Name: Woman Sleeping
Brand: Lucian Freud
Rating: 5 (236 reviews)

Track auction value trend

The value of Lucian Freud’s Woman Sleeping (signed) is estimated to be worth between £9,000 and £13,500. This etching, created in 1995, has shown consistent value growth, with an average annual growth rate of 9%. This work has an auction history of 9 total sales since its entry to the market in February 2012. In the past 12 months, the average selling price was £12,115, across 2 sales. Over the past five years, the hammer price has varied from £9,231 in October 2024 to £22,232 in August 2023. The average return to the seller is currently £13,164. The edition size of this artwork is limited to 36.

Meaning & Analysis

This etching was executed by Lucian Freud in 1995, and depicts one of his most recognised sitters: Sue Tilley, aka Big Sue. Her voluptuous figure stretches across the centre of the composition, and though she has the appearance of being seated, Freud has depicted only her body. Through his thick etched lines that outline her body, Tilley's figure retains a weightiness despite the illusion of being suspended in empty space.

Sue Tilley, aka Big Sue, was introduced to Lucian Freud by her friend - and fellow sitter - Leigh Bowery. Freud was so taken with Tilley's curvaceous form that he painted her four times, and alongside these paintings he explored her naked portrait through his preferred printing medium of etching. Woman Sleeping is related to his painting Sleeping By The Carpet With Lions, where Tilley is depicted sat asleep on a leather chair, with a blanket underneath her. In Woman Sleeping however, the chair and drapery is gone, leaving only her shapely body at the centre of a bare background.

As with many of Freud's other etchings in our Naked Portraits collection of his work, he rarely depicted extremely slim women. As he himself once confessed, "I have perhaps a predilection towards people of unusual or strange proportions which I don't want to over-indulge." Created in the 1990s, when "size zero" was the buzzword in women's popular culture, works like Woman Sleeping show Freud's confrontation of these senseless beauty standards.