HIS FOUR CHILDREN BY BEATNIK LOVER
LUCIAN FREUD took Suzy Boyt as his lover when she was his student at the Slade School of Fine Art. Between 1957 and 1969, she had four children with him. Suzy gave up painting to raise them and for a time supported the family by selling antique lace. She then bought a cargo ship and took her children around the world. In Trinidad, the boat fell into disrepair and the family was deported, penniless, to start again in London.
1. The wild teen turned drugs counsellor
AlexAnder Boyt, known as Ali in the family was — according to his siblings — a wild teenager. Aged 16, he was said to have got drunk in France and got into a fight with a group of Hell’s Angels who tried to stab him.
He once set up a skate park and now, aged 60, works with drug and alcohol abusers. He lives alone in Islington, north london.
lucian used him as a model several times. He recalls: ‘I once apologised to dad for something I did, and he replied, “that’s nice of you to say, but it doesn’t work like that. there is no such thing as free will. People just have to do what they have to do”.’
2. Chippy punk author
rose Boyt provoked pointed references to great-grandfather sigmund when her first novel, sexual Intercourse, was published in 1990. It was about a girl and her sexually charged relationship with her father. A punk teenager, she says she had a chip on her shoulder because her family was ‘really poor’.
‘I was extremely anti-social. I stayed out all night and took drugs,’ she said.
Her father painted her nude, for 1979’s Portrait of rose, when she was 19, a portrait she describes as ‘crew cut, open legs, naked’.
Her most recent novel is How’s your Father. now 58, she lives in Islington with husband Mark Pearce. they have two children.
3. Mum of a pop star
IsoBel Boyt (known as Ib), 56, was painted by lucian with her partner Paul Costelloe while pregnant in 1992 — the picture, Ib And Her Husband, is worth around £18million. she has three daughters and her Facebook page suggests she lives in Athens. one daughter, Alice, was in the moderately successful band Big deal.
4. Satirist of middle-class yummy mummies
susIe Boyt, 47, a novelist and style columnist for the Financial times, is the youngest of the Boyt brood and says her sister rose largely brought her up. she went to oxford university but was devastated when her boyfriend died in a climbing accident.
she is married to tom Astor, a scion of the Astor dynasty, who managed the band Gorillaz and now produces films. they have a daughter, Mary, 16 and live in Hampstead in north london. susie’s sixth novel, love And Fame, was published this year.