Okay! Here's my question. How much would you pay for this portrait? I'll help you out. It was painted by Lucien Freud, the grandson of Sigmund Freud, who is considered the leading portraiture painter in England and whose paintings are currently Â
on exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery in London where Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, got an early look a couple of nights ago when she arrived for her first solo appearance to view it along with other nudes by Freud./>
The subject, Sue Tilley, has posed a number of times for Freud. The 250-pound job-center worker is the subject of several nudes, including Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, which sold at auction in 2008 for $33.6 million, a record for a living artist.
According to an article in USA Today, the new royal star, Kate Middleton, officially now Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge since marrying Prince William, arrived to a crowd of paparazzi and royal watchers at the National Portrait Gallery in London for the sneak peak (no pun intended) of Lucian Freud: Portraits , which features 100 of Freud's most important portraits over 70 years, including the one he was painting when he died in July 2011.
The duchess majored in art history in college and was without William, who is in the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic for a six-week tour fulfilling his duties as an RAF helicopter search-and-rescue pilot.
She also had the rather dubious pleasure of speaking with Sue Tilley, who was at the gallery for the express purpose of hoping to meet Catherine..
Gallery director Sandy Nairne told London's Evening Standard that the museum is thrilled to have the duchess as patron. "She came to see us last September when she was deciding which organizations to support. She was fizzing with intelligent questions," Nairne said.
Since Katherine has now given her stamp of approval to Freud's nudes, look for this painting to top even the previous sale.
Wonder what Gramps would have had to say about his grandson's penchant for painting nudes...fat ones at that!
All I can say is that there's no explaining art...nor taste!
https://content.usatoday.com/communities/entertainment/post/2012/02/duchess-kate-samples-fleshy-delights-of-lucian-freud/1
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