print
- Museum number
- 2004,0602.64
- Title
- Object: Head of a Girl I
- Description
-
Face of a long-haired girl (the artist Celia Paul) looking down. 1982
Etching
- Production date
- 1982
- Dimensions
-
Height: 111 millimetres (plate)
-
Height: 265 millimetres (sheet (deckled edges))
-
Width: 114 millimetres
-
Width: 238 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Edition of 16 plus 4 Artist's Proofs, proofed and printed by Terry Wilson of Palm Tree Studios.
Text from 'Living with art: The Alexander Walker collection' (British Museum Press, 2020):
Freud moved with his family to London in 1933 because of rising anti-Semitism in Germany and became one of the UK’s leading figurative artists. This print was made in the year that he took up etching for the first time since the 1940s. It is from a group of fifteen small-scale etchings, four of which were selected to be published with the de luxe edition of Lawrence Gowing’s monograph on the artist. This print is one of five that were editioned separately. The model for this and 'Head of a Girl II' was the British artist Celia Paul (born 1959), Freud’s partner at the time.
In 1993 Walker wrote: ‘In figurative art, particularly where the human face is the subject, I go for harsh, strong, ambiguous visions. Is it pain reflected in Lucian Freud’s small etching, Head of a Girl, 1982, with her disconcertingly puffy eyelids and lip…?’
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
2004-2005 June-Jan, BM, Matisse to Freud: The Alexander Walker Bequest
- Acquisition date
- 2004
- Acquisition notes
- Purchased by Alexander Walker from Thomas Gibson Fine Art, London on 11/6/91 for £2,996.25.
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 2004,0602.64
