Artists_amp_amp_Illustrators__July_2016_

70 Artists & Illustrators

INFLUENCE

COLLECTIVE

AHEAD OF A NEW EXHIBITION OF PAINTERS’ PAINTINGS AT THE NATIONAL GALLERY IN

LONDON, WE EXPLORE HOW THE ART COLLECTIONS OF FREUD, MATISSE AND DEGAS

IMPACTED ON THEIR WORK. WORDS: KATIE MCCABE

© LFA /BRIDGMAN IMAGES PHOTO COURTESY OF THE OWNER

W

hat do the paintings owned by artists say

about the work they created? In the case of

Lucian Freud, the content of his art

collection is one of the few windows into the painter’s

process, beyond his own work. Freud, unlike his

contemporary, Francis Bacon, was famously cagey

about naming his influences, at times denying he had

any. His earlier paintings, created in painstaking detail

with small sable brushes, were regularly compared with

those of the New Objectivity, a theory Freud often

rebuked. And yet the techniques of historical painters,

particularly those of 19th-century artists, were crucial

to his work. He travelled the world to visit Goyas and

Velazquez’s Las Meninas; he haunted the halls of the

ABOVE Lucian Freud, Self

Portrait: Reflection, 2002,

oil on canvas,

66x50cm

70 Lucian Freud2.indd 70 12/05/2016 10:24