Breakfast with Lucian: A Portrait of the Artist

257 Pages·2013·6.12 MB·English

by  Geordie Greig

Breakfast with Lucian
Greig, Geordie
Random House (2013)
Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Dedication
Title Page
Epigraph
Preface
1. Breakfast
2. Stalking
3. Early Days
4. First Loves
5. Obsession
6. Lorna’s Legacy
7. Caroline
8. Paint
9. Lovers
10. A Daughter’s Tale
11. Two Late Sitters
12. Dealers and Gambling
13. Offspring
14. Finale
Family Tree
Notes
Picture credits
Acknowledgements
Index
Copyright
About the Book
For ten years Geordie Greig was among a very small group of friends who
regularly met Lucian Freud for breakfast at Clarke’s restaurant on Kensington
Church Street. Over tea and the morning papers, Freud would recount stories of
his past and discuss art. It was, in effect, Freud’s private salon.
In this kaleidoscopic memoir, Greig remembers Freud’s stories: of death threats;
escaping from Nazi Germany; falling out with his brother Clement; loathing his
mother; painting David Hockney; sleeping with horses; escaping the Krays;
painting the Queen; his controversial role as a father; and why Velázquez was
the greatest painter. It is revelatory about his art, his lovers, his children, his
enemies and his love of gambling. Freud dared never to do dull, speaking
candidly of dancing with Garbo as well as painting Kate Moss naked.
Those closest to him, after decades of silence and secrecy, have spoken frankly
about what life was like living, loving or sitting for the greatest figurative
portraitist of the twentieth century. Partly based on hours of taped conversations
with the artist and his circle, and drawing on interviews with those who knew
Freud intimately – including many girlfriends, models, dealers and bookmakers
– Breakfast with Lucian is an intimate portrait of the artist as a young and old
man. Illustrated with many unseen photographs of Freud, it is a uniquely
fascinating, personal and authoritative account of one of the greatest British
painters of this century and the last, and a profile of a man who makes everyone
else’s life seem less lived.
About the Author Geordie Greig is the Editor of the Mail on Sunday. He was
previously the Editor of the London Evening Standard and Editor of Tatler. He
lives in London and is married to a Texan with whom he has three children. His
last book was The Kingmaker, the story of his grandfather’s friendship with King
George VI.
For Kathryn, Jasper, Monica and Octavia
What matter? Out of cavern comes a voice,
And all it knows is that one word ‘Rejoice!’
Conduct and work grow coarse, and coarse the soul,
What matter? Those that Rocky Face holds dear,
Lovers of horses and of women, shall,
From marble of a broken sepulchre,
Or dark betwixt the polecat and the owl,
Or any rich, dark nothing disinter
The workman, noble and saint, and all things run
On that unfashionable gyre again.
‘The Gyres’, W. B. Yeats
‘Dull not to.’
H. L. C. Greig (1925–2012)
Preface
In the mid 1990s Lucian Freud stopped publication of his authorised biography.
Even though he had cooperated with the writer he paid him off with a substantial
sum. When Lucian read the manuscript he was appalled that so many intimate
details would enter the public domain. The idea that the book would be
published in his lifetime was abandoned.
When I was a news reporter on the Sunday Times in the late 1980s, another
writer told me that East End gangsters had come round to his house, at Freud’s
request, and threatened him with unpleasant consequences if he did not stop
researching a biography. That book withered too.
This book avoided his obstructions. We met for breakfast regularly over the
last ten years of his life, and during our many conversations Lucian gradually
opened up. Eventually he was happy for me to record what we said. We had an
understanding that it was fine for me to publish what he told me in different
magazines and newspapers. The resulting book, started after Lucian’s death, is a
personal perspective on his life and work by someone who followed his career
for thirty-five years but only gained his confidence and trust in his last decade.
Walking home with David Dawson, 2011
Breakfast
CHAPTER ONE
Scruffy, slightly stooped and silent, the two men looked like characters arriving
for a dress rehearsal of Waiting for Godot. Breakfast with Lucian invariably
began the same way, with the Grand Old Man of British art and his younger
assistant, David Dawson, walking the few doors down from the painter’s home
in Kensington Church Street in Notting Hill to Clarke’s restaurant. Lucian often
wore a paint-flecked, grey cashmere overcoat, and black lace-up workmen’s
boots, which gave him a sartorial edginess. The coat was from Issey Miyake, and
his unironed white shirt was crumpled but expensive.
Lucian entered Clarke’s before the curtain went up. He and David would slip
through the delicatessen next door to the restaurant, via a side passage into the
empty dining room. The shop does a brisk trade in almond croissants, pains au
chocolat, organic cheeses, quiches, lemon tarts, sausage rolls and breads, but
breakfast next door was a privilege that Sally Clarke – the eponymous owner of
the restaurant and one of Lucian’s last sitters – only ever granted to him. In
effect, it became Lucian’s private salon for himself and his guests.
It is a small upmarket restaurant that has been a fixture in Kensington for
more than a quarter of a century. Its customers often remarked that it felt more
like going to a dinner party than a restaurant, as for most of that time Sally
Clarke offered no menu choice, only what she had decided to cook that day. It
has relaxed that distinction in recent years to give a choice of three or four dishes
every day, always what is freshest on the market. It is a discreet and popular
venue for top brass from the BBC, and people like Bryan Ferry, Salman Rushdie
and Dame Maggie Smith. When the Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu
Kyi came to the UK in June 2012 after a twenty-four-year exile, it was where
she spent her one lunch in London, on her sixty-seventh birthday. Cashmered
English ladies of a certain age enjoy its quiet atmosphere. A card on the table
indicates that mobile phones are forbidden. The Duke and Duchess of
Cambridge are customers. It is situated among estate agents and specialist
antique shops, and is easily missable; but once through its wood and glass doors,
its superiority over almost every other restaurant in the area is evident.
Lucian had first started going to the tiny front café in Clarke’s in 1989 with
Leigh Bowery, the flamboyant Australian performance artist whose pierced