Fat Sue and Lucian Freud

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Lucian Freud dead at 88 years-old

Fat Sue Tilley says:

‘part of my life is gone’

British painter Lucian Freud died in London yesterday, a great figure in the art world for the past 50 years, the artist was 88 years-old, a former model, Sue Tilley, known as Fat Sue Tilley said: ‘part of my life is gone.’

The 300 pound worker at a government benefits office, Sue Tilley posed for Freud in the early 1990s. In 1995 the life-size portrait of Tilley, called Benefits Supervisor Sleeping was sold in New York for $34 million, a world record price paid at auction for a work of art by a living artist.

fat sue tilley and lucian freudBenefits Supervisor Sleeping – by Lucian Freud

fat sue tilley today
Sue Tilley posing – This time for the camera

 

Tilley never liked the painting being called “Fat Sue”

Ms Tilley never liked the nickname of “Fat Sue” attached to the painting by the media, but when asked how she felt about posing nude, she said: “At first, I was a little bit embarrassed but after a while I just got used to it and it became a completely normal thing to do, like going to the doctor.”

“I never weigh myself because I can’t be bothered,” she said.

Asked if she would ever sit for another artist, Ms Tilley said it was “hard to know where to go” as she had “started with the very best”.

The portrait is characteristic of Freud’s unflinching style, but Ms Tilley said she watched the work being painted and so became acclimatised to it.

Born in Berlin, Freud was the son of an Austrian Jewish father, Ernst Ludwig Freud, an architect, and a German Jewish mother. He was a grandson of psycoanalyst Sigmund Freud, elder brother of the late broadcaster, writer and politician Clement Freud and of Stephan Gabriel Freud. He moved with his family to St. John’s Wood, London in 1933 to escape the rise of Nazism. He became a British citizen in 1939.


Boy Smoking – Painted in 1951 by Lucian Freud

lucian freeud paints queen of england
Queen of England posing for Freud


The finished article

 
Another great human being has passed, along with Fat Sue Tilley, art lovers will miss Lucian Freud.
 

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Holte Ender

Holte Ender will always try to see your point of view, but sometimes it is hard to stick his head that far up his @$$.
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12 years ago

[…] Mad Mikes America Posted in Painting and tagged with Painting, Portrait. RSS 2.0 feed. « Martha Boxley […]

Maria Elena
12 years ago

When I so this paintiing I remain estonished!!. Is me, as I am now!
Incredible!

12 years ago

Love it.

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