. The sitter,
Sue Tilley, is calm and confident, relaxed and comfortable in her own
skin. She is very much in control, taking on the artist and the viewer.
A contemporary take on the Odalisque and the fertility goddess, with
her head flung back, she exudes an intriguing ambiguity, implying
ecstasy, defiance and the deep exhale of peacefulness. Freud described
Sue Tilley as an extremely feminine sitter, and he has painted her with
an objectivity and sensuality that is brought alive by the incredible
use of brushwork and color harmony. He observed every inch of her with
an uncritical eye almost daily for more than 9 months. The surface is
amazing and almost sculptural in its layering of color.”
Lying in resplendent repose in the painter’s modest London studio, Lucian Freud’s Benefits Supervisor Resting
is regarded as one of the most remarkable paintings of the human figure
ever produced. Featuring Sue Tilley, a local government worker from
London and one of the artist’s favorite sitters, this extraordinary
portrait demonstrates Freud’s mastery of the painterly medium as he
records the subtle nuances of Tilley’s figure with astute observation
and technical brilliance. Painted over a grueling nine month period in
1994, with Tilley sitting for long hours four or five times a week, this
remarkably candid portrait is a stunning essay on Freud’s patient
painterly practice, in which he undertakes an exhaustive examination of
the human form and renders every curve, fold, blemish and contour of
Tilley’s body with deeply evocative force.
Sue Tilley was introduced to Freud by
the performance artist and designer, Leigh Bowery, another of Freud’s
great subjects. Tilley, the author of Bowery’s biography, was nervous on
first meeting Freud but like most of his sitters grew more comfortable
and confident as she came to know him. After Freud’s first picture of
her, Evening in the Studio of 1993, which was originally to
have also included Bowery and for which she was forced to lie on the
bare floor in an extremely uncomfortable pose, Freud bought the
dilapidated sofa that appears in this painting for her to sit on.
“I
am only interested in painting the actual person, in doing a painting
of them, not in using them to some ulterior end of art. For me, to use
someone doing something not native to them would be wrong. If I am
putting someone in a picture I like to feel that they’ve fallen asleep
there or they’ve elbowed their way: that way they are there not to make
the picture easy on the eye or more pleasant, but they are occupying the
space of my picture and I am recording them.”
Freud reworked the traditional theme of
the nude, using a strong, uncompromising technique. Presented exposed
and naked on a sofa set down on a bare wooden floor, this portrait and
interior is both monumental and magnificent. Bruce Bernard, picture
editor, photographer and friend of the artist stated: the portraits of
Sue Tilley “are major contributions to the sum of Western painting of the nude, and may even put the final stop to the classical tradition.”
The undeniable and almost overwhelming physical presence of Tilley’s
relaxed and confident naked form demonstrates Freud’s extraordinary
depth and apparently infinite richness of stark reality. Going on to
state that it is “truthfulness as revealing and intrusive, rather than rhyming and soothing.”
"The task of the artist," Freud once declared, "is
to make the human being uncomfortable, and yet we are drawn to a great
work of art by involuntary chemistry, like a hound getting a scent; the
dog isn't free, it can't do otherwise, it gets the scent and instinct
does the rest.”
