0:00:02 > 0:00:08This programme contains some strong language.
0:00:13 > 0:00:17If you put your knee forward. Yeah, absolutely.
0:00:18 > 0:00:19(Absolutely...)
0:00:19 > 0:00:23At 88, Lucian Freud still wanted to paint every day
0:00:23 > 0:00:24in the quiet of his studio.
0:00:25 > 0:00:26(I do.)
0:00:34 > 0:00:38These shots were filmed by his trusted assistant, David Dawson,
0:00:38 > 0:00:41as he posed for Freud's final painting...
0:00:41 > 0:00:42Quite.
0:00:44 > 0:00:46..and is the first time this secretive man
0:00:46 > 0:00:48has been filmed working.
0:00:51 > 0:00:55It is also what turned out to be the very last day he ever painted.
0:01:05 > 0:01:07Only a few days later,
0:01:07 > 0:01:09on 20th July last year,
0:01:09 > 0:01:11the artist Lucian Freud died.
0:01:12 > 0:01:14(I do.)
0:01:17 > 0:01:18(I do.)
0:01:29 > 0:01:32He was acclaimed only in the last quarter of his life.
0:01:35 > 0:01:39He was famous for mercilessly explicit paintings.
0:01:45 > 0:01:48Notorious for sex with young women in old age,
0:01:48 > 0:01:51and for a surprising number of children.
0:01:51 > 0:01:53Some like to say as many as 40
0:01:53 > 0:01:55but, in reality, more like 14.
0:01:59 > 0:02:02Lot 37, Lucian Freud, Benefit Supervisor Sleeping.
0:02:02 > 0:02:06And celebrated for breaking world records at auction.
0:02:06 > 0:02:0830 million.
0:02:08 > 0:02:09At 30 million.
0:02:10 > 0:02:12These headlines are endlessly recycled
0:02:12 > 0:02:15because the artist gave little away.
0:02:23 > 0:02:26Despite his late, uninvited exposure,
0:02:26 > 0:02:30for most of his life, Lucian Freud was almost invisible.
0:02:30 > 0:02:32And always elusive.
0:02:39 > 0:02:43- OK, now we're going to just drop it down.- Buffer it on your feet...
0:02:51 > 0:02:54Good boy. Are you all right, mate?
0:03:07 > 0:03:12MUSIC PLAYS IN BACKGROUND
0:03:12 > 0:03:16# Do not forsake me, oh, my darlin'
0:03:18 > 0:03:23# On this our wedding day
0:03:23 > 0:03:29# Do not forsake me oh my darling... #
0:03:29 > 0:03:32It's a few weeks after Lucian's death.
0:03:32 > 0:03:34His assistant, David Dawson, is still caught up
0:03:34 > 0:03:36in the strands of his life.
0:03:37 > 0:03:39Sharpened by a sense of loss,
0:03:39 > 0:03:42memories of the artist and his paintings are surfacing
0:03:42 > 0:03:45amongst his lovers, family and friends.
0:03:47 > 0:03:52They talk with the same uncompromising honesty with which Freud painted them...
0:03:53 > 0:03:58..revealing the romantic passion which fused his life with his art.
0:04:01 > 0:04:06LUCIAN FREUD: 'My preferred subject matter are humans.
0:04:07 > 0:04:10'I'm really interested in them as animals,
0:04:10 > 0:04:15'and part of liking to work from them naked is partly for that reason.'
0:04:18 > 0:04:20When you're with him one-on-one,
0:04:20 > 0:04:24it was the most intimate, intense level of friendship.
0:04:25 > 0:04:29Completely in the moment
0:04:29 > 0:04:31about what was happening around you,
0:04:31 > 0:04:33and that's all that mattered.
0:04:42 > 0:04:44He was electric.
0:04:44 > 0:04:47And everything about him was electric,
0:04:47 > 0:04:49and so one was stimulated immediately.
0:04:49 > 0:04:53Just the way he walked into a room and the way he breathed,
0:04:53 > 0:04:56he would breathe like an animal that's excited.
0:04:56 > 0:05:00And he was very animal and feral
0:05:00 > 0:05:04and he did exactly what he wanted.
0:05:09 > 0:05:11I think he was very shy, actually.
0:05:11 > 0:05:13Quite shy.
0:05:13 > 0:05:16Obviously loved women, so he's not so shy with them.
0:05:17 > 0:05:21He was always chasing girls. I mean, he'd spent a lot of time doing that.
0:05:25 > 0:05:28He was a bit of a show-off, I would say.
0:05:28 > 0:05:31But a show-off with all the desires
0:05:31 > 0:05:33of not being noticed.
0:05:33 > 0:05:37But equally wanting to be noticed, so it's a contradiction.
0:05:41 > 0:05:44He used to get into fights all the time,
0:05:44 > 0:05:47and he very easily took against things
0:05:47 > 0:05:50in a way that I thought was delightful, I really admired.
0:05:50 > 0:05:53You know, the way he would just suddenly decide
0:05:53 > 0:05:57that something really pissed him off was superb
0:05:57 > 0:06:01because there was nothing half-hearted about his responses to things.
0:06:06 > 0:06:08On one occasion,
0:06:08 > 0:06:11he was in this punch-up with this man in Marylebone High Street,
0:06:11 > 0:06:14and the man was much bigger than him
0:06:14 > 0:06:17and he'd pinned Lucian to the pavement
0:06:17 > 0:06:21and was absolutely going berserk and punching Lucian.
0:06:21 > 0:06:25Lucian, at this point, having given as good as he'd got up till then,
0:06:25 > 0:06:29just kind of lay back as though he was on a beach
0:06:29 > 0:06:33and became completely passive, as though it was happening to somebody else.
0:06:33 > 0:06:38And I think Lucian had this kind of animal instinct
0:06:38 > 0:06:42to know how to play life, really.
0:06:46 > 0:06:51RACING ANNOUNCER: 'The back of the field at this stage, is six lengths off the pace.
0:06:51 > 0:06:55'Valedictor has taken over now but only has a narrow advantage as they reach the halfway point...'
0:06:55 > 0:06:56Do you remember once
0:06:56 > 0:07:00he lost, I think, nearly a million pounds in one afternoon
0:07:00 > 0:07:03and another afternoon he won a million. We said, "Brilliant."
0:07:03 > 0:07:07He said, "Well, actually, I owe four million, so it's not all that good!"
0:07:10 > 0:07:13- The motive, I think, was to lose everything...- Yeah.
0:07:13 > 0:07:17..and that somehow triggered him off to be able to then paint cos there's no other distractions.
0:07:19 > 0:07:22And then as the price of his paintings increased,
0:07:22 > 0:07:25there was just too much money involved.
0:07:25 > 0:07:28He couldn't get rid of it all and then that's when he lost interest.
0:07:32 > 0:07:35Lucian Freud sacrificed everything for his painting,
0:07:35 > 0:07:39happy to be feared, if that kept the world at bay.
0:07:42 > 0:07:45He kept his private life as mysterious as possible.
0:07:47 > 0:07:50What he wants us to know is all there in the painting.
0:07:52 > 0:07:54Evidence of what he saw...
0:07:55 > 0:07:57delivered with lacerating honesty.
0:08:02 > 0:08:06The paintings often disturb and yet enchant us too with their intensity.
0:08:11 > 0:08:15And that disturbing intensity was there from the start, in his family
0:08:15 > 0:08:18and with his mother.
0:08:20 > 0:08:23He always said that he really couldn't stand his mother -
0:08:23 > 0:08:26she used to hoard his love letters that she found.
0:08:26 > 0:08:30She used to write to girlfriends asking for love letters so she could put them in her drawer.
0:08:30 > 0:08:33She was intrusive, she was instinctive, he said,
0:08:33 > 0:08:37and by that he meant her instincts were to know what he was up to
0:08:37 > 0:08:40and he didn't want her to know what he was up to.
0:08:43 > 0:08:48Lucian was born in Berlin in 1922,
0:08:48 > 0:08:52and from the outset, his mother encouraged his talent.
0:08:52 > 0:08:55She hoarded all his childhood drawings.
0:08:59 > 0:09:03He was her favourite and she named him after herself, Lucie.
0:09:05 > 0:09:06Lucian.
0:09:10 > 0:09:16When Lucian was born, his father Ernst set off almost immediately
0:09:16 > 0:09:19to the mountains and left Lucie and Lucian alone.
0:09:19 > 0:09:22As a mother, I know how important those first few months are -
0:09:22 > 0:09:26you're just completely wrapped up in your baby.
0:09:26 > 0:09:31And there's no doubt that she was very connected to him.
0:09:32 > 0:09:35When he was 18, her made a drawing of her.
0:09:36 > 0:09:40He wouldn't make another image of her for 30 years.
0:09:42 > 0:09:44What did he make of his father?
0:09:45 > 0:09:48Ernst Freud was a successful architect.
0:09:48 > 0:09:53In the late '20s, Berlin was at the forefront of modern design.
0:09:58 > 0:10:02Today, his cigarette factory is still standing.
0:10:06 > 0:10:11And in Potsdam, his fashionable weekend retreat for a banker client,
0:10:11 > 0:10:15modernism in brick, has been restored.
0:10:16 > 0:10:19Ernst was a society architect.
0:10:20 > 0:10:23Lucian found him boring.
0:10:23 > 0:10:26I think my first memory is of us all
0:10:26 > 0:10:30sitting on the floor in our nursery with a diabolo,
0:10:30 > 0:10:34one of these things, a piece of string with a sort of...
0:10:34 > 0:10:38waisted object in the middle which you'd try to roll along it
0:10:38 > 0:10:40and bounce up in the air.
0:10:40 > 0:10:44We all vied with each other to do it best.
0:10:46 > 0:10:50The family apartment was full of his father's trendy furniture.
0:10:54 > 0:10:58But on the wall is a print of a painting by Titian,
0:10:58 > 0:11:03an artist who was become one of Lucian's absolute favourites.
0:11:04 > 0:11:07We were dragged to museums nonstop.
0:11:07 > 0:11:11- Do you think Lucian was taken off to museums?- Oh, I'm certain.
0:11:11 > 0:11:15I mean, that went with the period in which we lived
0:11:15 > 0:11:19and the people who were our family -
0:11:19 > 0:11:23art and music played a HUGE role.
0:11:24 > 0:11:28In later life, Lucian denied being taken to the great Berlin galleries.
0:11:28 > 0:11:31He rarely talked about his influences.
0:11:31 > 0:11:34He refused any sort of label.
0:11:34 > 0:11:36But he did talk about his affinity with animals,
0:11:36 > 0:11:38and in particular, horses.
0:11:56 > 0:11:57He did say that as a child,
0:11:57 > 0:12:00he used to go to the grand house called Gaglow.
0:12:00 > 0:12:05There were horses there, and I think he once said that there was a fire
0:12:05 > 0:12:08and that he remembered the distress of the horses
0:12:08 > 0:12:10and how important it was to let the horses out.
0:12:16 > 0:12:19For the young Lucian, horses were a comfort,
0:12:19 > 0:12:22a way of escaping the world.
0:12:25 > 0:12:30LUCIAN FREUD: 'I was always alone and I always wanted to be.
0:12:30 > 0:12:34'My mother said my first word was "alleine", which means "alone",
0:12:34 > 0:12:37'leave me alone. I always liked being on my own.'
0:12:41 > 0:12:44The reassurance he found with animals is missing with humans.
0:12:50 > 0:12:54Lucian's early attempts to cope with his conventional wealthy parents
0:12:54 > 0:12:56in Berlin would not last long.
0:12:58 > 0:13:00Lucian was a German Jew.
0:13:00 > 0:13:02DISTANT CHANTING
0:13:17 > 0:13:22After "the very small man" came to power early in 1933,
0:13:22 > 0:13:25Jewish businessmen became a target.
0:13:27 > 0:13:30Lucian's uncle, Rudolf Mosse,
0:13:30 > 0:13:33was one of the very first to be singled out.
0:13:38 > 0:13:39Lucian knew him.
0:13:39 > 0:13:42They would've gone to his house near Berlin.
0:13:43 > 0:13:47Rudy was arrested at five in the morning
0:13:47 > 0:13:49in his home.
0:13:50 > 0:13:56He was marched off minus braces, minus belt, minus shoelaces.
0:13:56 > 0:13:59The indication was very clear -
0:13:59 > 0:14:02you're not going to enjoy where you're going.
0:14:02 > 0:14:06What then happened, nobody really knows...
0:14:07 > 0:14:09..other than he died.
0:14:12 > 0:14:16Ernst and Lucie Freud reacted to the murder immediately.
0:14:19 > 0:14:23On 12th August 1933, immigration papers show Ernst addressed in London
0:14:23 > 0:14:26where he planned the family escape.
0:14:28 > 0:14:30They were leaving security...
0:14:31 > 0:14:33..and a very easy life
0:14:33 > 0:14:36for a totally unknown factor.
0:14:38 > 0:14:41That autumn in England, Lucie arrived and sent Lucian to board
0:14:41 > 0:14:45at Dartington Hall, a progressive school in Devon.
0:14:48 > 0:14:50Lucian could not speak English.
0:14:51 > 0:14:55But Dartington Hall had stables - that is where he said he decided to sleep...
0:14:56 > 0:14:58..on his own.
0:15:01 > 0:15:03He was a natural horseman.
0:15:03 > 0:15:05When he was at school,
0:15:05 > 0:15:09they realised he wasn't a very normal pupil
0:15:09 > 0:15:13and he was put in charge of the animals, which he loved
0:15:13 > 0:15:17because he had a extraordinary affinity with dogs, or even birds.
0:15:19 > 0:15:22You were allowed to do what you wanted at Dartington, and what he chose to do
0:15:22 > 0:15:24was spend time with the horses.
0:15:24 > 0:15:28He once said that the man who looked after the horses, the groom,
0:15:28 > 0:15:31was the first person that he really loved.
0:15:34 > 0:15:38'Since you didn't have to go into school, I took it literally
0:15:38 > 0:15:42'and I got up at five or six and helped the farmer milk the goats
0:15:42 > 0:15:46'and do various other things so I could have the horses I liked.
0:15:47 > 0:15:52'So I used to ride nearly all day and I got further and further behind.'
0:16:01 > 0:16:05His handwriting looks like an idiotic child
0:16:05 > 0:16:08has sort of written it - it's so awkward.
0:16:08 > 0:16:10I remember receiving this letter
0:16:10 > 0:16:13inviting me to meet up and have lunch with him
0:16:13 > 0:16:16and it said Lucian Freud at the bottom and it just looked
0:16:16 > 0:16:20so completely unlikely to be the hand of an adult person.
0:16:20 > 0:16:22It just looks so childish.
0:16:32 > 0:16:36In the forlorn hope that he might get a proper education,
0:16:36 > 0:16:40Lucian's parents moved him to Bryanston School.
0:16:40 > 0:16:44He carried on before - wilful and independent.
0:16:44 > 0:16:46'I thought if I didn't go into the initial lessons
0:16:46 > 0:16:51'I would never be missed because I hadn't been initially seen,
0:16:51 > 0:16:55'so I took that too far and spent all my time at the sculpture school
0:16:55 > 0:16:59'and carved a horse out of sandstone. I was very pleased with it.'
0:17:01 > 0:17:04Lucian's way of being attuned to animals,
0:17:04 > 0:17:07horses and dogs particularly, was basic,
0:17:07 > 0:17:12central, fundamental, and every time he painted a horse or a dog,
0:17:12 > 0:17:16this was as much a portrait as it was of the most intimate human being
0:17:16 > 0:17:18with whom he was connected.
0:17:20 > 0:17:23Lucian still had problems fitting in at school.
0:17:23 > 0:17:27One day, he diverted the local hunt through Bryanston's main hall.
0:17:28 > 0:17:32When, on a dare, he dropped his trousers in the local town,
0:17:32 > 0:17:33he was expelled.
0:17:33 > 0:17:36What would his parents do with him next?
0:17:53 > 0:17:54At the age of 15,
0:17:54 > 0:17:58Lucian's determination to do exactly what he wanted paid off.
0:17:58 > 0:18:02He was accepted at art school on the strength of this sculpture.
0:18:04 > 0:18:07At the same time, in the summer of 1938,
0:18:07 > 0:18:12Lucian was filmed in London with his grandfather, Sigmund Freud.
0:18:12 > 0:18:16The founder of modern psychoanalysis had just escaped Vienna.
0:18:22 > 0:18:25Lucian's four great aunts
0:18:25 > 0:18:28all died in concentration camps.
0:18:32 > 0:18:36He was very proud of his grandfather.
0:18:37 > 0:18:41But not of his grandfather as a psychiatrist - he had absolutely no time
0:18:41 > 0:18:44for Freud's theories of psychology.
0:18:44 > 0:18:51He admired his grandfather above all for being a biologist,
0:18:51 > 0:18:55and when Freud did indeed start as a biologist,
0:18:55 > 0:18:58and I believe made a lot of major discoveries,
0:18:58 > 0:19:00Lucian always maintained
0:19:00 > 0:19:05that he was the one who discovered how to tell the sex of eels -
0:19:05 > 0:19:08nobody before Freud had realised which was a male
0:19:08 > 0:19:13and which was a female eel. And Lucian's love of animals
0:19:13 > 0:19:18I think came very much from his grandfather being a biologist
0:19:18 > 0:19:21before he became a psychiatrist.
0:19:21 > 0:19:26As a biologist, Sigmund used a microscope to make this ink drawing
0:19:26 > 0:19:28showing the nerves of fishes.
0:19:30 > 0:19:34Lucian looked very precisely at what interested him.
0:19:40 > 0:19:43Sigmund analysed his patients for years
0:19:43 > 0:19:45in the privacy of his consulting rooms.
0:19:50 > 0:19:52Lucian scrutinised his human subjects for years
0:19:52 > 0:19:54in the secrecy of his studio.
0:20:05 > 0:20:08Sigmund filled his space with ancient art,
0:20:08 > 0:20:11betrayals of the psyche and sexuality.
0:20:26 > 0:20:29He also had two mummy portraits,
0:20:29 > 0:20:33some of the earliest examples of a human likeness that echoed Lucian's need
0:20:33 > 0:20:37to capture individuality and mortality.
0:20:41 > 0:20:46As a German, a Jew and as Sigmund's grandson,
0:20:46 > 0:20:50the young art student had a complex but rich inheritance.
0:20:54 > 0:20:59I first met Lucian very casually. He liked to make his presence felt.
0:20:59 > 0:21:01He was 17, I was 16.
0:21:01 > 0:21:04He was very distinctive-looking,
0:21:04 > 0:21:07an intense look, these very sharp features
0:21:07 > 0:21:12and you just felt that he was sort of turned right on whenever you spoke to him.
0:21:12 > 0:21:17He was not like the rest of us - relaxed and sloppy and silly -
0:21:17 > 0:21:23Lucian was kind of all wired up and ready to go.
0:21:23 > 0:21:27One felt his power, intellectual power,
0:21:27 > 0:21:31and his sort of physical presence.
0:21:31 > 0:21:34I can't exaggerate it too much,
0:21:34 > 0:21:37this feeling that he was already somebody.
0:21:39 > 0:21:43Lucian hated it when critics claimed to see influences in his work.
0:21:43 > 0:21:47But prints by Durer hung on the wall
0:21:47 > 0:21:50near the Titian in the family home in Berlin.
0:21:52 > 0:21:56Actually, Lucian had an extraordinary admiration
0:21:56 > 0:21:59for the minuteness, the amazing invention of Durer,
0:21:59 > 0:22:04but primarily for this amazing, intense gaze.
0:22:04 > 0:22:06Perhaps it's characteristically North European,
0:22:06 > 0:22:09you sit and look at something in minute detail,
0:22:09 > 0:22:13whether it's a hare, or your mother, or a lump of grass,
0:22:13 > 0:22:18and you find each thing, not just differently fascinating, but equally fascinating.
0:22:19 > 0:22:23If you locked him away...
0:22:23 > 0:22:28in even a dingy motel room in America,
0:22:28 > 0:22:33at the end of a week, he'd still come out with interesting paintings.
0:22:33 > 0:22:38He'd find the tears on the carpet or the worn something or other
0:22:38 > 0:22:43and he'd paint it, because he'd enjoyed looking at it somehow,
0:22:43 > 0:22:45the difference between this and this.
0:22:47 > 0:22:51Every element in Freud's work is intensely examined.
0:23:16 > 0:23:21His eyes had this rather odd way of focusing on you
0:23:21 > 0:23:25where they would stare suddenly -
0:23:25 > 0:23:28you'd be in the middle of a conversation and suddenly
0:23:28 > 0:23:32like that. Quite disconcerting.
0:23:33 > 0:23:37I always sensed a sort of absence there,
0:23:37 > 0:23:39that his eyes were looking at you,
0:23:39 > 0:23:44but actually behind those eyes, he'd gone into some different mode.
0:23:47 > 0:23:52He must have been late teens or early 20s,
0:23:52 > 0:23:57and he was drawing this wonderful picture.
0:23:57 > 0:24:02You have this incredibly intricate basketwork,
0:24:02 > 0:24:06which is just beautiful.
0:24:06 > 0:24:10I watched him do that and I was really astonished.
0:24:13 > 0:24:17Lucian dropped out of his conventional art school in London.
0:24:17 > 0:24:19He never liked being told what to do.
0:24:22 > 0:24:26The art school he eventually went to was the only one that could have suited him
0:24:26 > 0:24:28because it was very lazy, very louche,
0:24:28 > 0:24:31almost a country house party in a boarding school manor.
0:24:31 > 0:24:36It was in Suffolk and it was run by Cedric Morris and Lett-Haines
0:24:36 > 0:24:40and they clearly saw in Lucian
0:24:40 > 0:24:42the absolute star pupil
0:24:42 > 0:24:45who seemed to be producing remarkable things from the world go.
0:24:45 > 0:24:49They painted each other and it's very interesting how Cedric Morris
0:24:49 > 0:24:53painted Lucian as a kind of squirmy, uneasy adolescent.
0:24:57 > 0:25:02Lucian painted Cedric Morris as a mischievous, devilish,
0:25:02 > 0:25:08very camp, with a funny little clay pipe, who was very much a grown-up,
0:25:08 > 0:25:12but he reduced him to almost a kind of glove puppet status.
0:25:16 > 0:25:19Under Cedric's protection, Lucian felt comfortable enough
0:25:19 > 0:25:23to start to express his attitude towards people.
0:25:26 > 0:25:28Six years after leaving Berlin,
0:25:28 > 0:25:31his images derived from memory and imagination,
0:25:31 > 0:25:33more than direct observation.
0:25:36 > 0:25:40The tender response to the horse is missing.
0:25:44 > 0:25:48Faces are sly or mask-like,
0:25:48 > 0:25:50lived in or damaged.
0:25:53 > 0:25:56Specimens of his times.
0:25:56 > 0:26:01Cedric Morris gave his student the freedom he needed.
0:26:01 > 0:26:05His approach to painting was a revelation.
0:26:05 > 0:26:09- CEDRIC MORRIS:- 'I got a feeling of the excitement of painting, watching him work,
0:26:09 > 0:26:12'because he worked in a very odd way, from the top to the bottom,
0:26:12 > 0:26:17'as if he was unrolling something which was actually there.
0:26:17 > 0:26:21'Even when he was painting a portrait, he'd paint a background
0:26:21 > 0:26:26'and go further down and do the whole thing in one go
0:26:26 > 0:26:30'and never really touched the thing afterwards as far as I know.'
0:26:32 > 0:26:35This very direct approach to capturing his subject
0:26:35 > 0:26:39influenced Freud for the rest of his life.
0:26:39 > 0:26:44He begins with a charcoal drawing,
0:26:44 > 0:26:47not that much...
0:26:47 > 0:26:53but enough to fix some essential things, the edge,
0:26:53 > 0:26:58and then he seems to begin with the nose.
0:27:02 > 0:27:08I think he spent a long time here building this
0:27:08 > 0:27:11and then moved round.
0:27:11 > 0:27:15The eyes are not put in for quite a while
0:27:15 > 0:27:19and it would build up very slowly.
0:27:19 > 0:27:22He mixed every tone
0:27:22 > 0:27:25and it did occur to me at first, I thought,
0:27:25 > 0:27:27"Well, you could've been a bit quicker
0:27:27 > 0:27:30"if you'd pre-mixed quite a few of them,
0:27:30 > 0:27:33"because they're quite similar,
0:27:33 > 0:27:36"and then it wouldn't take you as long to mix it."
0:27:36 > 0:27:41But that was when I realised I'm just thinking of myself there
0:27:41 > 0:27:44because his method, he wants you there as long as possible
0:27:44 > 0:27:50so why not mix every colour slowly, meaning he has more time that way?
0:27:53 > 0:27:56Lucian settled at Cedric Morris' school,
0:27:56 > 0:27:59but then in July 1939, it burned down.
0:28:01 > 0:28:04Lucian claimed he'd been experimenting with smoking.
0:28:20 > 0:28:23Two months later, war broke out.
0:28:23 > 0:28:26Lucian could not stay at art school
0:28:26 > 0:28:31and he couldn't face going home to be with his mother, so he went to sea.
0:28:37 > 0:28:43He somehow found himself in the Merchant Navy on an Atlantic convoy
0:28:43 > 0:28:48and ended up, I think it was Halifax, Canada, or Nova Scotia,
0:28:48 > 0:28:53but he said that the worst thing on the trip out
0:28:53 > 0:28:59was that he was thin, young, presumably rather nice-looking
0:28:59 > 0:29:05and that some of the older sailors on the boat took a fancy to him
0:29:05 > 0:29:09and that's when he said he learned how to defend himself.
0:29:14 > 0:29:16The whole convoy must have come under attack.
0:29:16 > 0:29:20One of the other ships was hit, and Lucian,
0:29:20 > 0:29:24rather characteristically said his first reaction to this air attack
0:29:24 > 0:29:29was, "Hooray, fireworks!" with these explosions and bright lights.
0:29:29 > 0:29:32And then bits of body
0:29:32 > 0:29:37and wreckage from this ship starting raining down on the ship which
0:29:37 > 0:29:40he was on and he realised what a terrible thing had happened.
0:29:42 > 0:29:46This prickly 19-year-old was shocked to the core.
0:29:46 > 0:29:50Whilst at sea, he developed tonsillitis and was discharged.
0:29:50 > 0:29:53He later painted himself ill in bed.
0:29:55 > 0:29:59From now on, he would calculate his own risks,
0:29:59 > 0:30:02retreat even further into his own private world,
0:30:02 > 0:30:04and control who gained entry.
0:30:06 > 0:30:10And he wanted to take control of the world through his pictures too.
0:30:11 > 0:30:16Freud began taking accurate draughtsmanship to the extreme limit.
0:30:22 > 0:30:26He started to look at his subjects with an ever greater intensity.
0:30:39 > 0:30:42He was finding a way to preserve what was precious to him.
0:30:45 > 0:30:47Aspects of his private life.
0:30:50 > 0:30:55His lover's flesh, his lover's hair.
0:30:55 > 0:30:56His dog.
0:30:57 > 0:30:59His mother.
0:30:59 > 0:31:01Himself.
0:31:02 > 0:31:04Breasts, for breastfeeding his baby.
0:31:21 > 0:31:28In 1942, aged only 20, he moved into violent, low-rent Paddington,
0:31:28 > 0:31:30and settled into a lifelong pattern
0:31:30 > 0:31:34of living and painting in seedy flats,
0:31:34 > 0:31:36exploring his immediate surroundings.
0:31:50 > 0:31:53Freud didn't like leaving his studio,
0:31:53 > 0:31:55but he would travel further for his art.
0:31:57 > 0:32:00After the war, he rushed to Paris.
0:32:00 > 0:32:03He wanted to meet the big talents of Europe.
0:32:06 > 0:32:11Pablo Picasso showed him recent work at his studio.
0:32:11 > 0:32:15Picasso was a virtuoso, and a showman,
0:32:15 > 0:32:18projecting his identity onto the canvas.
0:32:23 > 0:32:27Freud didn't see himself as the next Picasso.
0:32:27 > 0:32:30He sought out another great artist working in Paris,
0:32:30 > 0:32:34someone depicting the world as he saw it on canvas and clay,
0:32:34 > 0:32:37Alberto Giacometti.
0:32:44 > 0:32:47They had long discussions.
0:32:47 > 0:32:51Giacometti made two drawings of Freud, now lost.
0:32:56 > 0:32:59Lucian was captivated by the cluttered studio
0:32:59 > 0:33:01and Alberto's procedure.
0:33:03 > 0:33:07A constant scrutiny, destroying and remaking works
0:33:07 > 0:33:10with no plan or guarantee of success, no formula.
0:33:11 > 0:33:13Trusting that with hard work,
0:33:13 > 0:33:15he might, one day, convey something of what he saw.
0:33:17 > 0:33:21Lucian followed this high-risk approach for the rest of his life.
0:33:33 > 0:33:37Freud kept faith with capturing the world in paint
0:33:37 > 0:33:42at a time when photography was in fashion as an art form.
0:33:42 > 0:33:44He knew that hundreds of hours of scrutiny
0:33:44 > 0:33:47pay off differently in a painting,
0:33:47 > 0:33:50layering into the work multiple visual insights,
0:33:50 > 0:33:52making his image almost inexhaustible.
0:34:02 > 0:34:06Proper painting has got to come from what we see around us,
0:34:06 > 0:34:10what we know, what we are sure of, what we're interested in.
0:34:10 > 0:34:14Now, the most imaginative thing you possibly can do
0:34:14 > 0:34:18is look at something ordinary and turn it into something memorable,
0:34:18 > 0:34:20which is what Lucian did throughout.
0:34:20 > 0:34:22He made people memorable,
0:34:22 > 0:34:25more memorable than they were in life, perhaps.
0:34:25 > 0:34:28He had this idea that a painting is something set apart.
0:34:28 > 0:34:31Once you've done it, it's on its own.
0:34:31 > 0:34:34And it either is boring or it's interesting.
0:34:34 > 0:34:39And if it's interesting, it's simply because the artist has put all his energies,
0:34:39 > 0:34:42all his attention, all his devotion into it,
0:34:42 > 0:34:46and then it's like a grown-up child, off it goes into its own life.
0:34:46 > 0:34:49And that's the most imaginative, positive,
0:34:49 > 0:34:52timeless and indeed modern thing you can do in art.
0:34:52 > 0:34:55Look at the world around you and make something of it.
0:34:56 > 0:35:00But what inspired Lucian's devotion throughout his life?
0:35:00 > 0:35:05In most cases, it's the person he loved at the time.
0:35:06 > 0:35:09In 1948, that person was Kitty Garman,
0:35:09 > 0:35:12the daughter of the sculptor Jacob Epstein.
0:35:14 > 0:35:16He married her,
0:35:16 > 0:35:20and she became the subject of his first major series of portraits.
0:35:35 > 0:35:38The series ended with his growing recognition,
0:35:38 > 0:35:42and in 1952, the first of his works to be bought by the Tate Gallery.
0:35:50 > 0:35:54Lucian's idea of a relationship was to be in love,
0:35:54 > 0:35:56but to remain in charge.
0:35:56 > 0:35:59Kitty had to do what she was told.
0:35:59 > 0:36:02She had a difficult life with him.
0:36:02 > 0:36:05She used to describe to me this kitchen scene,
0:36:05 > 0:36:08that she'd cook up something that she thought he liked,
0:36:08 > 0:36:12and then he sat at the table, waiting,
0:36:12 > 0:36:16and then she'd put it down in front of him,
0:36:16 > 0:36:21and then she had to go and sit with her face to the wall in the corner,
0:36:21 > 0:36:23while he ate it up.
0:36:24 > 0:36:27Lucian felt free to do anything he liked.
0:36:28 > 0:36:32When he was married, he was looking for something with me.
0:36:32 > 0:36:35Probably that's why they didn't last long, you know.
0:36:35 > 0:36:38Once you've had a good feed of something, you get tired of it.
0:36:38 > 0:36:46And the way he used to be able to get away from Kitty was to say,
0:36:46 > 0:36:49"I'm working on a night picture with Charlie."
0:36:49 > 0:36:54You know? Away we go, do an hour, you know, painting.
0:36:54 > 0:36:57And then that gave us leeway to go down the West.
0:36:57 > 0:36:59And he'd go back the next morning,
0:36:59 > 0:37:02"Yes, marvellous night, lot of work done!"
0:37:02 > 0:37:04And that was it, you know.
0:37:04 > 0:37:09The painting reflected how the relationship changed,
0:37:09 > 0:37:11and tensions grew.
0:37:12 > 0:37:15If you look at these, to me,
0:37:15 > 0:37:18the earlier paintings show my mother as a girl.
0:37:21 > 0:37:26And then you turn to this. This is a painting of a woman.
0:37:26 > 0:37:29There's a much greater sense of self,
0:37:29 > 0:37:32projecting at you,
0:37:32 > 0:37:36as a viewer. Um...
0:37:36 > 0:37:39There's a sense of sadness,
0:37:39 > 0:37:43even some anger, I think.
0:37:43 > 0:37:47It's to do with real life. It's the maturation of her face.
0:37:47 > 0:37:53There is a much more complicated person being portrayed here.
0:37:53 > 0:37:57There are thoughts and emotions and a life going on.
0:37:57 > 0:38:04And the...nature of her, her gestural self,
0:38:04 > 0:38:06is richer and more complex,
0:38:06 > 0:38:11with her hand on her breast, and the other resting on the mattress.
0:38:11 > 0:38:15And also, a huge part of the painting is taken up with
0:38:15 > 0:38:18this yellow towelling dressing gown.
0:38:18 > 0:38:23And it somehow adds a difficult emotional aspect to the painting.
0:38:23 > 0:38:25Its sort of complex folds,
0:38:25 > 0:38:28and the way it goes so deeply in at the waist.
0:38:36 > 0:38:38Less than a year after this painting,
0:38:38 > 0:38:40Kitty and Lucian separated.
0:38:44 > 0:38:47It was a terrible, terrible thing to experience.
0:38:47 > 0:38:51I'm sure, like most children do when their parents separate,
0:38:51 > 0:38:54that they think that they are some way to blame,
0:38:54 > 0:38:59and that I felt somehow at fault.
0:39:03 > 0:39:06When I was quite small, when we used to go to the park,
0:39:06 > 0:39:09we used to spend a lot of time doing handstands.
0:39:09 > 0:39:13I know that he was brilliant at headstands and handstands.
0:39:13 > 0:39:17And spent a large amount of his childhood standing on his head.
0:39:17 > 0:39:21And he was always throwing me around, not in a way that hurt.
0:39:21 > 0:39:24I used to wonder, as I was sailing through the air,
0:39:24 > 0:39:26whether he wanted me to be an acrobat.
0:39:31 > 0:39:33Lucian had fallen for high society beauty
0:39:33 > 0:39:37and intellectual Lady Caroline Blackwood.
0:39:38 > 0:39:42His infatuation fuelled the next series of paintings.
0:39:46 > 0:39:50Caroline's money bought him an upper-class lifestyle.
0:39:52 > 0:39:55Coombe Priory in Dorset.
0:39:55 > 0:39:59Horses and dogs, weekend parties.
0:39:59 > 0:40:01And frequent visits to Paris.
0:40:05 > 0:40:09In 1954, he went with her to see Picasso again.
0:40:36 > 0:40:40Unlike Kitty, Caroline couldn't be controlled.
0:40:40 > 0:40:43She was her own person, getting what she wanted.
0:40:49 > 0:40:54The romantic, erotic dream that turned into a nightmare.
0:40:54 > 0:40:58Lucian's painting reflected the tensions in the relationship.
0:41:02 > 0:41:04Caroline is in the light.
0:41:07 > 0:41:09Lucian in the shadow.
0:41:13 > 0:41:17A question seems to hang in the air. What is this situation?
0:41:17 > 0:41:23Paris was meant to be fun, but the love nest has become a battleground.
0:41:27 > 0:41:32When Caroline left him, Lucian was devastated.
0:41:32 > 0:41:34He returned to his old life in London,
0:41:34 > 0:41:38where friends, including the leading painter of his time,
0:41:38 > 0:41:41Francis Bacon, noticed a change.
0:41:41 > 0:41:44When the divorce came through,
0:41:44 > 0:41:48people were worried that he was going to commit suicide, with Caroline.
0:41:48 > 0:41:50Or Francis Bacon was, anyway.
0:41:50 > 0:41:52Because we were in the street, and he said,
0:41:52 > 0:41:55"I'm just going upstairs," in Dean Street.
0:41:55 > 0:41:57"See you in a minute."
0:41:57 > 0:42:00Bacon said to me, "For Christ's sake, go and keep an eye on him
0:42:00 > 0:42:02"cos I think he's going to jump off the roof."
0:42:05 > 0:42:08When Caroline left him, that was an extraordinary shock.
0:42:08 > 0:42:11It was unprecedented for him, he'd not been left,
0:42:11 > 0:42:13it was as though his mother had left him.
0:42:13 > 0:42:15It was abandonment, and he abandoned himself.
0:42:15 > 0:42:19He got into fights, he drank. He went wilder.
0:42:19 > 0:42:23And the painting was in a transitional stage.
0:42:23 > 0:42:26Painting always is in a transitional stage if it's any good,
0:42:26 > 0:42:29but it was unusually transitional.
0:42:31 > 0:42:35And so, one way and another, his life had to be re-orientated.
0:42:35 > 0:42:39And he found it difficult, difficult for two or three years.
0:42:41 > 0:42:44In a way, the misery which he cast off
0:42:44 > 0:42:47actually concentrated his mind, I think.
0:42:47 > 0:42:50The experience concentrated Lucian's mind
0:42:50 > 0:42:53on a major problem in his painting.
0:43:08 > 0:43:12What did Lucian need to liberate his painting?
0:43:18 > 0:43:21In 1945, Lucian had befriended Francis Bacon,
0:43:21 > 0:43:26who was on the cusp of international fame.
0:43:26 > 0:43:28By the mid-'50s, he was a superstar.
0:43:29 > 0:43:34Bacon had made it to this position entirely on his own terms.
0:43:34 > 0:43:38At that time, Lucian saw him as unique, the real thing.
0:43:44 > 0:43:49Lucian was stunned by the truth of Bacon's raw, fleshy brushwork,
0:43:49 > 0:43:52and his relentless effort to express the intensity of his feelings.
0:43:52 > 0:43:57I think one of the things that really excited Freud is that
0:43:57 > 0:43:59Bacon really used to talk about how much
0:43:59 > 0:44:02he used to pack into every brushstroke.
0:44:02 > 0:44:05This is something that really, really excited Freud,
0:44:05 > 0:44:07the fact that he could free up paint.
0:44:07 > 0:44:10As we can see here, around the face,
0:44:10 > 0:44:12not only in the way that the face is worked,
0:44:12 > 0:44:15but the fact that when he's finished the face,
0:44:15 > 0:44:17he's throwing the brush and creating this in a way,
0:44:17 > 0:44:21as Lucian used to always talk about, what Bacon calls "the accident".
0:44:25 > 0:44:29Bacon's dexterity produced what looked like spontaneous emotion.
0:44:32 > 0:44:36This immediacy demanded a response from Freud,
0:44:36 > 0:44:38but not to imitate Bacon's look.
0:44:39 > 0:44:42Freud moved away from the style that had made him successful,
0:44:42 > 0:44:44the hard-edged,
0:44:44 > 0:44:49smooth surface achieved with a soft sable brush, which conveyed
0:44:49 > 0:44:52a sense of emotional remoteness, to a patchwork of marks
0:44:52 > 0:44:55made with a bigger, stiffer hogshair brush.
0:44:57 > 0:44:58Now, each stroke of paint
0:44:58 > 0:45:00would better satisfy
0:45:00 > 0:45:03Freud's intense personal engagement with the subject.
0:45:04 > 0:45:07To capture close up their living presence.
0:45:14 > 0:45:17Most portrait papers are content to achieve a likeness,
0:45:17 > 0:45:20a good likeness of a person.
0:45:20 > 0:45:23Constantly in Lucian, you see him going way beyond that.
0:45:24 > 0:45:27He achieves something like a likeness,
0:45:27 > 0:45:31and then he just keeps putting more on, and creating more effects.
0:45:31 > 0:45:35And each one of those marks is not predetermined,
0:45:35 > 0:45:40but it's another sign of his response to the person in front of him.
0:45:40 > 0:45:45I think through registering all those extra responses over such a long period,
0:45:45 > 0:45:47it does go beyond likeness
0:45:47 > 0:45:51and into this sense you have of his own engagement with that person.
0:46:05 > 0:46:07It was so crucial for paint to become flesh
0:46:07 > 0:46:12that when he discovered a heavy lead-based paint, Cremnitz white,
0:46:12 > 0:46:18it so suited the way he saw things that he couldn't create without it.
0:46:18 > 0:46:23Cremnitz white helped give Freud his look of pasty, lived-in bodies,
0:46:23 > 0:46:26lying in stained and damaged rooms.
0:46:30 > 0:46:32Cremnitz white's a lovely paint,
0:46:32 > 0:46:35and it's got a lovely skinny quality about it.
0:46:35 > 0:46:39And Lucian, once he'd discovered it, was totally taken over.
0:46:39 > 0:46:42And I do remember at some stage,
0:46:42 > 0:46:45the EU was going to issue a ban on paint
0:46:45 > 0:46:48with so much lead in it or something.
0:46:48 > 0:46:50And Lucian absolutely freaked out.
0:46:50 > 0:46:54He got in a total state of panic, and he lobbied Arnold Goodman,
0:46:54 > 0:46:58who was in the House of Lords at the time, to ask questions.
0:46:58 > 0:46:59And he bought up as far as he could
0:46:59 > 0:47:02the country's whole supply of Cremnitz white.
0:47:02 > 0:47:07Freud lived to paint. It calmed him down.
0:47:07 > 0:47:10But he worked with such intensity, seven days a week,
0:47:10 > 0:47:14that he needed to find ways of letting off steam.
0:47:14 > 0:47:16Help was close at hand.
0:47:16 > 0:47:19He greatly admired Bacon, the way... his rather lordly way of life.
0:47:19 > 0:47:21Striding along in the gutter,
0:47:21 > 0:47:24rather despising other people, in the case of Bacon,
0:47:24 > 0:47:27knowing he could buy people with champagne,
0:47:27 > 0:47:31knowing that if he dispensed cash, people would come grovelling for it.
0:47:31 > 0:47:32Knowing that his witty asides
0:47:32 > 0:47:35were probably better witty asides that most people's.
0:47:35 > 0:47:38Lucian loved this, and he admired him.
0:47:38 > 0:47:42It was a kind of relationship of how to live an artist's life.
0:47:46 > 0:47:49Well, we'd go to a club, and he'd pull, trying to pull,
0:47:49 > 0:47:51you know, which he invariably did.
0:47:54 > 0:47:56We'd go to The Mandrake, and The Colony.
0:48:00 > 0:48:05Bacon would be up there, and all the rest, Deakin. Everyone else.
0:48:05 > 0:48:09It was a good club, you know. Full of homosexuals.
0:48:09 > 0:48:15All trying to outdo each other, with gestures and things. Um...
0:48:17 > 0:48:21..Lu and Bacon having a discussion of art, over the din.
0:48:23 > 0:48:27And this crippled pianist used to sit there,
0:48:27 > 0:48:31and he used to play there all night. Really good, he was.
0:48:34 > 0:48:38He had a sort of very wide circle of acquaintances.
0:48:38 > 0:48:42Lu Freud of Paddington, they all talked about him, all those people.
0:48:42 > 0:48:44But he never discussed it much, that.
0:48:46 > 0:48:49Lucian was
0:48:49 > 0:48:51tremendously fond of,
0:48:51 > 0:48:54er, sort of cockney life.
0:48:54 > 0:48:58And he hung out in East End pubs.
0:48:58 > 0:49:02He had a number of friends who were on the fringes of the law.
0:49:02 > 0:49:05At one moment, he even knew the Kray brothers.
0:49:05 > 0:49:08I would have run a mile, but Lucian was amused.
0:49:08 > 0:49:11And then there was another character in his life,
0:49:11 > 0:49:14who he did a portrait of.
0:49:14 > 0:49:16He really was a rather bad character
0:49:16 > 0:49:19in that he betrayed his fellow criminals,
0:49:19 > 0:49:22and I remember Lucian telling me
0:49:22 > 0:49:25that he was tied to a chair...
0:49:26 > 0:49:31..and then they cut his mouth open, because somebody who grasses,
0:49:31 > 0:49:33that's the classic thing they do.
0:49:33 > 0:49:37The chair was hung out of the window upside down,
0:49:37 > 0:49:42on the road that came in from the east end of London, and up which,
0:49:42 > 0:49:45on this particular early morning,
0:49:45 > 0:49:49the Aldermaston march was coming.
0:49:49 > 0:49:52And this man came to with his mouth cut open
0:49:52 > 0:49:55and the Aldermaston peace march walking underneath him.
0:49:57 > 0:50:02He rang me, sort of, I think it was about four in the morning
0:50:02 > 0:50:05and said, "Dave, can I come round, I've got something to ask you."
0:50:05 > 0:50:09I said, "Yes, you better hurry up
0:50:09 > 0:50:12"because I'm just about to go to the airport to catch a plane somewhere."
0:50:12 > 0:50:17He came round, I said, "What do you want?"
0:50:17 > 0:50:19He said, "£1,500,"
0:50:19 > 0:50:24because, you know, we were all... It was quite a sum to raise.
0:50:24 > 0:50:28So I said, "Why do I have to give you £1,500?"
0:50:28 > 0:50:32He said, "Because if I haven't produced it by 12 o'clock,
0:50:32 > 0:50:35"they're going to cut my tongue out."
0:50:37 > 0:50:40Freud liked living on the edge. Which was fortunate.
0:50:41 > 0:50:45His painting was completely out of step with his time.
0:51:00 > 0:51:03We had the kitchen sink school in the late '50s, we had pop art.
0:51:03 > 0:51:07Then we had op art, then we had kinetic art.
0:51:07 > 0:51:11And all the sort of younger critics
0:51:11 > 0:51:14and people who were interested in trendy, modern art
0:51:14 > 0:51:16thought Lucian was a dinosaur.
0:51:16 > 0:51:18They just weren't interested.
0:51:18 > 0:51:21They couldn't see there was any point in that sort of painting.
0:51:22 > 0:51:29The pictures he did in the early '60s were over life-size,
0:51:29 > 0:51:33and pretty...superficially, pretty ugly.
0:51:33 > 0:51:35They didn't sell.
0:51:36 > 0:51:40And they hung around for a long time without proud owners.
0:51:41 > 0:51:45People felt he had just not lived up to his initial promise.
0:51:46 > 0:51:48Lucian didn't care.
0:51:48 > 0:51:51He wouldn't change, he COULDN'T change.
0:51:53 > 0:51:56His impulse was to commit ever more to his painting,
0:51:56 > 0:51:59exploring feelings even more deeply.
0:52:00 > 0:52:05I think he was very, very focused on what he was doing.
0:52:05 > 0:52:10And was quite tough, and ignored whatever the fashion was.
0:52:10 > 0:52:14But all good artists do that, I think, really.
0:52:28 > 0:52:31His drive remained to portray people he was closest to.
0:52:31 > 0:52:36With Kitty and Caroline, a portrait meant the head and face.
0:52:36 > 0:52:42By the mid-1960s, he started to paint the whole body.
0:52:42 > 0:52:45To capture the complete intimate relationship.
0:52:45 > 0:52:48A naked person just as he saw them.
0:52:48 > 0:52:53Not the idealised porcelain nudes of tradition, but a naked portrait.
0:52:53 > 0:52:55It was a new category of painting.
0:53:00 > 0:53:03I think he wanted more than just the head,
0:53:03 > 0:53:06he wanted to see the whole animal, he would say.
0:53:06 > 0:53:11And he loved watching, he liked watching people move and talk,
0:53:11 > 0:53:15and emotions... He was fascinated by animal behaviour.
0:53:18 > 0:53:20To paint the human animal
0:53:20 > 0:53:24inevitably required a great deal of trust and cooperation.
0:53:26 > 0:53:27Sometimes I resented it terribly,
0:53:27 > 0:53:32sometimes I was so pleased to get away from the domestic life
0:53:32 > 0:53:33and be able to go there and relax
0:53:33 > 0:53:36and work at something that made total sense to me.
0:53:36 > 0:53:39And then sometimes it was so painful, obviously,
0:53:39 > 0:53:41because things were going on in our life,
0:53:41 > 0:53:45that I'd want to jack it in and just leave the room.
0:53:45 > 0:53:47And it was all quite difficult,
0:53:47 > 0:53:50we gave up on several paintings because it just became so difficult.
0:53:50 > 0:53:53We were crashing around at that time,
0:53:53 > 0:53:56there was a lot of books flying around the room.
0:53:56 > 0:54:00It was during one of our many break-ups.
0:54:18 > 0:54:21By ratcheting up the explicit detail,
0:54:21 > 0:54:25specifically the genitals, Freud rebelled against the coy nude
0:54:25 > 0:54:29and showed us the presence of a real body.
0:54:29 > 0:54:33He gave a frank account of many of his sexual relationships.
0:54:42 > 0:54:46For Lucian, I think that painting was akin to fucking.
0:54:46 > 0:54:51I think his creativeness, I should have said, was very akin to fucking.
0:54:51 > 0:54:55The sex act and the intellectual act, whatever you call it,
0:54:55 > 0:54:59of painting, were in some ways interchangeable.
0:54:59 > 0:55:02I think that he very...
0:55:02 > 0:55:08He had no difficulty transforming sexual notions into paint,
0:55:08 > 0:55:10and paint into sexual notions.
0:55:10 > 0:55:14I think the two aspects of his senses came together in the act of painting.
0:55:18 > 0:55:20He didn't start painting me for two years
0:55:20 > 0:55:23after I'd started going out with him.
0:55:23 > 0:55:28I was a very, very self-conscious, shy young woman.
0:55:28 > 0:55:33And it did feel very exposing to lie there.
0:55:33 > 0:55:37And he stood very close to me
0:55:37 > 0:55:39and kind of scrutinised me
0:55:39 > 0:55:43in a way that made me feel very undesirable.
0:55:43 > 0:55:48It felt quite clinical. Almost as though I was on a surgical bed.
0:55:50 > 0:55:54The many months of collaboration often undermined the relationship.
0:55:54 > 0:55:59In this painting of Celia, roles are exchanged.
0:55:59 > 0:56:02The naked man is perhaps a surrogate Lucian.
0:56:04 > 0:56:11I'm the painter, and I'm standing in a position of power, really.
0:56:11 > 0:56:17And this is interesting to me, that it's the last painting he did of me.
0:56:17 > 0:56:20I'd...
0:56:20 > 0:56:24I'd become myself more ambitious as a painter,
0:56:24 > 0:56:31and I was preparing for my first solo exhibition in London.
0:56:31 > 0:56:38And I'd also, a few years before, had given birth to our son Frank.
0:56:38 > 0:56:44And I think Lucian's feelings about me
0:56:44 > 0:56:47in this painting are quite ambivalent.
0:56:49 > 0:56:54I'm holding this very definitely angled brush,
0:56:54 > 0:56:57and I'm standing on a tube of paint which is oozing.
0:56:59 > 0:57:04The brush and the oozing paint tube, I feel, are kind of sexual symbols,
0:57:04 > 0:57:09and I think suddenly me becoming both a mother
0:57:09 > 0:57:13and a seriously ambitious painter
0:57:13 > 0:57:17put me in a different position.
0:57:17 > 0:57:22And I was no longer the kind of voluptuous figure lying on the bed.
0:57:25 > 0:57:29I remember at one point, you know, we had some quarrel
0:57:29 > 0:57:30and I said, "I'm leaving."
0:57:30 > 0:57:35He pleaded with me not to, because he said, "We're just in the middle."
0:57:35 > 0:57:39And it made me sort of conscious that there was going to be
0:57:39 > 0:57:42a beginning, middle and end,
0:57:42 > 0:57:46and that it wasn't going to be a relationship for life.
0:57:48 > 0:57:51I remember hearing these parents of friends of mine
0:57:51 > 0:57:55talking about a friend of mine, a girl, saying,
0:57:55 > 0:57:58"Do you know he's having an affair with Lucian Freud?"
0:57:58 > 0:58:02They were saying, "Disgusting, filthy Jew." This is what they said.
0:58:02 > 0:58:05I remember them saying this. And I remember thinking,
0:58:05 > 0:58:09"I wonder if I could meet him?" I remember thinking that.
0:58:09 > 0:58:15He was demanding so much commitment and so much time,
0:58:15 > 0:58:19that you really couldn't not love someone to be in that situation.
0:58:19 > 0:58:24You had to love them a bit, because they're trying to...
0:58:25 > 0:58:32..create out of nothing this magic, magic creation, from nothing.
0:58:32 > 0:58:34From a blank canvas.
0:58:34 > 0:58:40And there's an enormous amount of crisis going into that.
0:58:40 > 0:58:42He would jump up and down and scream,
0:58:42 > 0:58:44it was really hard for him to bring it about.
0:58:47 > 0:58:51He was working in this immense intensity.
0:58:51 > 0:58:55This was year in, year out. This was Christmas Day, New Year's Eve.
0:58:55 > 0:58:59There was never a day off, it was like this every day.
0:58:59 > 0:59:03He had this extraordinary energy and he was working, standing up,
0:59:03 > 0:59:05for seven, eight hours, through the night.
0:59:05 > 0:59:08And then he would be up at 7am,
0:59:08 > 0:59:12painting someone else, which to me seemed incredible.
0:59:14 > 0:59:20To Freud, making a painting was always an attempt to make his best work yet.
0:59:20 > 0:59:22He would try never to repeat himself.
0:59:35 > 0:59:37The way that he dealt with me in the beginning,
0:59:37 > 0:59:41was really, it's like sort of saying, "You're an animal.
0:59:41 > 0:59:46"You've got to understand, that's how you're going to be treated."
0:59:46 > 0:59:48He wanted it to be a sexual relationship?
0:59:48 > 0:59:54Yes, I think he was really used to it. That's the deal, almost.
0:59:54 > 0:59:57Um... But I just didn't, I wouldn't, it's just not...
0:59:59 > 1:00:02You know, I just wasn't into it.
1:00:04 > 1:00:07Four paintings of Sabina were started,
1:00:07 > 1:00:11but all of them failed and were destroyed by Freud himself.
1:00:11 > 1:00:13It was, punch, you know,
1:00:13 > 1:00:19a kick through so it's almost like you're kicking through a person.
1:00:19 > 1:00:22I felt that he was very angry with me.
1:00:29 > 1:00:34Lucian needed intimacy to capture the presence of his sitters.
1:00:34 > 1:00:38When trust broke down the strain was unbearable.
1:00:38 > 1:00:43But the bliss of pure looking would help him through.
1:01:08 > 1:01:12He always used to say that when he was particularly unhappy he would turn to painting.
1:01:12 > 1:01:14The view out of the window or plants -
1:01:14 > 1:01:16things from which human beings didn't directly crop up.
1:01:23 > 1:01:27LUCIAN FREUD: 'The subject matter has always been dictated by
1:01:27 > 1:01:30'the way my life's gone and I noticed then,
1:01:30 > 1:01:33'that when I switched away from people
1:01:33 > 1:01:36'was when I was under particular strain.
1:01:36 > 1:01:42'I didn't feel so like staring at people or bodies all day.'
1:01:51 > 1:01:55The depth of scrutiny achieved in the paintings of people was
1:01:55 > 1:01:57equalled in other subjects.
1:02:02 > 1:02:06But sooner or later Lucian always regained his nerve,
1:02:06 > 1:02:10painting what excited him most - people.
1:02:11 > 1:02:16After three decades of absence, he took on his mother as a subject.
1:02:18 > 1:02:24When his father Ernst died in 1970, Lucie had attempted suicide.
1:02:25 > 1:02:32She took an overdose and she was rushed off to hospital
1:02:32 > 1:02:38and had her stomach pumped out but there was some damage
1:02:38 > 1:02:43and the result was that she was no longer
1:02:43 > 1:02:52the sparkling, brilliant, bright, funny person she had been.
1:02:52 > 1:02:58And she was a shadow of her former self.
1:02:58 > 1:03:02In this condition, Lucian could tolerate his mother.
1:03:02 > 1:03:06He picked her up most days and brought her to the studio.
1:03:06 > 1:03:09He looked after her, but he never flinched from showing
1:03:09 > 1:03:12the history of their fraught relationship.
1:03:12 > 1:03:16She had read his love letters, was too intrusive,
1:03:16 > 1:03:20so he puts her with his lover Jacquetta.
1:03:22 > 1:03:25Beneath her chair is a pestle and mortar
1:03:25 > 1:03:27used for grinding pigment.
1:03:27 > 1:03:30The sexual symbolism is there.
1:03:32 > 1:03:35The painting is heavy with emotional tension.
1:03:35 > 1:03:36Mother,
1:03:36 > 1:03:41lover and the struggle to depict reality.
1:03:41 > 1:03:45It also shows devotion to every exquisite detail.
1:03:48 > 1:03:51It was terribly morbid, what he was doing,
1:03:51 > 1:03:56and I'm not sure that emotionally, I respond to
1:03:56 > 1:04:01the idea of painting somebody who is no longer the person they were.
1:04:13 > 1:04:17He told me he didn't like his mother!
1:04:17 > 1:04:20They're wonderful actually though, I think.
1:04:20 > 1:04:24I mean, he... He...
1:04:24 > 1:04:28It probably is a way of being with her
1:04:28 > 1:04:32and he didn't have to say anything.
1:04:34 > 1:04:38Freud painted many members of his family.
1:04:42 > 1:04:48In 1961, he had three more daughters by three different girlfriends.
1:04:48 > 1:04:52As they grew up, Lucian brought them into his life.
1:04:52 > 1:04:55One way was by asking them to sit for him.
1:05:02 > 1:05:05I did two paintings first before I did any nudes,
1:05:05 > 1:05:10and then I thought, "Well, you know, I know that's what he would like,"
1:05:10 > 1:05:14so I tried it out and as soon as I started I just felt fine,
1:05:14 > 1:05:17there was no weird feeling, ever.
1:05:29 > 1:05:32If you've got a father who paints naked women -
1:05:32 > 1:05:33that's what he does,
1:05:33 > 1:05:37that's his thing, then it would be so much more strange
1:05:37 > 1:05:40if he didn't want to paint you naked.
1:05:40 > 1:05:43Why would you... What would that be expressing?
1:05:45 > 1:05:48Maybe I was quite a ferocious teenager and I could, at any point
1:05:48 > 1:05:51in that painting, I could leap up and do whatever I wanted.
1:05:51 > 1:05:54I think there's a sort of languor because of the hand over
1:05:54 > 1:05:58the eyes but there's also a lot of force, the muscles in my legs
1:05:58 > 1:06:00look quite pumped up and I look quite a forceful person.
1:06:04 > 1:06:09It is incredible to me how completely my arm is still my arm.
1:06:09 > 1:06:12That is EXACTLY the shape of my arm.
1:06:12 > 1:06:14I remember being a little disappointed by the painting
1:06:14 > 1:06:17myself, aged 16, I wanted to be a great beauty
1:06:17 > 1:06:19and there I was, myself.
1:06:19 > 1:06:23I did think that I looked like a very large person in the painting
1:06:23 > 1:06:26and I'm quite a small person, and I said, "Oh, gosh,
1:06:26 > 1:06:29"I'm not as big as that," and he said, "That's what you think."
1:06:29 > 1:06:33And I always liked that cos I think what he was saying was, you are a big person.
1:06:33 > 1:06:36But I just remember thinking,
1:06:36 > 1:06:43he's not trying to depict an image of me, he's painting who I am.
1:06:48 > 1:06:51I think that when you look at his naked portraits
1:06:51 > 1:06:55you get the strongest sense of what it is like to occupy a body.
1:06:55 > 1:06:58The fact that just beneath the surface of all of our skins
1:06:58 > 1:07:03there's surging blood and nerves going haywire.
1:07:03 > 1:07:06Even on the skin itself there are rashes,
1:07:06 > 1:07:11there's a whole history of sunburn or eczema, you know,
1:07:11 > 1:07:14a lifetime of response to the environment and so on,
1:07:14 > 1:07:19conveying an incredibly strong sense of their physical presence
1:07:19 > 1:07:24and registering, in this way, what's unknown and unknowable about his sitters.
1:07:26 > 1:07:29It might be said that Lucian himself was unknowable.
1:07:29 > 1:07:34He found the world strange and he seemed strange to others.
1:07:34 > 1:07:36He liked it like that.
1:07:36 > 1:07:39It was more his personality that was so astounding
1:07:39 > 1:07:42and the way he behaved, he was rather badly behaved
1:07:42 > 1:07:45and rebellious in terms of my child's perspective.
1:07:45 > 1:07:48He used to ring the house and my stepfather used to answer
1:07:48 > 1:07:52and in the way that people did in those days, he would say,
1:07:52 > 1:07:56"Coleman's Hatch, 231, who's speaking please?"
1:07:56 > 1:08:00My father just wasn't going to have anything to do with that kind of formality.
1:08:00 > 1:08:04He'd say, "Hello? Hello?"
1:08:04 > 1:08:07They knew who each other were but he wasn't doing it.
1:08:07 > 1:08:09So he used to phone the phone box instead. Me and my sister
1:08:09 > 1:08:13would run down the hill as the phone was ringing at an appointed hour.
1:08:13 > 1:08:17And speak to him at certain points of the week and that was really much more fun.
1:08:17 > 1:08:20It felt as if we were the naughty children and the adults
1:08:20 > 1:08:23and the teachers were the boring grown-ups.
1:08:25 > 1:08:29He did this thing with his eyes, he would look at something
1:08:29 > 1:08:33and then he would look, open his eyes more to sort of take
1:08:33 > 1:08:38it in and so he'd be quite, kind of, you know,
1:08:38 > 1:08:42"Come in!" and you felt like he was just there
1:08:42 > 1:08:45and that he might just fly off at any time.
1:08:45 > 1:08:48And then he'd look at things and take it in.
1:08:48 > 1:08:51And I remember thinking, "I like the way he did that."
1:08:51 > 1:08:54And I used to copy him when I was at school
1:08:54 > 1:08:57and I'd kind of look at things like that.
1:09:01 > 1:09:03After a lifetime of keeping his family and lovers
1:09:03 > 1:09:08at a safe distance from each other, and from him,
1:09:08 > 1:09:10in 1980 he started a painting which included two lovers
1:09:10 > 1:09:12and three children.
1:09:14 > 1:09:19It was his largest painting to date and for the first time,
1:09:19 > 1:09:22based on the work of an old master.
1:09:38 > 1:09:40I feel that Lucian was...
1:09:40 > 1:09:45was erecting a kind of scaffolding, um,
1:09:45 > 1:09:48a hammy-theatrical situation which we all know
1:09:48 > 1:09:52when we look at the picture is just that it's false,
1:09:52 > 1:09:54it's made up, it's theatrical.
1:09:54 > 1:09:56We know that they're mimicking a pose
1:09:56 > 1:09:58from a great painting from art history,
1:09:58 > 1:10:02we know that they're not wearing their natural clothes.
1:10:05 > 1:10:09And yet they're also still in Lucian's actual studio,
1:10:09 > 1:10:10and you're aware of that -
1:10:10 > 1:10:14the floorboards, the paint on the walls and so on.
1:10:17 > 1:10:19And slowly, as you look at it,
1:10:19 > 1:10:22the scaffolding sort of falls away in your mind.
1:10:24 > 1:10:28Just by being made aware of it, it's sort of encouraged to fall away.
1:10:28 > 1:10:31You're made conscious of the artifice of the thing
1:10:31 > 1:10:35and what's left is these sort of gorgeous human presences
1:10:35 > 1:10:40devoid of any fiction or any attempt to be captured in some way
1:10:40 > 1:10:43and there's something sort of gorgeous about them.
1:10:47 > 1:10:50That was a really hard picture to sit for,
1:10:50 > 1:10:55it was so uncomfortable, sitting upright holding this horrible mandolin
1:10:55 > 1:10:57and wearing this really uncomfortable dress
1:10:57 > 1:11:01that had gold thread in which was rather prickly
1:11:01 > 1:11:04and also, when we were all together,
1:11:04 > 1:11:08all the heat from the different bodies
1:11:08 > 1:11:15was really uncomfortable but then after he'd sketched it in and put us in place,
1:11:15 > 1:11:20we'd be probably two at a time and sometimes alone.
1:11:25 > 1:11:30When he was with a person, nobody else mattered to him
1:11:30 > 1:11:36and I think he was, um, challenged to do a painting
1:11:36 > 1:11:42with a lot of people that mattered to him in his life, all together.
1:11:42 > 1:11:46But the interesting thing in that painting is that I only ever
1:11:46 > 1:11:51sat with Bella, I never sat with any of the other figures in the painting
1:11:51 > 1:11:57so I think it gives it quite a melancholy feeling, this,
1:11:57 > 1:12:02all the individuals are sort of isolated in their own inner space.
1:12:07 > 1:12:11The reason that it comes off so brilliantly is that it's got
1:12:11 > 1:12:14the different nervous feelings of the sitters.
1:12:14 > 1:12:18The whole painting has a kind of feeling
1:12:18 > 1:12:20of people not quite getting on or part of a circle,
1:12:20 > 1:12:25and, of course, the focus of the whole painting is Lucian. They're there because of Lucian
1:12:25 > 1:12:27and you get this very strong feeling
1:12:27 > 1:12:29that this is Lucian's great studio painting.
1:12:29 > 1:12:33And to produce that in the late 20th century was absolutely extraordinary.
1:12:37 > 1:12:44Lucian's painting and his ambitions grew in the '80s and I think that
1:12:44 > 1:12:48things were, for once, beginning to go slightly well for him.
1:12:48 > 1:12:52He had a nice studio, he was beginning to know some success,
1:12:52 > 1:12:55he was financially, already exceedingly well off,
1:12:55 > 1:13:02I think that he was possibly becoming slightly more genial.
1:13:03 > 1:13:07Uh, and he certainly became more productive.
1:13:12 > 1:13:15Lucian's career was thriving in Britain.
1:13:15 > 1:13:19He was no longer Lu of Paddington.
1:13:19 > 1:13:22Mr Freud had a studio in upmarket Holland Park.
1:13:26 > 1:13:29And in his 60s, America beckoned.
1:13:31 > 1:13:36A touring exhibition caught the eye of a radical curator.
1:13:36 > 1:13:38The thing that made me feel
1:13:38 > 1:13:41that we should proceed with a Lucian Freud exhibition
1:13:41 > 1:13:46was that this was an artist who was painting in a way that seemed
1:13:46 > 1:13:50quite different from anything else that I had seen anywhere.
1:13:51 > 1:13:57You know, you think of a surgeon as someone who scrutinises someone
1:13:57 > 1:14:01and looks at someone very, very carefully
1:14:01 > 1:14:05but when you stop to think about the surgeon actually only
1:14:05 > 1:14:10looks at one small part of the part that he's going to operate on.
1:14:10 > 1:14:12The rest of it's all covered with sheets or whatever.
1:14:12 > 1:14:16Freud, whether he's working on an elbow
1:14:16 > 1:14:21or whether he's working on an ear or an eye or whatever,
1:14:21 > 1:14:24it's the entire figure that becomes important
1:14:24 > 1:14:27and I just hadn't seen anything like that.
1:14:29 > 1:14:36The 1987 Hirshhorn Show kick-started Freud's international reputation.
1:14:36 > 1:14:40His work became less directly autobiographical and more ambitious.
1:14:42 > 1:14:45The thing that Lucian did was make a long career
1:14:45 > 1:14:49of doing fundamentally the same things, over and over,
1:14:49 > 1:14:50in the same small rooms,
1:14:50 > 1:14:55and yet constantly giving you the feeling, and I think it was true,
1:14:55 > 1:14:57that he was reinventing the process from scratch,
1:14:57 > 1:15:00and that he was taking this incredible risk in doing so.
1:15:00 > 1:15:02He didn't know how it would come out.
1:15:02 > 1:15:04That's what makes really great painting,
1:15:04 > 1:15:08this sense of risk that you feel as well,
1:15:08 > 1:15:10of overcoming this thing,
1:15:10 > 1:15:13and not something that just is so easy and so repetitious
1:15:13 > 1:15:15that it has a quality of being riskless.
1:15:19 > 1:15:21Lucian always had to challenge himself.
1:15:21 > 1:15:23He always had to push himself further,
1:15:23 > 1:15:28and as he got older he started doing more and more ambitious paintings.
1:15:28 > 1:15:33He was in his late 60s when he did the two By The Rags.
1:15:36 > 1:15:39I think this was a sort of test on himself.
1:15:39 > 1:15:43It was a test on his concentration and a test on his memory.
1:15:44 > 1:15:49When he was nearly the age of 70 Lucian found a startling new model,
1:15:49 > 1:15:52Leigh Bowery, a performance artist.
1:15:53 > 1:15:55He became a close friend,
1:15:55 > 1:15:57but perhaps initially Freud chose him
1:15:57 > 1:16:01because he was lost in wonder at Leigh's substantial body.
1:16:03 > 1:16:07He loved the way that Leigh would volunteer extraordinary poses,
1:16:07 > 1:16:10very taxing poses, three or four hours at a time at least
1:16:10 > 1:16:14with your leg up and blood draining away.
1:16:16 > 1:16:19The first one is really beautiful, but I think,
1:16:19 > 1:16:24to my mind, an element of showbiz came in slightly.
1:16:24 > 1:16:28I'm sure thousands of people would disagree with me,
1:16:28 > 1:16:34but I feel there was more of a consciousness of the great museums,
1:16:34 > 1:16:36and I don't think that was there before.
1:16:39 > 1:16:41Yes, these are theatrical paintings,
1:16:41 > 1:16:44but he was somebody who thought that theatricality
1:16:44 > 1:16:46is part of the whole studio experience,
1:16:46 > 1:16:49and that's why his paintings were done, I think.
1:16:49 > 1:16:51He wanted to do big paintings,
1:16:51 > 1:16:54grand paintings, paintings that challenged the pose
1:16:54 > 1:16:59more than an ordinary sitter would possibly be capable of.
1:17:22 > 1:17:26Freud's confrontational male flesh in his new paintings
1:17:26 > 1:17:28was too much for the London galleries.
1:17:28 > 1:17:30They thought no-one would buy them.
1:17:30 > 1:17:33But having seen the exhibition at the Hirshhorn
1:17:33 > 1:17:35one of America's most influential art dealers
1:17:35 > 1:17:37dropped in to Freud's studio.
1:17:39 > 1:17:42He pulls out the first Leigh Bowery painting,
1:17:42 > 1:17:44which was Leigh Bowery's back.
1:17:44 > 1:17:50And then he pulls out Leigh Bowery with a leg up,
1:17:50 > 1:17:53and he pulls out one more Leigh Bowery in a red chair.
1:17:53 > 1:17:57And by the way does this all by himself, and they're huge paintings,
1:17:57 > 1:18:01he doesn't want anyone touching them, he pulls them out, no problem.
1:18:01 > 1:18:05I see these three paintings, and I was absolutely taken by them.
1:18:05 > 1:18:09The monumentality of them, I thought they were so fabulous,
1:18:09 > 1:18:11and I turned to my wife and...
1:18:11 > 1:18:13because I had been told before this
1:18:13 > 1:18:16by a lot of dealers and friends of mine in London
1:18:16 > 1:18:21that he was painting these male nudes and they are totally unsaleable,
1:18:21 > 1:18:25and, you know, he's difficult to deal with all this kind of stuff.
1:18:25 > 1:18:29Anyway, I asked my wife, "Do you think these are erotic?"
1:18:29 > 1:18:32He had left the room. "Do you think these are erotic paintings?"
1:18:32 > 1:18:36And she said, "No." I said, "Well I don't either. I think they're unbelievable."
1:18:36 > 1:18:41So he came back in and I said, "If I can represent you worldwide,
1:18:41 > 1:18:43"let's do it, if you'd like to."
1:18:43 > 1:18:47I said, "There's no contract, if it doesn't work for you, you tell me, we stop.
1:18:47 > 1:18:52"If it doesn't work for me I'm going to tell you and we stop, it's over."
1:18:52 > 1:18:56When we agreed to work with each other we were having dinner,
1:18:56 > 1:19:00and he said, "You know, I have a gambling debt,
1:19:00 > 1:19:03"would you take care of it for me and see what you can do about it?"
1:19:03 > 1:19:07I said, "Sure, no problem." What can it be? A gambling debt?
1:19:07 > 1:19:13So I met with the bookie and I said, "I'd like to take care...
1:19:13 > 1:19:15"find out what Lucian owes,"
1:19:15 > 1:19:19and he said, "That's wonderful, Bill, it's £2.7 million."
1:19:20 > 1:19:23I said, "What?!"
1:19:27 > 1:19:31In his 80s, far from slowing down, the variety of painting quickened.
1:19:31 > 1:19:35Lucian continued to spring surprises.
1:19:35 > 1:19:40He created a stir with his own brand of unflattering society portraits,
1:19:40 > 1:19:44including an uncompromising portrait of the Queen.
1:19:48 > 1:19:52I said, I suppose, perhaps rather cheekily to Her Majesty,
1:19:52 > 1:19:54I think at some race meeting,
1:19:54 > 1:19:56"What you think of Mr Freud's painting?"
1:19:56 > 1:19:59"Very interesting", she said. Well, that can mean anything.
1:19:59 > 1:20:01Whereas Prince Philip said,
1:20:01 > 1:20:03"You're something mad being painted by that man."
1:20:05 > 1:20:08Andrew Parker Bowles was also mad.
1:20:08 > 1:20:10Well, it wasn't quite how I saw myself
1:20:10 > 1:20:13but everybody else thought it was a wonderful picture.
1:20:13 > 1:20:17I think, actually, except for my stomach showing and jacket undone,
1:20:17 > 1:20:21I think he's painted the uniform brilliantly, which is not easy.
1:20:32 > 1:20:33In 2007 Lucian flew to New York
1:20:33 > 1:20:38in Bill Acquavella's private jet to see a major show of his work.
1:20:43 > 1:20:46He travelled light, one spare shirt in a carrier bag.
1:20:46 > 1:20:51He visited old friends, and stayed at the best hotel.
1:20:55 > 1:20:58We had our own grand piano in the sitting room in the hotel suite,
1:20:58 > 1:21:02so we tried to find a pianist then to come and play for us.
1:21:02 > 1:21:05And then it was straight, so we arrived,
1:21:05 > 1:21:08straight into the hotel, straight into MoMA
1:21:08 > 1:21:12for one very rare occasion, Lucian actually came to the opening.
1:21:12 > 1:21:17But within half an hour, 40 minutes, I mean,
1:21:17 > 1:21:20people were just turning up, realising Lucian was there,
1:21:20 > 1:21:24and we were just getting mobbed.
1:21:24 > 1:21:25So we had to leave, in a sense,
1:21:25 > 1:21:29it was a bit like a rock star or something appearing.
1:21:50 > 1:21:54I think this has got so much to do with love
1:21:54 > 1:21:58and the intimacy of two people spending their lives together.
1:21:58 > 1:22:04The physical closeness, how their limbs are wrapped round each other,
1:22:04 > 1:22:08shows an awful lot of trust within their relationship.
1:22:09 > 1:22:12They seem very at ease.
1:22:13 > 1:22:15I think when this painting was being made
1:22:15 > 1:22:18this would be the main focus in their lives,
1:22:18 > 1:22:24to be in this position every day for Lucian to make this painting happen.
1:22:27 > 1:22:32And this painting of Big Sue is a day painting, painted in daylight.
1:22:35 > 1:22:38And we went down Portobello Market
1:22:38 > 1:22:42to find this old chenille type wall hanging.
1:22:48 > 1:22:50But it is remarkable
1:22:50 > 1:22:53when you look down into her feet,
1:22:53 > 1:22:56and then into, through into the chair and back up.
1:23:00 > 1:23:03It just shows you what life can be about.
1:23:03 > 1:23:07And his life was always painting.
1:23:07 > 1:23:10And, you know, now he's no longer here,
1:23:10 > 1:23:13but these are just knockout to be around these again.
1:23:18 > 1:23:21And 16 million to start it. 16 million for it.
1:23:21 > 1:23:22At 16 million.
1:23:22 > 1:23:2516 million. 17 million. 18 million,
1:23:25 > 1:23:27At 18 million. 19 million.
1:23:27 > 1:23:32At 19 million. 20 million. At 20 million.
1:23:32 > 1:23:34At 20 million. 20,500,000,
1:23:34 > 1:23:3621,500,000,
1:23:36 > 1:23:39Ahead of you at 21,500,000.
1:23:39 > 1:23:4222,500,000.
1:23:54 > 1:23:57They are among my favourite of his paintings, the self portraits.
1:23:57 > 1:24:00There is one particular where he sort of...
1:24:00 > 1:24:02A very sort of smoky, bluey grey,
1:24:02 > 1:24:06and his hair and his face, so tender,
1:24:06 > 1:24:09almost like he has so much compassion for himself
1:24:09 > 1:24:12as a much more fragile person,
1:24:12 > 1:24:13and actually, I felt
1:24:13 > 1:24:16looked much more fragile in that painting than he did in real life.
1:24:19 > 1:24:24When he was in his 80s, he suddenly ask me to cut his hair.
1:24:24 > 1:24:28I loved doing that because I hadn't ever really touched him that much.
1:24:28 > 1:24:33So it was really lovely to run my hands through his hair and stuff.
1:24:38 > 1:24:41He said, "You know, for me it's very difficult to do a self-portrait
1:24:41 > 1:24:44"because I don't want to make myself look too good,
1:24:44 > 1:24:47"but I don't want to make myself look too bad.
1:24:47 > 1:24:50"And to get it just right is very difficult."
1:24:50 > 1:24:55And that's the struggle, I think, with anyone doing a self-portrait
1:24:55 > 1:24:58that is really honest about his painting.
1:24:58 > 1:25:02And Lucian, he gets that. He just gets it.
1:25:03 > 1:25:07I also have another portrait in my private collection,
1:25:07 > 1:25:11a painting called Nude with the Blue Toenails.
1:25:11 > 1:25:16And the reflection of Lucian's head is on the white mattress cloth.
1:25:16 > 1:25:21And just from the shadow, and the shape of his hair,
1:25:21 > 1:25:23you see immediately that it's Lucian's head.
1:25:27 > 1:25:30He said that when he was painting this painting
1:25:30 > 1:25:33he was thinking about that song
1:25:33 > 1:25:38that comes at the moment where Gary Cooper has to face his enemy.
1:25:38 > 1:25:44And he says, "I have to face the man who hates me,
1:25:44 > 1:25:46"or die a coward in my grave."
1:25:46 > 1:25:49And that was what went into this painting.
1:25:49 > 1:25:55And it is looking at himself without narrative or without pity,
1:25:55 > 1:26:00without rehearsing an explanation for anything.
1:26:00 > 1:26:05# Do not forsake me, oh, my darlin'
1:26:05 > 1:26:10# On this our wedding day
1:26:10 > 1:26:16# Do not forsake me, oh, my darlin'
1:26:16 > 1:26:21# Wait, wait long. #
1:26:21 > 1:26:22At 28 million.
1:26:24 > 1:26:30Yes. 28,500,000. At 28,500,000.
1:26:30 > 1:26:35PILAR ORDOVAS: He never admitted that he cared at all about what happened at the auction.
1:26:35 > 1:26:36At 29 million.
1:26:36 > 1:26:39He, naturally, wanted to know the result but
1:26:39 > 1:26:41I don't think it really mattered to him.
1:26:41 > 1:26:43For him, when paintings left the studio
1:26:43 > 1:26:45they had a life to live on their own.
1:26:45 > 1:26:47This side now, 29,500,000.
1:26:47 > 1:26:52I really wanted him to see the auction and what had happened,
1:26:52 > 1:26:54and I put it up on the screen.
1:26:54 > 1:26:58He was much more fascinated looking at the people
1:26:58 > 1:27:00and look at that interesting posture,
1:27:00 > 1:27:04or look at that other person, who is that, what are they doing?
1:27:04 > 1:27:08much more so than really to look at the result.
1:27:08 > 1:27:11At 30 million now. 30 million.
1:27:11 > 1:27:16It's on this telephone, and selling, fair warning, at 30 million.
1:27:16 > 1:27:18No. Brett, your bidder at 30 million.
1:27:18 > 1:27:20APPLAUSE
1:27:25 > 1:27:28It was always amazing when you went into his house.
1:27:28 > 1:27:30He'd come to the door
1:27:30 > 1:27:32and give you a shy smile,
1:27:32 > 1:27:36his head would sort of be slightly bowed.
1:27:38 > 1:27:43And I just remember feeling, it was such a special feeling,
1:27:43 > 1:27:47just coming in, and walking into that house.
1:27:47 > 1:27:52And I never wanted to say anything, apart from, "Hello, and how are things?"
1:27:52 > 1:27:53The first two or three minutes
1:27:53 > 1:27:55were always the most magical in a way,
1:27:55 > 1:27:57just walking into that house.
1:28:50 > 1:28:53Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd