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85 year old Lucian Freud, the grandson of father of Psychology, the great psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud has broken the global record for living artists by fetching more than $33 million (£ 17.2 million) after the sale of his painting at Christie’s in New York. An anonymous buyer has bought Freud’s ‘Benefits Supervisor Sleeping’, the life-size 1995 portrait depicting a nude woman sleeping on a worn out sofa.
The auction which was conducted on Tuesday, May 13, 2008 was easily auctioned at higher price than the previous living artist’s record, the £11.3m paid last year for Jeff Koons’s Hanging Heart (Magneta Gold). Art experts feel that Freud rightfully deserves the auction price money. Richard Calvocoressi, the former Director of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art remarked that Lucian Freud is the ‘Rembrandt of our times’. He further remarked that Freud’s great works are in fact very difficult to value.
Lucian Freud is a British painter of German origin and was born in Berlin in 1922. Freud studied art in London and held his first solo exhibition there in 1944. In 2001 he famously painted the Queen and was even short listed for the prestigious Turner prize in 1989. Sue Tilly, who modeled for Freud for the ‘Benefits Supervisor Sleeping’ painting remarked that she is thrilled and can’t believe that such a bizarre thing could happen to her. The work is a part of series from the late 1980s and 1990s, when Freud moved into large scale, life-size paintings.
