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Medium: Etching
Edition size: 25
Year: 1989
Size: H 40cm x W 36cm
Signed: Yes
Format: Signed Print
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Auction Date | Auction House | Location | Hammer Price | Return to Seller | Buyer Paid |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Sotheby's London | United Kingdom | ||||
October 2023 | Phillips New York | United States | |||
May 2017 | Shapiro Auctioneers | Australia | |||
October 2015 | Phillips London | United Kingdom | |||
November 2014 | Van Ham Fine Art Auctions | Germany | |||
February 2012 | Christie's London | United Kingdom |
This etching was produced by Lucian Freud in 1989, and illustrates the mirror-image of a painting with the same title. In the foreground, the nude figure of Angus Cook stretches up the length of the composition. His feet, which appear disproportionately large, stand upon a bed, underneath which the head of another man peers up at Cook. Beyond the two figures, Freud has represented the inside of his studio, with canvases propped up against the wall.
Angus Cook, a filmmaker who Freud clearly took a liking to, sat for the artist over the period of 1985-90, and is the subject of at least seven paintings and seven etchings. Like his other etchings of Cook, like Man Posing and Naked Man On Bed, this particular etching was produced alongside a painting with a similar composition. The fact that Freud decided to produce etchings alongside his painted portraits of Cook is testament to his preoccupation with the sitter. For Freud, it didn't particularly matter whether his sitter was male or female. Of prime important to him was engaging with his sitter on a deeply psychological level, so that he could truly understand and therefore represent them.
Though Freud rarely depicted men in his Naked Portraits, Two Men In The Studio is testament to his ability to capture his sitters with blunt honesty and psychological depth. Though the bodily proportions here aren't as biologically accurate as we might expect from Freud, he still captures the confident character of his sitter with great attention to detail.