Man With A Blue Scarf: On Sitting For A Portrait By Lucian Freud

Lucian Freud (1922-2011), widely regarded as the greatest figurative painter of our time, spent seven months painting a portrait of the art critic Martin Gayford. The daily narrative of their encounters takes the reader into that most private place, the artist's studio, and to the heart of the working methods of this modern master - both technical and subtly psychological.

From this emerges an understanding of what a portrait is, but something else is also created: a portrait, in words, of Freud himself. This is not a biography, but a series of close-ups: the artist at work and in conversation at restaurants, in taxis, and in his studio. It takes one into the company of the painter for whom Picasso, Giacometti, and Francis Bacon were friends and contemporaries, as were writers such as George Orwell and W. H. Auden.

The book is illustrated with many of Lucian Freud's other works, telling photographs taken by David Dawson of Freud in his studio, and images by such great artists of the past as van Gogh and Titian who are discussed by Freud and Gayford.

Full of wry observations, the book reveals the inside story of how it feels to pose for a remarkable artist and become a work of art.

"It will be read as long as Freud's work is admired".
(The Sunday Times)

"If it is Freud who dominates this book, it is Gayford's achievement to bring him out and to do so with wit and humor as well as acute intelligence. "Man with a Blue Scarf" is literally inimitable no one else is going to get this opportunity. It's the real deal".
(The Guardian)

"A journal, an act of confession, a character study of Freud, a piecemeal survey of art history and an investigation into the practicalities of portraiture".
(The Spectator)

"Gayford's observations and Dawson's photos provide a unique insight into the working habits of the greatest painter of the human frame in all its infinite variety".
(New Statesman)

"Freud is vividly surprising, potent and dynamic a portrait of an anarchic painter with views on everything from Leonardo's failings to Princess Margaret's voice".
(The Observer)