Room 5
Man in a Chair 1983-5
This is a portrait of Baron Thyssen, who owned the small painting known as Les Jaloux, or Pierrot Content,
by Jean-Antoine Watteau which Freud used as the basis for his earlier work,
Large Interior, W11 (after Watteau) 1981-3.
On the floor is a pile of the cotton rags on which Freud wipes his palette knife and paint brushes as he works.
Although the portrait was commissioned by Baron Thyssen, Freud was insistent that this in no way affected his approach
to the work: 'People go on about how to be commissioned is on some way to be trammelled or harnessed or limited.
Auden said a very sensible thing about this.
"In the end", he said, "it's a romantic idea.
Whatever an artist does, they think they're commissioning themselves."' |
