Very Bohemian indeed... nude art painted by Scot that Queen star gazed at in his final days
HE was the flamboyant frontman of one of the world’s most successful rock bands.
But in his final months as he battled Aids, Queen legend Freddie Mercury withdrew from the public eye.
Now it has emerged that, in the days before his death, the singer drew comfort from a surprising source – the sensual watercolours of a Scottish artist famed for his nudes.
Mercury began collecting works by Edinburgh-born watercolourist Sir William Russell Flint in June 1991, five months before he died. He bought his fifth and final painting, Gabrielle, 17 days before his death on November 24 at the age of 45.
Mercury hung them in his home in Kensington, West London, where he could enjoy them in his final days.
The five artworks could fetch more than £100,000 next month in London at two Sotheby’s auctions, Freddie Mercury: A World of His Own/The Evening Sale and At Home.
Experts say the ‘confidence and flamboyance’ of Russell Flint’s work is thought to have appealed to the showman, who lived a ten-minute walk from the artist’s former studio in Camden Hill.
Simon Toll, Sotheby’s senior director and specialist in British Art post-1850, said: ‘Freddie wasn’t an avid collector but he bought things that he liked to decorate his house.
He seems to have developed a passion for Flint in the last year of his life.’
He added: ‘There is no other artist in Freddie’s collection represented by so many works.
‘They all hung in Freddie’s house. Even though he knew he was dying, he still wanted to be surrounded by beautiful things.’ Mercury bought three Russell Flint paintings – Gossip in a Park, Disputation at the Well, and Cecilia Posing as the Poet Robert Herrick’s Julia – at auction on June 6, 1991.
The next day he returned to Sotheby’s to purchase Silver Shade, Languedoc. The four paintings are now expected to attract bids of up to £20,000.
Cecilia was Cecilia Green, a beautiful former ballerina who appears in many of Russell Flint’s pictures. These include Gabrielle, the Bohemian Rhapsody singer bought on November 7, 1991.
The nude painting is expected to fetch £30,000-50,000 in The Evening Sale, the ‘jewel in the crown’ of Sotheby’s auctions.
Mr Toll said: ‘Gabrielle is the most wonderful painting. I can see exactly why Freddie bought it because it’s fabulous, flamboyant and opulent.’
Russell Flint was born in 1880, educated in Edinburgh and died in 1969.