Lucian Freud Has Died

As told by one of his models:

The artist with the all too penetrating gaze, Lucian Freud, has died. What his eyes saw in the human form, his hands rendered, not as Michaelangelo or Titian had done -- that is, with a newborn reverence for the human body -- but more probingly, in long sessions, under the shadow of the first half of the twentieth century. What his portraiture revealed was his subjects' own stark humanity, shorn of grace in a graceless world.

Many years ago, I sat for my own portrait in Lucian's studio. If I remember correctly, the work lasted six months. But I rather enjoyed the time I spent with him. The man had a genius for story-telling and often regaled me, as I lay naked on a bed, with wonderful anecdotes and reminiscences. Of the early, hungry days in the East End, he had great picaresque tales. (I seem to remember a string of encounters with a devious landlord). Of artist friends, he was generous and kind; of predecessors, most discriminating, though often brazenly iconoclastic. (He had, for example, no mercy for the pre-Raphaelites). When I wasn't laughing, I was looking back at him, into his eyes, which I imagined always saw more than I saw in myself, at times seemed almost remorseless.

When Lucian first showed me my portrait, I nearly recoiled from it, much as Dorian Gray had from his decaying likeness. Though I'd seen and known other of his works, it almost never occured to me, at least not while I lay there and listened to him, that I could be exposed to the same scrutiny. But there I was, all of myself, swathed in nothing but the flesh tones of my body, lying uneasily on a bed. And in my anxious gaze, the faint recognition that I had never been so naked.