Camilla’s ex is 30million dollar man
Astounding sum for Lucian Freud portrait of Andrew Parker Bowles
LUCIAN FREUD’S ‘insolent’ portrait of Andrew Parker Bowles, the former husband of the Duchess of Cornwall, is to be sold at auction for an expected $30million (£19.8million).
The 7ft-high work, known as The Brigadier, will be one of the star attractions at a Christie’s sale in New York on November 11.
The portrait is one of Freud’s best known and most popular paintings, and if it reaches its asking price it will be one of the highest amounts ever paid for one of his works.
Christie’s will this week announce that the canvas is to be displayed at its London headquarters before being flown to the US.
Freud, who died in 2011, got to know Parker Bowles in the early 1990s after the artist approached him for help locating horses both to paint and ride. The two men struck up an unlikely friendship and the highly decorated soldier was happy to sit for Freud for two mornings a week over 18 months in 2003 and 2004.
In return, he was given a selection of etchings and treated to the occasional breakfast at Sally Clarke’s, a fashionable restaurant close to Freud’s home in Kensington Church Street and one of the artist’s favourite haunts.
Parker Bowles, 75, last night recalled with fondness his sittings, which took place in the late artist’s studio in Notting Hill. He said: ‘It was a huge pleasure sitting for Lucian who never did utter a dull word, and though the process seemed very long, I am hugely glad to have done it.’
One critic described the painting as ‘insolent’, ‘scathing’ and ‘melancholic’. He went on to describe its subject as looking ‘saddened and wiped out’. But Parker Bowles – who divorced Camilla in 1995 – is a fan of the work, and the painting’s naturalism is one of the reasons why it is so popular.
It is understood that the painting’s late owner bought it as a gift for his first wife for £5.3million. He remarried following her death and his widow is now selling it.
In 2008, Freud’s iconic Benefits Supervisor Sleeping was sold at auction for £21.2million. A spokesman for Christie’s confirmed the painting was to go up for sale in New York but declined to comment on its asking price.