FREUD, LUCIAN. (1922-2011). British painter and portraitist. ALS. (“Lucian Freud”). ½p. Small 4to. London, (December 13, 1973). To Mrs. Ronnie Duncan (Henriette, the wife of notable Yorkshire contemporary art collector Ronnie Duncan).
“Thank you for your letter. I am sorry not to be able to come but I cant [sic.] leave London just now. Yours sincerely…”
Lucien Freud
A grandson of pioneering psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, Lucian Freud was born in Berlin but became a British subject after his family fled the Nazis in 1933. He spent his entire life working in London, becoming identified with the “School of London” artists, of which he and Francis Bacon are the best known. Influenced by German expressionism and Surrealism, Freud developed his own representational style, often juxtaposing his subject with an incongruous object or animal, to become one of Britain’s most prominent artists of the late 20th century.
Freud has added his Thorngate Road address in the letter’s upper right corner. In 1972, he moved into a council-owned Victorian house on Thorngate Road in London’s Maida Vale neighborhood. “Freud had always liked the idea of downmarket. He had lived in a succession of Maida Vale and Paddington flats, always just one step ahead of their demolition,” (“When Lucian Freud Lived Upstairs,” Maida Unveiled, Bruce). He spent five years there before moving to Holland Park. “Freud’s time at Thorngate Road is probably best known now for the many portraits he painted of his mother in that upstairs room. After the death of her husband, she had suffered from depression and to provide her with some purpose Freud embarked on a mammoth project. Most mornings he would go and collect her and take her to breakfast at Maison Sagne, a café and patisserie decorated in high European style which had been on Marylebone High Street since 1921. This would then be followed by a four-hour sitting in the upstairs room at Thorngate Road,” which resulted in a series of nine portraits, (ibid.).
A visionary art collector for more than six decades, Duncan “through great vision and creative curiosity, has developed an astonishing art collection and fostered friendships with some of Britain’s greatest artists,” (“Yorkshire Art Collector, Ronnie Duncan Bequeaths Major Gift of Art to Wakefield,” The Hepworth Wakefield website, hepworthwakefield.org/news/yorkshire-art-collector-ronnie-duncan-bequeaths-major-gift-of-art-to-wakefield/).
Written in Freud’s bizarrely childlike hand and folded into quarters with scattered staining in the blank margin. Very fine and scarce; with the original, handwritten envelope.
