Lucian Freud

Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner in 1997

London, Tate Gallery, Lucian Freud: Some New Paintings, 1998, no. 121

Sebastian Smee, Lucian Freud 1996-2005, London 2005, p. 40, no. 18, illustrated in colour

The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate although the overall tonality is deeper and richer in the original. This work is in very good condition. No restoration is apparent under ultraviolet light.
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Eight Months Gone is a remarkably intimate and sincere portrayal of one of the world's most beautiful women by one of the greatest painters of this era. Depicting the reclining Jerry Hall eight months pregnant with her fourth child Gabriel in 1997, this painting shows the natural serenity of her as an expectant mother. In this capacity it provides a tranquil counterbalance to the epic catalogue of iconic photographic images she made with the likes of Helmut Newton, Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, and Francesco Scavullo during the preceding three decades. Indeed, Eight Months Gone truly affords unique insight to the private side of one of the most public personas of our times.

The vestige of a wonderful encounter between these two cultural icons, the narrative of this work's genesis has been recounted by Jerry: "When I was eight months pregnant with Gabriel, I sat next to Lucian Freud at dinner. He asked if he could paint me and wanted me to start the next day. I was flattered to be asked in my condition to model for such a great artist. I accepted and posed three times a week until I went into labour. I adored Lucian and felt cheered up to be involved in something creative. Although I was pregnant and posing nude, I felt so comfortable. Lucian adored my various lumps and bumps and, through his admiring eyes, I became very accepting of my growing body. It was so exhilarating to be appreciated for being natural and hugely pregnant. That was a great gift that Lucian gave me [...] We talked a lot about art, and he was very impressed that I had been so close to Andy Warhol. He loved Warhol's work and rated him as a truly innovative artist. He also loved David Hockney, who we met for lunch, but his favourite artist and best friend was Frank Auerbach" (Jerry Hall, My Life in Pictures, London 2010, p. 232).

Eight Months Gone exhibits exceptional painterly dexterity, proving Freud's phenomenal aptitude to describe form and character directly onto the canvas in the stuff of pigment and medium. Enlisting only the most necessary economy of means, the deft strokes of the brush are narrated by the tightly-knit textural schema. It is a sublime display of Freud's painterly control: the facetted planes of colour shift through a tonal spectrum to lend form while a flurry of minute brushstrokes forges a physical topography that describes the body's shape. Indeed, as is perfectly characteristic of Freud's working practice of this time, the material of paint becomes inextricable from its subject: an equation reached only after decades of struggle to enlist the most judicious array of mark-making. As the artist has stated, "The idea of doing paintings where you're conscious of the drawing and not the paint just irritated me. So I stopped drawing for many, many years...I thought that I would make forms from the urgency of the paint, rather than having ready-made forms" (cited in: Bruce Bernard, David Dawson and Sebastian Smee, Freud at Work, London 2006, p. 18).

Considering the sheer effort that Freud invests in his work, typically executing not more than a handful of paintings each year with every one demanding multiple sittings and tireless reworking, the present work is especially noteworthy as there was clearly the utterly non-negotiable schedule of his sitter's pregnancy. As the artist said when he first asked Jerry to sit for him: "Come tomorrow morning. We have to be quick, before you have the baby" (cited in: James Reginato, 'Jerry Hall: The Model Muse', Sotheby's at Auction, September-October 2010, p. 30). This process was clearly expedited by the subject's exceptional modelling professionalism. Since she had moved to Paris aged 16 Jerry had played the part of artist's muse, first posing for the drawings of fashion illustrator Antonio Lopez. She has described how: "Lucian was pleased with the way that I could get back into exactly the same position with the same angles. He told me that very few people could do that, and that I made a very good artist's model. I was used to holding the same position for long periods of time and loved the peace and tranquillity of Lucian's studio: no phones rang and no one ever rang the doorbell [...] we stayed friends and after Gabriel's birth I took him along in his carry-cot and we met for delicious lunches" (Jerry Hall, Op Cit). Also following the birth of Gabriel, Freud composed the very well-known, large scale work Large Interior, Notting Hill in 1998, which includes his frequent sitter David Dawson apparently breast-feeding a baby in the middle of the sparse room. Anecdotal legend recalls how this figure was initially Jerry Hall with her baby, but due to her being unable to fulfil the extensive schedule of sittings owing to other commitments, the artist replaced her figure with that of Dawson.

Famously acclaimed as "the greatest living realist painter" by Robert Hughes (Exhibition Catalogue, Washington DC, Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and travelling, Lucian Freud: Paintings, 1987, p. 7) and "the Ingres of Existentialism" by Herbert Read (Contemporary British Art, Harmondsworth 1951, rev. 1964, p. 35), Freud's critical reputation across the past seven decades remains unmatched and undiminished. Eight Months Gone is a stunning distillation of his ability to capture exactly, through forensic brushwork and observation, the mood and character of his subject, resulting in a portrait of very great integrity and beauty.