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UVA Exhibits Lucian Freud Etchings

The Collection of William and Donna Acquavella

Some big names are gracing the University of Virginia’s art museum this month. 

Lucian Freud was the grandson of Sigmund Freud, who encouraged him to become an artist.  The younger Freud left Germany with his family when Hitler came to power and settled in England, where he painted a diverse group of people; from the civil servant he called Big Sue to Mick Jagger’s fashionable wife.

“He had a fascination for pregnant women, and he painted Jerry Hall and Kate Moss, who were best known as tall, sleek models, in the third trimester of their pregnancy.” 

Bruce Boucher, director of UVA’s art museum, says Freud believed in punctuality, and when Jerry Hall failed to arrive for a sitting, he painted the head of his studio assistant onto her body.

“The finished painting was of David Dawson nursing Jerry Hall’s baby, which didn’t please Jerry Hall or Mick Jagger.”

Like his famous grandfather, Lucian Freud hoped to discover the essence of people.

“He would sit you down, and you would spend months being studied and sketched, and at the end of a 4 or 5 hour sitting, which was typical for him, he would take you out to dinner.”

When subjects were willing, Freud liked to paint them without their clothes.

“He often said that when people posed in the nude, they divested themselves of their façade, and they were like animals, and he got more of a sense of who they were.”

Boucher says Freud was an eccentric but charming bachelor.

“He lived on his own, even though he fathered some 30 children that we know of, but he had great charm, and everyone who sat for him was enchanted by his wit and slightly old-world manner.”

Lucian Freud is best known for his paintings - layers of oil on canvas that convey the texture of flesh and fabric, but Boucher discovered, on a visit to Britain’s National Portrait Gallery, that he was also a master of etching, and he arranged a rare show of Freud’s prints in Charlottesville.

David Dawson, who served as Freud’s studio assistant and photographer, will speak about the artist next month as part of the Virginia Festival of the Book.  Also coming soon to the Fralin Museum on UVA’s campus - six works by Andy Warhol, which will be part of a big exhibition of his work next year.  

Sandy Hausman is Radio IQ's Charlottesville Bureau Chief
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