Freud’s naked muse goes for £22.5m record

Model: Sophie Church with the work A PAINTING by Lucian Freud sold for a record £22.5million last night.

The sale makes the piece, Portrait on a White Cover, the most expensive artwork by the British painter.

Sophie Church, 47, spent eight months modelling for the painting and had no idea what happened to the work as it passed into private hands.

Mrs Church posed for the painter at the age of 31 while working at the Tate Britain as a production manager.

She told the Sunday Telegraph she only learned of its fate when auction house Sotheby’s contacted her to say it was being sold. Speaking about being reunited with the painting, Mrs Church said: ‘It’s quite emotional actually … it reminds me so much of Lucian and that time.’

She said she would not have posed for anyone apart from Freud, who died in 2011.