Honor Clerk

Free of Lucian Freud — Celia Paul’s road to fulfilment

Paul writes of her ten-year relationship with Freud without rancour; but only after they parted could she concentrate on her own career as a painter

issue 16 November 2019
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  • Self-Portrait

    Celia Paul

    Cape, pp. 216, £20

I was looking the other day at a video of the artist Celia Paul in conversation with the curator of her recent exhibition at the Huntington Library in California. The image projected there of a reserved and quietly-spoken woman, hesitant, diffident and patently ill at ease in the spotlight, left me very unprepared for the raw honesty and openness of this memoir.

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