Freud’s naked muse painting sold for record £22.5million
FOR nearly two decades, Sophie Church had no idea what had happened to the nude painting she spent eight months posing for, as Lucian Freud’s muse.
Now the married mother-of-two has been reunited with the remarkable portrait, as it sold for an incredible £22.5million last night.
Mrs Church, who works as an NHS speech and language therapist, had been completely unaware of the painting’s history as it passed through private collectors.
Now 47, she posed for the painting at the age of 31 while working at the Tate Britain as a production manager.
While the painting was admired for years, little was known about the naked woman on a cream bedspread. She was asked to pose for the artist after she worked on the catalogue for one of his exhibitions in 2002.
Mrs Church, then Sophie Lawrence, spent five nights a week posing on a bed for the artist for eight months. Usually, their sessions lasted from 7pm until 1am when she would take a taxi home, covered in paint.
Speaking about being reunited with the painting, Mrs Church said: ‘It’s quite emotional, actually. It’s going back in time. It’s both just like me and also apart from me, and it reminds me so much of Lucian and that time.’
She told the Sunday Telegraph that she only learnt of the painting’s fate when Sotheby’s sent her an email telling her it was to be sold.
Portrait on a White Cover sold at Sotheby’s London for an astonishing £22.5 million – making it the most expensive Freud painting sold.
Mrs Church said she would not have posed for anyone apart from Freud, who died in 2011.
She met the British painter at a dinner and created a friendship thanks to her excellent time-keeping. She later went to his home, where they ‘drank champagne and gossiped in the garden’.
Recalling the day when she impressed the artist by apologising for being a single minute late, she said. ‘It was incredibly intimidating, but he made me feel at ease.’
There is one difference between the young woman shown in the painting and Mrs Church herself – a blue vein on her leg.
She explained the artist added it as the painting ‘looked a bit too smooth’.
When it was finished, she never saw the artist again – and saw the completed creation just once, at the Wallace Collection in London.