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Lucian Freud s muse says she cried when he painted her

An artist who bore one of Lucian Freud s children and became his muse has revealed she cried when he painted her and felt trapped by the artist.  Indian-born British artist Celia Paul was 18 when she met the 55-year-old Freud in 1978 and gave an account of their relationship to London Review of Books.  She said Freud, her first lover, was drawn to   neurotic … vulnerable female artists who he would dump when they became too needy . Speaking about her own experience with Freud, she recounted how she modelled for Naked Girl with Egg, After Watteau, Girl in a Striped Nightshirt, Painter and Model and one other painting.

Lost and Found: the 10 best overlooked books of 2020

NYRB: 216 pages, $30 Paul’s memoir will disabuse you of any notions about the glamour of being an artist’s muse. She met famous painter Lucian Freud in 1978, when she was 18 and he was 55. She fell in love with him, and he painted her for a decade; in the meantime, her own creativity dried up entirely. In “Self-Portrait,” she writes about that stalling out, and then of how she came to create her later portraits, creamy and alive. She explains her own needs as an artist silence and solitude, even a separate apartment from her husband, who doesn’t have a key. It’s a captivating mix of memories, notebook pages and musings, proof that while Freud may have captured her on the canvas, she owns her image on the page.

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