David Dawson: Lucian Freud, the Queen, Leigh Bowery and Me

I n October 2022, Phaidon Books published 'Lucian Freud', a comprehensive tome collecting just about every work by Lucian Freud, as well as a host of essays, ephemera and notes, assembled under the eye of co-editor David Dawson - Freud's friend and assistant for the last twenty years of his life. To commemorate the book's release, Sotheby's met up with Dawson at Freud's former West London residence and studio to discuss the life and work of the late legend, what it was like sitting for the master, and some of his subjects from the Queen to Leigh Bowery.

So, this is a new book, but its actually based on the previous Phaidon two-volume box set?
Yes, it is those two volumes, put into one book - but we’ve added one extra painting that’s never been seen before near the end. Because what I did notice, after the book was printed was that in the last few paintings Lucian painted, his colours became very silvery, different whites and greys. It was very, very beautiful as in each of the paintings, it became something new... So I added this painting to it, which is of his son, Frank Paul. That’s in this book, with this amazing use of Cremnitz white, which was what he used to paint flesh, and Flake white was the white he used for inanimate objects. It all runs together beautifully, doesn’t it?

Absolutely - and this is such a huge volume, it really contains everything
Yes, so the other thing about this book is that it’s a really comprehensive view of his entire work. It’s going to be around for a long, long time. It’s not going to change and the work is complete. It’s a very good book to have.

So a chronological sequence, over successive decades?
Yes, this is a really important, comprehensive overview of paintings and drawings and etchings. It must be, about 80 percent of his total work.

Going back to when you first encountered him - how did Lucian figure in your world before you met him?
Oh, he was somebody I was aware of and recognised as a really serious artist, but I was looking towards America. During the 1980s I was an art student in London, I was a contemporary of all the YBAs, we were the same year, but as we were coming up through art school, it was a really arid period in British art - all those really dry minimalist, conceptual shows.

Let’s have a look at a few of the key works here. One that has been very much on all our minds in recent weeks is the portrait of the Queen. Now, you were obviously there at the time, assisting Lucian and you also took that very famous photograph of them together, him at the easel. What are your memories of that day?
Just that it was rather special and quite unique, the painting was done in St. James’s Palace I would go in with Lucian at each sitting, set up the easel, get the paints ready, we’d always bring the painting back with us.

You didn’t leave it there?
No, because it’s so small, so we would always bring it back because it fitted perfectly into a little trainer shoe box.

Of course - yes, it was tiny!
Yes, it’s so small, partly because Lucian works so slowly, he knew there was going to be limited time allowed, so it gave him a chance that he could possibly finish a painting, if it was very small-scale and then we had to add to it because of the queen’s diadem.

I heard that the Queen commented that Lucian was taking an awful long time, and he replied that this was him painting quickly!
Well, I think she realised that the more they talked, [the longer it would take as] Lucian would stop painting! It was amazing, she was very interested in everything, especially they shared an interest in horses and the trainers who they both knew in common. It was about nineteen, or twenty, two-hour sittings. And it was a great success, I think. What was so nice was, because Lucien was an Order of Merit, when he died, the Order of Merit had to be handed back to the Queen and she then chooses another person, in that same field. so it went to David Hockney. And in the Lucian Freud: New Perspectives show at the National Gallery, we’ve hung the portrait of the Queen with self portrait of Lucian on one side and Hockney on the other.

Let’s look at some more. This one is very well known, The Girl with the White Dog.
Yes, that’s his first wife, Kitty.

And of course, dogs were a regular thing.
Well, he loved fur and skin and the difference between them, I always rather like, in a way that he made dogs look naked, he made animals look naked and he made naked people like animals.

I mean it’s a brilliantly, contradictory Lucian thing. he made people like animals, which we are in some ways. It’s nice, isn’t it! There is a high-spiritedness in all of Lucian’s work - funny and sad are closely connected. So, you’ve got to have both in everything, in life. When people say, the paintings are cruel and cold - well they’re not, you just need to stand with them and see how Lucian put everything of you into the portrait. The intimacy, the closeness of the person when you look at a portrait - it's the physical close-up space that you share only with loved ones.

One of my favourites, which looks glorious at the National Gallery, is the huge one of Leigh Bowery and Nicola on the bed, ‘And The Bridegroom”
Lucian always told me he thought this was his best painting. It’s - well, everything about this painting is just right, the grandness of it and the title, And the Bridegroom, it’s from A. E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad.

What do you think Lucian responded to in Leigh?
I used to go out to lots of nightclubs at that time, so I knew Leigh as a performer. You’d go to a club, and everyone would be waiting for him to arrive - and if you knew he arrived, you knew you were in the right club that night! For the sittings, Leigh would come in, during the day, wearing an old gaberdine overcoat and a really ratty old blonde wig that was slightly askew, he looked like - do you know a British comedian Benny Hill? [laughs]. Leigh was fascinating for Lucian, he just adored him. He just thought he was fearless, extraordinary, all the things that Lucian liked in a person. Here was this bulk of a physical man, but he was incredibly balanced and light - he could move or contort his body in ways he wanted.

How did Lucian direct him to sit?
Lucian, never, ever directed anybody how he wanted to paint them. When Leigh first arrived, I think Lucian was thinking he might try getting him in one of Leigh’s rather baroque outfits. Leigh had these dimples in his cheeks, where his piercings were taken out and he would arrive in this wig. But then Lucian went off and took a phone call in the kitchen and returned to the studio and Leigh had stripped off and was naked. So, Lucian just picked up a brush and started painting without speaking.

How did you yourself find it, sitting for Lucian?
When Lucian asked me to sit for the first time, he said, I think I’ve got an idea for a painting of you. All I said was, do you want me clothed or unclothed? He said, naked and that was my only question. Then he said, would you maybe like to lie on here and then you just be you. Maybe he might go, oh maybe just move your arm a little but on the whole, it’s not contrived. You do feel a little self-conscious at the beginning.

Yes, that self-consciousness must be inhibiting at the beginning
It can be, but that’s part of you and he’s not trying to hide or he’s not trying to exaggerate anything and that is what is wonderful. It’s who you are and here we are and this is real. I don’t know if it comes out of our modern urban living or it’s just everywhere, but these days, you’re never good enough, are you. It’s all about - you’ve got to improve, you’ve got to be better, you’ve got to do this, you’ve got to go to the gym. Everything is about improving because you’re not good enough. Lucian was the opposite of that, he was like, you are here, you are good enough and this is what you are, this is real life. This is the fundamental thing I’ve always loved about Lucian’s work is its honesty.

When you began to sit for him, what did you learn about yourself, refracted through that process?
Well, it’s not like being in therapy because it’s not, I think I learned a really nice way of spending a long time with one other person. I mean I’m a singular man and I don’t live with anybody but I really, really liked spending hours and hours in a painting studio with him. The gentleness and the slowness of it all, is a very sympathetic way for you to daydream. You’re allowed to daydream and feel safe in that environment. Yes, so all the personal stuff that is going on in your life, when you came in and suddenly sat here, all that got pushed way. So, the balance of life was really good,...your own balance in life got into the right position. And that’s what he did for a lot of people, I think.

Yes, Martin Gayford, who writes the essays in the new book, also recounted his similar experiences in The Man With The Blue Scarf
Martin Gayford is a wonderful writer and he knew Lucian, he has a deep understanding of paintings. I still think that his book, The Man With The Blue Scarf is the most accurate piece of writing about what it’s like to sit for Lucian. It’s good because he doesn’t waver away from what he knows and his experiences with Lucian and it’s rich because the one thing about sitting for Lucian was that the stories and the ideas and Lucien’s understanding of things was so captivating. That’s why he had all these sitters, because people wanted to be in his company - because he was such good company. He was really good fun to be with.

Lucian Freud by Martin Gayford, David Dawson and Mark Holborn, £100 phaidon.com/lucianfreud

What were your main organising principles for the exhibition? Was there a linear progression in mind as one moved through the successive rooms?
Our Credit Suisse Exhibition: Lucian Freud – New Perspectives, aims to introduce the work of Lucian Freud to new audiences by introducing new voices and new ideas about Freud’s work. We do so by showcasing masterpieces of the artist’s entire career, all the way from the 1940s to the 2010s. However, within that rough chronology, we focus on thematic groups that identify particular angles of interest, often re-assessing preconceived notions about Freud’s work. We end on a room that addresses a recurring theme in the artist’s entire oeuvre: the flesh – the human body and, perhaps, mortality itself. 

In your opinion, why does Freud still resonate so profoundly with people?
Freud’s continuing success and impact is partially due to his name, celebrity and the exceptional market successes that his sales can still command. But in the past years, his fame has nearly occluded a clear view of his actual work and the massive contribution he made to figurative painting in the 20th century. The occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth seems to be a good opportunity to take stock and really look at how and why his work still has so much impact and resonance with audiences. That impact goes beyond the artist’s fame. Instead, I believe it is testament to Freud’s profound, dogged and almost wilful belief in the power of painting – despite all the challenges that the 20th century presented to the medium. 

How crucial a role did David Dawson play in Freud’s final decade or so?
David Dawson has been an unwavering advocate for Freud, both in the final decade of the artist’s life, and well into the past decade after his death. As the former assistant of Lucian Freud and as a fellow artist himself, he understands the work with unmatched knowledge and commitment. It was a pleasure working with David on this project – his advice was invaluable.

What are your personal memories of Freud?
I actually never met Freud myself. But I was working at the National Galleries of Scotland, when Freud advocated for the joint acquisition of Titian’s Diana and Actaeon and Diana and Callisto with the National Gallery, London. Having an artist of his renown speak to the acquisition of those two masterpieces for the Nation made a great difference – and made the paintings available for our visitors.

The painting that struck me the most, seeing in the flesh last week, was ‘And The Bridegroom…’. Was there any one work which, when hung in this show, struck you anew with its power and force?
Working on the exhibition was a real pleasure for getting to see so many well-known works in a different light. My favourite in this regard was perhaps ‘Sleeping by the Lion-Carpet’, 1996. Freud’s paintings of the large, expansive, non-traditional bodies of the performance artist Leigh Bowery and the benefits supervisor Sue Tilley caused a real stir in the 1990s.  ‘Sleeping by the Lion-Carpet’, 1996, still has that power to surprise us, but whereas criticism in the 1990s was very concerned with its deviation from a perceived bodily norm, I believe that there is actually now an opportunity to see these paintings for the care and attention that was lavished onto them in the very process that created them: paintings itself. In that, they become a celebration of the human body, of painting as a discipline, and – perhaps –  of human nature itself. 

The Credit Suisse Exhibition Lucian Freud: New Perspectives runs until 22 January 2023 at the National Gallery, London