BIOGRAPHY: Man with a Blue Scarf: On Sitting for a Portrait by Lucian FreudBy Martin Gayford Thames &Hudson, 248pp. £18.95
MARTIN GAYFORD is the man in the blue scarf. He is described as a critic, writer and curator. To those descriptions can now be added diarist: this book is based on the journal he kept of the process by which Lucian Freud’s portrait of him emerged.
The first entry is timed at 6.30pm, November 28th, 2003. Most of the sittings were in the evening in a studio lit by an electric bulb. Freud states: “I begin to think a picture is finished when I have the sensation I am painting someone else’s picture.” That state arrived on July 4th, 2004. After a short break, in November 2004 Freud began to create an etching on which he worked in the afternoon. The plate was completed and placed in its acid bath on April 10th, 2005, when the first print was pulled. After the pulling of the second print, Freud went back to work.
As a knowledgeable art critic, Gayford was familiar with the work of Freud, but he also knew him, to a degree, socially. It was he who tentatively suggested that Freud paint his portrait. Neither of them knew if it would work. Freud has to find something in the sitter in order for a portrait to work. “In the same way that a specialist might say of a child that one’s not going to grow up right,” he explains of portraits he has had to abandon, “I could tell that it wouldn’t develop into a finished picture . . . There is something wrong. I have lots of paintings in my studio that didn’t work. I feel having them around keeps me going. One painting may go wrong after four days, another after longer.”
Luckily, Gayford’s portrait did work, and the world has not only the portrait but also this insightful book on Freud and the process by which a portrait by him emerges. A great portrait is revelatory not only of the sitter but maybe also of the painter.
Freud was working on at least three portraits when Gayford was sitting. As Gayford was being painted in the evening he had the advantage of dining very often with Freud after their evening's work. The book bristles with wonderful facts, such as Freud's ability to quote poetry by rote, in German (a poem by Schiller, Der Taucher) or English (by Auden, Larkin, Byron and, more surprisingly, Belloc: Lord Lundy, Who Was Too Freely Moved to Tears, and Thereby Ruined His Political Career).
Then suddenly you are reading an anecdote about staying as a guest of a Greek princess in Paris in 1947 and then about living happily among petty and not-so-petty criminals in 1950s London. His life is kaleidoscopic.
Gayford records all with a Boswellian insight, including Freud’s opinions of other artists. There is praise for Titian; disdain for Raphael. Vermeer, Ingres, Van Gogh, Chardin and others all come in for comment both good and bad. Of particular interest are his comments about Francis Bacon, Freud’s good friend for many years, and among the splendid illustrations is a marvellous unfinished portrait of Bacon, begun in 1956-7, a “child” that was not turning out “right” and has been abandoned.
Of the Freud insights quoted, my favourite is one in praise of the diversity of Dublin weather – not a thing that is heard particularly often: “My climatic ideal is Dublin weather. I like quickly changing circumstances, it’s sunny for ten minutes, then here comes a cloud. For me, a blue sky all day every day would be utterly horrible. But for working, I like a north light that is cold and clear and constant. High, light cloud suits me well. When I read that the studio in Van Gogh’s Yellow House faced south I thought: he really was mad.”
Freud started his life in Weimar Berlin in 1922, his parents emigrated to England in 1933 and he has worked in London for most of his life. The horrors and inanities of the 20th century are the crucible in which this articulate, observant and intelligent man has made his work. This book records Freud at work in the new millennium. He is in his 80s, but where Freud is is no country for old men. We are privileged to have this record of Freud with his dynamic energy as he looks, looks and looks again at the human face before he makes a mark on the canvas – his never-ending quest to get it right. In this book Martin Gayford undoubtedly has got it right.
John McBratney is a barrister
