Auction of prints sets another Freud record

Published on Thursday 16 February 2012 01:57

AN AUCTION of works by the late Lucian Freud has resulted in a record-breaking sale of a print by the artist.

Entitled Eli, the etching fetched £145,250 when it went under the hammer at Christie’s in London – the highest ever auction price paid for a Freud print and well over the £70,000 for which it was estimated to sell.

A total of 38 works by the artist, said to be the most complete array of his prints ever to be auctioned, were sold.

His 1996 etching of a sitter called Sue Tilley, entitled Woman with an Arm Tattoo, fetched the second highest price of £121,250. An oil portrait of Ms Tilley sold for £20.6 million in 2008, setting a world record.

A third etching, Kai, fetched £91,250 at the sale, called The Printer’s Proof: Etchings by Lucian Freud from the Studio Prints Archive. Both prices were also well in excess of the sums they were expected to attract.

All the works on sale came from the private collection of Freud’s master printer, Marc Balakjian. The artist and the printer worked together for a quarter of a century, with Freud taking a painstaking interest in the printing process.

Almost entirely in black and white, the works were done as Freud sketched his sitters directly onto copper plates, prior to the printing process.

Richard Lloyd, head of Christie’s print department, said: “This sale was a tribute to Lucian Freud, who was not only a painter of immense talent, but also an inspired printmaker.”

Freud died in July aged 88.