The ordeal of sitting for my father Lucian Freud

The frontispiece of this book is Lucian Freud’s portrait of his daughter Rose naked on a bed. Rose says that when her father asked her to sit, which she had long hoped he would do, she naturally assumed he would want her naked, but asked him not to paint her hairy legs. He, in turn, asked her to remove her mascara, but she refused. When she saw the canvas she was shocked at how much it focused on her vulva, but she did not object. She sat for him at night – he had other sitters during the day – and he sometimes gave her purple hearts to keep awake. When the portrait was finished, she took on the task of cleaning Freud’s studio, which ‘made me feel special, downtrodden, and loved for all the wrong reasons’.

Rose was born in 1958, 18 months after her brother, Ali. Freud had met their mother, Suzy Boyt, while she was a student at the Slade and he was a visiting lecturer, but Suzy was expelled when she got pregnant for the second time. Freud didn’t attend Rose’s birth, but turned up a couple of hours later with two live lobsters which he expected Suzy to cook, even though she was allergic to shellfish. He registered himself as the father on Rose’s birth certificate, but never suggested she take his name. For a long time Suzy hoped he would marry her, but of course he didn’t, and although he visited the children occasionally they never cohabited.