Lucian Freud’s Rare Explorations of Landscape to Highlight

London – Two rare and exquisite Lucian Freud paintings that trace the artist’s enduring fascination with the natural world throughout his distinguished career will highlight Christie’s 20th / 21st Century: London Evening Sale on 28 February 2023. Unseen in public since 1974, Scillonian Beachscape (1945-46, estimate: £3,500,000-5,500,000), is an early painting by the artist, and one of a handful of works inspired by a formative visit to the Isles of Scilly, accompanied by his close friend, the artist John Craxton. During the trip, Freud created a number of drawings and completed this canvas when he returned to London. Unusually for the artist, the composition of Scillonian Beachscape is directly based on one of his location drawings, Untitled (which was sold by Christie’s in October 2022). Scillonian Beachscape is presented alongside Garden from the Window (2002, estimate: £2,500,000-3,500,000), which comes to auction for the first time. Both paintings are offered from the same private collection, and were formerly in the renowned collection of Simon Sainsbury.An exquisite portrait of nature painted at the height of Freud’s powers, Garden from the Window offers a rare glimpse of life beyond the artist’s studio walls. With exceptional detail, the artist captures the dappled play of light across the buddleia at the centre of his garden. Cropped to near-abstraction, leaves and petals are rendered with the same exacting textures that Freud applied to human flesh, their forms entangled like limbs. Painted in 2002, and unveiled at Tate Britain, London two years later, the canvas belongs to a series of works depicting the artist’s garden at 138 Kensington Church Street. The wild, overgrown plot became a great source of inspiration to him during the last two decades of his life. More keenly aware than ever before of time’s inevitable passage, Freud set about capturing the miraculous flux of light and life outside his window.