Acquired directly from the artist by the prese𒀰nt owner

London, Hayward Gallery, Lucian Freud, 1988, no. 61
Oxford, Ashmolean Museum; Edinburgh, The Fruitmarket Gallery; Hull, Ferens Art Gallery; Liverpool,  Walker Art Gallery; Exeter, Royal Albert Memorial Museum; San Francisco, The Fine Arts Museum; Minneapolis Institute of Art; New York, Brooke Alexander Gallery; Cleveland Museum of Art; The Saint Louis Art Museum, Lucian Freud Works on Paper, 1988-1989, no. 61, illustrated in colour
Rome, Palazzo Ruspoli; Milan, Castello Sforzesca; Liverpool, Tate Gallery, Lucian Freud, Paintings and Works on Paper 1940-1991, 1991-92, no. 63, illustrated in colour
Tochiyi, Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts; Nishinomiya, Otani Memorial Art Musuem; Tokyo, Steagaya Art Museum; Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales; Perth, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Lucian Freud, 1992-93, no. 60, illustrated in colour
London, Whitechapel Art Gallery; New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Madrid, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Lucian Freud: Recent Work, 1993-94, no. 15

The London Review of Books, Vol. 7, no. 13, 18^th July 1985, illustrated on the front cover
Bruce Bernard & Derek Birdsall, Lucian Freud, London 1996, no. 186, illustrated in colour
William Feaver, Lucian Freud, New York 2007, no. 204, illustrated in colour
Sebastian Smee & Richard Calvocoressi, Lucian Freud on Paper, London 2008, no. 142, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality of the paper is slightly lighter in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. The left, top and right edges of the paper are deckled and the paper is hinged to the mount at the centre of the top edge. There are artist's pinholes at all four corners and along the side edges.
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A virtuoso exhibition of remarkably delicate and subtle chiaroscuro modelling in black charcoal, this masterful portrait of Lord Goodman magnificently illustrates Lucian Freud's inimitable analysis of the human subject and his incomparable aptitude as a draughtsman. Exactly paralleling a smaller drawing of the same sitter that is now held in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery, thus attesting the indisputable museum calibre of the present work, Lord Goodman ranks in the very highest tier of works on paper by Freud from the 1980s and readily testifies to his extraordinary powers of analysis in both form and character.

The present work was enlisted as font cover illustration to a 1985 edition of the London Review of Books, in which publication the esteemed sitter penned a lengthy account of this work's genesis: "A very great artist – who has now in a sensationally short space of time become a very close friend – unexpectedly asked if I would like to be drawn by him. I refer, of course, to Lucian Freud...It has been a rare privilege to be drawn by Lucian because it has been an undiluted pleasure...He chose a position which for the initial drawing... was not entirely comfortable. I was lowish in the bed, with inadequate support for my head, and I frequently arose with a rick in my neck. But he displayed exemplary courtesy in inquiring whether I was comfortable, periodically prodding the pillows, so that there was some slight mitigation of the agony of the position...we proceeded to conversations as stimulating as I have known for many years... It has been a rare privilege to be drawn by Lucian because it has been an undiluted pleasure...The drawing process consisted of Lucian arriving at my home at what for me was the middle of the night, usually about 8.30 a.m. My bleary-eyed housekeeper would admit him, and the difficulties associated with bathing, shaving and dressing at that hour were summarily solved by a decision that he would draw me in bed in my pyjamas, unshaved, unbathed, before a single brush or lotion had been applied to the untouched exterior."" (Lord Goodman, 'Diary', London Review of Books, Vol. 7 No. 13, 18 July 1985, p. 21).

Citing the visage of his sitter within the framing device of an irregular cushion, Freud magnifies the perspectival viewing point, enabling his charcoal line to scrutinize the irregular contours of Goodman's dramatic and impressive features. The flow of light across his forehead, eyes, nose, cheeks, mouth, jaw and chin is minutely observed and rendered with studied precision. The precisely organised schema of tonal areas resonates in magnificent compositional concert, and the interlocking permutations of charcoal shade breathe life into the variously taught and sagging compartments of skin and flesh. Equally remarkable is the confident economy of means through which the sense of compositional wholeness is achieved: the overall schema of mark-making ultimately resulting in dramatically sculptural forms rather than a mere accumulation of half-tones. Each deft accent of Freud's hand exudes sympathy for the physiognomy or material it describes, effortlessly combining to create a compelling feeling of palpable texture that is beautifully illuminated by the paper's soft fawn tones and smooth surface. The pre-eminent delicacy of Freud's technique here is such that the viewer is drawn ever closer to the picture's surface, investing the depicted sitter with an intensity and immediacy that utterly defies the twenty-seven years that have elapsed since the work was executed.

A leading London lawyer and partner of the firm Goodman, Derrick & Co, Arnold Goodman was a renowned and fiercely intelligent solicitor and advisor to senior politicians, including Prime Minister Harold Wilson, and later became one of the most powerful figures in Arts and Culture policy in the United Kingdom. Between 1965 and 1972 he was chairman of the Arts Council, overseeing the establishment of the South Bank Centre and securing regular funding for many galleries and theatres throughout England. At various times he was also chairman of British Lion Films, the Committee of Inquiry into Charity Law, the Committee on London Orchestras, the Housing Corporation, the National Building Agency, the Newspaper Proprietors' Association, and The Observer Trust, as well as being Director of the Royal Opera House and Sadler's Wells, Governor of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, a member of the Planning Committee for the Open University and President of the Theatrical Advisory Committee. He was Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Art, as well as a founder and patron of the Next Century Foundation. Later in his career, he was Master of University College, Oxford. He was created a life peer as Baron Goodman of the City of Westminster in 1965 and Companion of Honour in 1972.

While Freud inevitably depicts the likeness of Goodman, and this necessarily connotes the full weight of the sitter's distinguished achievements, through painstaking observation this portrait is also of course an exceptional essay in artistic truth. With Freud's characteristic obsession to the objective aesthetic fact, this stands as a beautiful pictorial rendition of his declaration that: "I would wish my portraits to be of the people, not like them. Not having a look of the sitter, being them. I didn't want to get just a likeness like a mimic, but to portray them, like an actor." (cited in: Lawrence Gowing, Lucian Freud, London 1982, pp. 190-91). In this way, although Freud's work depicts one of the Great Men of its time, its artistic stature is not restricted by the context of its own era. Indeed, Freud's Lord Goodman contꦇinues a grand tradition of analysing and assessing human character via the means of meticulous draughtsmanship that has occupied leading figurative artists of everꦆy age since Albrecht Dürer, and is one of the outstanding portrayals in the medium of Lucian Freud's entire oeuvre.