The Lives of Lucian Freud (2 volume set)

William Feaver

Hardcover | 1238 pp | 2 volumes

Knopf | 2019 | 9780525657521 & 9780525657668

Illustrations: 17 colour and 41 b/w

Volume I: The Restless Years (1922-1968) 

Volume II: Fame (1968-2011) has eight pages of colour images.

PLEASE NOTE: This title has been remainder marked by the publisher - a  marker pen dot or line on one edge. See images for example.

The first biography of the epic life of one of the most important, enigmatic and private artists of the 20th century. Drawn from almost 40 years of conversations with the artist, letters and papers, this is a major work written by a well-known British art critic.

Lucian Freud (1922-2011) is one of the most influential figurative painters of the 20th century. His paintings are in every major museum and many private collections here and abroad. William Feaver's daily calls from 1973 until Freud died in 2011, as well as interviews with family and friends were crucial sources for this book. Freud had ferocious energy, worked day and night but his circle was broad including not just other well-known artists but writers, bluebloods, royals in England and Europe, drag queens, fashion models gamblers, bookies and gangsters like the Kray twins. Fierce, rebellious, charismatic, extremely guarded about his life, he was witty, mischievous and a womaniser.

This is an extremely intimate, lively and rich portrait of the artist, full of gossip and stories recounted by Freud to Feaver about people, encounters, and work. Freud's art was his life - "my work is purely autobiographical" - and he usually painted only family, friends, lovers, children, though there were exceptions like the famous small portrait of the Queen. With his later portraits, the subjects were often nude, names were never given and sittings could take up to 16 months, each session lasting five hours but subjects were rarely bored as Freud was a great raconteur and mimic. This book is a major achievement, a tour de force that reveals the details of the life and innermost thoughts of the greatest portrait painter of our time. 

Reviews

The concluding volume of Feaver's unmissable biography sees the great painter evolving from enfant terrible into Old Devil - although really was a man ever so uncompromisingly himself from cradle to grave? As a life it's both a horrible warning and a shining example, and Feaver does it justice ― Daily Telegraph

Freud was a wonderful painter - a genius - but a frequently awful human being. His endless feuds and fights, his numerous sexual partners, his extraordinary work and his eccentricities are all vividly chronicled in this, the second volume of Fever's monumental biography ― Mail on Sunday, Books of the Year

Lucian Freud wanted William Feaver's biography of him to be 'the first funny art book' . [this is] certainly that, with laughs galore. But it's also much more, not least a wonderfully vivid chronicle of the interlocking worlds of money, art and bohemia ― Observer, Best Books of 2020

Freud's voice rings out on every page, offering opinions on everything from the poutiness of some of his less-acknowledged children to the sublimity of Titian's Diana and Callisto. There's plenty of celebrity juice here too ― Guardian, Best Art Books of 2020

Huge, gossipy and sometimes shocking . no less breezy and eye-popping than the first ― The Times and Sunday Times Best Books of 2020

Feaver has collected some fabulous stories ― Daily Telegraph, The Best Biographies and Memoirs of 2020

William Feaver's biography of Lucian Freud also comes in two parts. I read the second part, Fame: 1968-2011 (Bloomsbury) this year and found it as engrossing and well informed as the first, and as judicious and well written -- Colm Toibin ― New Statesman, Books of the Year

[One of] the best things I read this year . crammed with enough jaw-dropping, buttocks-clenching revelations to keep a whole Soho pub entertained for days -- Robert Douglas Fairhurst ― Spectator, Books of the Year

Explosively enjoyable, bursting with life and art, and all focused on a central figure as wild and beguiling as any character in literature, real or fictitious ... Feaver is wonderfully deft at interweaving the art and the life in an unshowy manner. Throughout the two volumes he manages to convey Freud's personal magnetism, and the way he was simultaneously controlled and controlling and out of control. And, rare for a biographer, he shows what it was like to be with his subject from day to day -- Craig Brown ― Mail on Sunday

Magnificent ... Reads like the last days of Rome ... Feaver shares his subject's style and timing. His clipped prose is running commentary and ironic aside; the sentences, bone-dry, have dramatic entrances -- Frances Wilson ― Times Literary Supplement

If Freud's pictures are at heart all about palpable reality, the same is true of Feaver's daunting enterprise ... David Hockney described Freud's portraits as being essentially "an account of looking", and that's just what Feaver's book is too ― Sunday Times

An extremely juicy biography . You can hear Freud's voice on the page, which is thrilling .Bulges with gossipy stuff . He was more vivid than other people ... and Feaver's great and generous achievement in his book is to enable us to imagine this. Its last lines - Freud tells him, that he's always liked lipstick on the teeth - are so perfect. Somehow, they say it all. Dress up, go out, get laid. And then try to get it all down in your work: "Tell people you've been alive" -- Rachel Cooke ― Observer

A biography that is as generous and unsparing as Freud's own best work. At once personally intimate and critically detached, perceptive on the art ... but never trying to compete with it, Feaver's biographical portrait is an unforgettable achievement ― Prospect

Superb and eye-opening ... A figure who was driven by strong appetites, told the truth when it was uncomfortable or unwanted, and used paint to play a complicated game in which self-revelation was strangely mixed up with self-disguise. ― Prospect

A mesmerising picture of a paintaholic who was incorrigibly on the make . Feaver's vastly detailed biography is the ideal companion to Freud's work. It resembles nothing so much as a large Freud canvas: hypnotic, occasionally reiterative, quirkily dark in places, proceeding by a process of obsessive accretion -- Elizabeth Lowry ― Guardian

Diverting . Freud played the mischievous bar-room raconteur, chuckling over bygone stunts and scrapes, and sticking the knife into old foes with venomous relish ― Sunday Telegraph

The latest instalment of the epic biography of Lucian Freud finds him at the height of his fame ― The Times

Absorbing in all its darkness and light, a dazzling tour de force . Remarkable . we have to be grateful that his Boswell was there to make a record ― Literary Review

The first volume of Feaver's biography of the artist was highly acclaimed. This second one covers his most productive years ― Sunday Times

William Feaver has done a brilliant job -- Lynn Barber ― Daily Telegraph

Freud emerges, dab by dab, fully three-dimensional from Feaver's vibrant recitation of dealers and models, works in progress and gambling ... David Hockney, another sitter, described Freud's portraits as being essentially "an account of looking", and that's just what Feaver's book is too ― SUNDAY TIMES

Freud and Feaver seize you by the elbows, bundle you into a Bentley, haul you round the nightclubs, feed you oysters, Guinness and amphetamines and order you Russian tea and eggs the next morning. I didn't know whether I'd been roughed up or ravished ― The Times

This is a tremendous read. Anyone interested in British art needs it . An extraordinary book -- Andrew Marr ― New Statesman

A biography that is as entertaining, and full of twists and turns, as a picaresque novel . It has amazing zip and gusto, and leaves you wanting more -- Craig Brown ― Mail on Sunday

Superlative . Every page of this volume affirms his distinction . This is Lucian Freudian biography, packed with stories -- Alexandra Harris ― Guardian

Lucian Freud was unique; unique in intensity, in affection, in interest and in fun. This brilliant and compendious biography has the same qualities. It does justice to Lucian -- Frank Auerbach

Feaver has filled his book to the brim with the excitement and strangeness of Freud's life -- Colm Toibin ― London Review of Books

Mesmerising, almost surreal in its headlong layering of detail, memory and gossip. Propelled by Freud's sardonic recollections, and lit throughout by William Feaver's impeccable, penetrating analysis of the work, this is a monstrously brilliant portrait -- Jenny Uglow

In William Feaver's The Lives of Lucian Freud, based upon decades of conversation with the painter, we hear Freud's remarkable voice on almost every page. The result is a vivid, intimate biography of one of the 20th century's most storied artists -- Annalyn Swann and Mark Stevens, Pulitzer Prize-winning authors of de Kooning: An American Master

Here, Freud gets to tell his version of events with panache ― Spectator

The painter emerges as fully three-dimensional in this second part of Feaver's biography ― THE TIMES, Best paperbacks of 2022