James Kirkman, London
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Directly related to the contemporaneous painting, Small Naked Portrait, belonging to Oxford's Ashmolean Museum, Drawing for a Naked Figure from 1973 depicts Freud's then girlfriend Jacquetta Eliot. Eliot has described the artist as "funny and clever, ardent, urgent, and fantastically intimate" and spoken of the unique charms of sitting for Freud as being "champagne on dirty floorboards" (cited in: William Feaver, Lucian Freud, New York 2007, p. 24). Also appearing in the large masterpiece Large Interior W9 of 1973 now housed at Chatsworth, Eliot's presence in Freud's work exudes a heightened degree of emotive tension. As accounted by William Feaver, for the artist, Eliot "brought overt emotional stress to the night-time sessions...she submitted herself with some resentment, letting her thoughts roam and drift", and that the artist's mother had heard her son's girlfriend smashing things in the next room (Exhibition Catalogue, London, Tate Britain, Lucian Freud, 2002, p.32). Intimating the aura of raw and fractured emotionality harboured by the Ashmolean painting, Drawing for a Naked Figure draws us in, succinctly manifesting the mantra that the artist once scrawled on his studio wall 'Urgent Subtle Concise'.

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is slightly warmer in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. The work is hinged to a mount at all four corners. There are artist's pinholes at all four corners with a further small number in places along the left, right and top extreme edges. Close inspection reveals two minute and unobtrusive spots of foxing, one towards the bottom right corner and another below the figure's right foot as visible in the catalogue illustration. There is some slight discolouration at the extreme edges, visible only when the work is unframed.
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