Lucian Freud Story Five - Life Living and Laughing with Lucian

Lucian Freud story five - living with his dad/ grandfather/ 

   

He would always ask my opinion. I think because I genuinely like painting and paint myself I could give answers back. It was a very natural conversation and I didn’t ever think ‘oh fuck I wish I hadn’t said that!’ I didn’t care I just said things and sometimes they were dumb and sometimes they were like oh, that’s a pretty good answer! And that’s how you grow really isn’t it?

 

And that was one of the rather amazing things being in Lucian’s company he would actually listen to you. And if you said something he didn’t agree with he would say so but in a very kind way. He’d sort of slightly encourage you to think in another way. He wouldn’t be horrible to you he would almost like think a bit like this. It was very encouraging. That’s why I think people liked him. He made you grow. I think that’s what most people would say about him.

 Did he talk about his childhood, did he had a mentoring influence?

He was fond of his grandfather (Sigmund). When his grandfather came over here he was a teenager and then his grandfather was an old man so there was that nice dynamic that you can have with your grandparents. His grandfather was very good at telling limericks. And Lucian was really good at them too. Lucian had an amazing memory so he would recite all these funny limericks and great swathes of poetry. Frank Auerbach could do it as well. They could just recite poems.

Quite often when you were sitting he would recite a massive amount of the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. And Shakespeare sonnets – he had a fantastic memory for poetry.