Blonde Girl
Blonde Girl
Signed Print
Lucian Freud
POA
This estimate blends recent public auction records with our own private sale data and network demand.
Etching, 1985
Signed Print Edition of 50
H 88cm x W 71cm
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Auction Results
| Auction Date | Auction House | Artwork | Hammer Price | Return to Seller | Buyer Paid |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| December 2018 | Bonhams New Bond Street - United Kingdom | Blonde Girl - Signed Print | |||
| October 2017 | Phillips New York - United States | Blonde Girl - Signed Print | |||
| September 2017 | Sotheby's London - United Kingdom | Blonde Girl - Signed Print | |||
| March 2017 | Sotheby's New York - United States | Blonde Girl - Signed Print | |||
| February 2017 | Sotheby's London - United Kingdom | Blonde Girl - Signed Print | |||
| September 2016 | Sotheby's London - United Kingdom | Blonde Girl - Signed Print | |||
| April 2016 | Sotheby's New York - United States | Blonde Girl - Signed Print |
Meaning & Analysis
This etching was produced by Lucian Freud in 1985, and pictures a nude woman stretched across the composition, her figure languidly leaning to the right. Though he has not detailed her surroundings, this blond woman appears to be sat on a chair with her legs cropped underneath the knee, and her hand resting on the negative space to the right of the work. With rounded lines and calculated hatching, Freud pronounces the feminine curvature of her body.
Though he was not always an avid depicter of nudes, Lucian Freud increasingly turned his attention to what he referred to as Naked Portraits from the mid-1960s. These works are less grounded in a voyeuristic perception of the female nude, but more-so in Freud's view that every single facet of the sitter's body was as important as their face in a portrait. In Blond Girl, Freud has built intense tonality around the sitter's face, highlighting her pensive expression. This detailing of expression is extended to her body, as he pays particular attention to the way her arm rests on an invisible surface.
Though the identity of this unnamed sitter is unknown, we can observe in Blond Girl a psychological bond between sitter and artist so typical of Freud's work. By observing his subjects for sometimes hundreds of hours, Freud truly understood the behaviour of his sitters and connected with them through conversation and his unwavering gaze.
