For the love of Luci an FREUD’S WOMEN Celebrated painter, obsessive task-master, lothario with 15 children, Lucian Freud changed women’s lives for ever. In intimate interviews with Caroline Scott, his For the love of Luci an models, including his daughter Annie, reveal the ordeals he put them through ia Kirby, a former student at RIA KIRBY, 31, Camberwell art school, has was hanging Freud’s crinkly hair the colour of paintings at the V&A corn and scrubbed, when he asked if she’d sit for him. The result, flawlessly clear skin which Ria: Naked Portrait, give her an air of Arcadian 2007 (above), took purity. She was 26 and a some 2,400 hours — all technician at the V&A when unpaid. For that period she spotted Freud there one she went everywhere day and felt compelled to with Freud, but they did not become lovers tell him how much she admired his work. Freud thanked her graciously. Later she had a message from the V&A’s head of painting: “Mr from the royal box and they’d turn up at parties Freud would like to know if you’d sit for him.” and private views. At weekends she might go R“When I called, he said, ‘Can you come to with him to a grandchild’s birthday party. the studio tomorrow at 6pm?’ And I remember “Overnight, I was part of the family. I think they CELIA PAUL, 52, thinking, ‘It’s good this is happening quickly,’ assumed I was his girlfriend, and I found that (below with Freud in 2010), because I was really nervous about whether intimacy slightly awkward. He didn’t.” was an innocent art student he’d want me naked and how I’d feel about that.” Ria thinks she sat for a total of 2,400 hours, of 18 when they met. The Freud offered tea or champagne. She chose all of it unpaid, for a painting she’d never see tender Girl in a Striped tea. Did she know about his reputation with again. “Freud was considered one of the world’s Nightshirt was painted from 1983 to 1985. Frank, women? “I was very conscious of it, but I’m not greatest painters,” she says tightly. “As a their son, was born in 1984 very flirty or tactile and he was over 80 then. painter, to become part of a work that will have ‘I think the family assumed I was his girlfriend’ I just felt a real sense of urgency; he wanted a place in the history of art was a privilege.” someone he’d be comfortable working with.” There was never any question of having a Ria chose a modest pose (“the position I sleep personal life at the same time. Ria turned down in”) and went to the studio seven nights a week the chance to sit for another portrait (“I wanted and every weekend, pocketing the taxi fare he my life back”) but looks on it as “an extraordinary gave her and cycling home to east London each time, something to tell the grandchildren”. evening. Freud took her to Clarke’s for dinner or When her daughter, Imogen, was born in 2010, the Wolseley. “I’d plough through three courses, she took her round to see him. “He was so with wine and pudding. He hardly ate, because tactful,” says Ria, generously. “She bawled in his he was working.” Then they’d get a cab back to face for a few minutes and he said, ‘I’m much PREVIOUSPAGES: ALL PICTURES COURTESY LUCIAN FREUD ARCHIVE, ARCHIVE;EXCEPT COURTESY SECOND LUCIANFROM RIGHT: FREUD BRIDGEMAN. ARCHIVE; BRIDGEMAN; THESE PAGES, DAVIDCLOCKWISE DAWSON COURTESY FROM theTOP OF HAZLITTLEFT: COURTESY HOLLAND-HIBBERT; LUCIAN FREUD STEVE SCHOFIELD FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE studio. They watched the Bolshoi Ballet better with animals, I think, than people.’” s 14 The Sunday Times Magazine 15.1.2012 FREUD’S WOMEN Lured by immortality Waldemar Januszczak on Freud’s power over his sitters There are, of course, important differences painting her sprawled naked across his between Premiership footballers and premier- settee, she was internationally adored and league painters. Obviously, one plays football the subject of the most expensive picture ever and the other does not. And one needs to be sold at auction by a living artist. Celia Paul young while the other can be old. But when it was a mousy art student of 18 when Freud comes to women, their behaviour is not entirely walked into her art class to teach her dissimilar. Both are controversially libidinous. painting. Seven years later, after the lessons Neither strikes you as being particularly and the affair were over, she was the Girl choosy. And if you have a younger sister, you’d in a Striped Nightshirt; the Naked Girl with Egg; prefer it if she met neither of them. and the figure on the left in Freud’s most However, one important variance does ambitious group portrait, Large Interior, stand out, and that is the reluctance of the W11 (after Watteau). women with whom they have been intimate Freud turned the ordinary into the gripping. to hire Max Clifford and spill the beans. Girls People you would never normally look at twice who go with Premiership footballers seem found themselves magicked into some of the actively to enjoy kissing and telling. But most compelling portraiture ever painted. They getting anything intimate or revealing out of come in all shapes. Sue from the job centre any of the women that Lucian Freud got was fearsomely fleshy: the kind of big girl you would not usually see naked except in the pages of a specialist magazine. Freud painted Freud’s women her conked out on a couch, her head thrown felt the breath of the back, snoring. Celia Paul, meanwhile, one of the many lovers who bore him a child, is a gods whistling small woman with big breasts whose stretch across their bodies marks he examines with a directness that feels like cruelty. As a final touch, he placed a through has proved difficult. The interviews plate of fried eggs by Celia’s legs, as if to say: on these pages reveal more than many of this is what you are. them have ever said before. All of which is the opposite of Premiership Why have his sitters been so circumspect, behaviour. No lavish gifts. No promises of at least until now? Principally, I suggest, money. No flashy nights in expensive hotels. because we are dealing here with a particular Yes, he was partial to a glass of champagne class of woman, very different from the and would sometimes share it with his sitters footballing wags. However naked they look in on a rare evening out, but never to seduce them his art, however brazenly they expose or weaken their resolve. Freud liked champagne. themselves to him and us, Freud’s women are And what Freud liked, he did. If he wanted to never in it for the media exposure or the bucks. gamble all night, he gambled. If he wanted fine They’re in it for the immortality: for the breath clothes, he bought them. If the fine clothes got of the gods they felt covered in paint, so be it. reud met Celia Paul in 1978 at the whistling across their The only time I ever met Slade, where she was an art student. naked bodies when they him, on Kensington She was 18 and had never had a posed for him. Church Street on his way boyfriend. He was 55 and had been Before she met to lunch, I assumed him invited to be a visiting tutor. Later, Lucian Freud in a to be a homeless man he told her he’d accepted the nightclub, Sue Tilley from the back. It was Finvitation specifically to find a girlfriend. was just a fat woman only when I overtook “He said he’d come to find a girl and that who worked at a job this small, crumpled girl was me,” she says. “The relationship he centre in the West End. figure that I noticed the was in was foundering. Of course I was totally By the time he finished posh silk scarf round his unaware of that at the time.” neck and recognised Lucian was wearing a beautiful grey suit SELF-PORTRAIT Lucian Freud. and smoking a French cigarette. Celia was an Freud was as unflinching The mood of the ingénue who had just begun to find her own in depicting himself as remarkable gallery of his other sitters. This way as an artist, using her own mother as a life portrait, titled Reflection, Freud portraits going on model. It’s easy to see how flattered she would dates from 1985, when show soon at the have been by his attention. She seemed a he was in his early sixties National Portrait a p17 The Sunday Times Magazine 15.1.2012 15 to have no idea what was on his mind. “I think I felt a connection to Lucian because he also worked from people he was intensely involved with,” she says. She found being with him “inspiring”, with the result that her own work became more ambitious. She was raised as one of five girls in what she describes as “a strict religious household” — nothing could have prepared her for being the object of his desire. “He was my first romantic encounter and he had a lot of trouble seducing me. I think Lucian was really exasperated.” Now working from a studio in Holland Park, Freud did not begin painting Celia until two years after they started “going out together”.