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The Lives of Lucian Freud: The Restless Years, 1922 - 1968
Though ferociously private, Lucian Freud spoke every week for decades to his close confidante and collaborator William Feaver – about painting and the art world, but also about his life and loves. The result is this a unique, electrifying biography, shot through with Freud's own words.
In Youth, the first of two volumes, Feaver conjures Freud's early childhood: Sigmund Freud's grandson, born into a middle-class Jewish family in Weimar Berlin, escaping Nazi Germany in 1934 before being dropped into successive English public schools. Following Freud through art school, his time in the Navy during the war, his post-war adventures in Paris and Greece, and his return to Soho – consorting with duchesses and violent criminals, out on the town with Greta Garbo and Princess Margaret – Feaver traces a brilliant, difficult young man's coming of age.
In Youth, the first of two volumes, Feaver conjures Freud's early childhood: Sigmund Freud's grandson, born into a middle-class Jewish family in Weimar Berlin, escaping Nazi Germany in 1934 before being dropped into successive English public schools. Following Freud through art school, his time in the Navy during the war, his post-war adventures in Paris and Greece, and his return to Soho – consorting with duchesses and violent criminals, out on the town with Greta Garbo and Princess Margaret – Feaver traces a brilliant, difficult young man's coming of age.
704 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 5, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
July 22, 2022
Lucian Freud seems to have been born with the belief that he would make it as an artist. A supreme confidence in his own talent which permitted no doubt and meant he never bothered with a regular day job or a plan B in case art didn't pay off.
As it turned out he was right to be confident.
He also seems to have had the firm idea that being a talented artist meant he was exempt from the usual standards of decency and morality. He spent a great deal of his life, drinking gambling and fornicating with wild abandon.
I personally enjoy stories about bohemian scenes of days gone by (a relic of my own sheltered Christian upbringing perhaps) so i was happy to read about the Colony Club and London back in the day but i can see how it might not grab other readers.
There is probably a bit too much information here, it's obvious the author is an ardent admirer of Freud's and has perhaps gone overboard. All the same it's quite readable and enjoyable if you like reading about artists and bohemian life.
As it turned out he was right to be confident.
He also seems to have had the firm idea that being a talented artist meant he was exempt from the usual standards of decency and morality. He spent a great deal of his life, drinking gambling and fornicating with wild abandon.
I personally enjoy stories about bohemian scenes of days gone by (a relic of my own sheltered Christian upbringing perhaps) so i was happy to read about the Colony Club and London back in the day but i can see how it might not grab other readers.
There is probably a bit too much information here, it's obvious the author is an ardent admirer of Freud's and has perhaps gone overboard. All the same it's quite readable and enjoyable if you like reading about artists and bohemian life.
July 28, 2021
All the published reviews have rewarded this first volume of William Feaver's two-volume biography of the painter Lucian Freud 5 stars. For a variety of reasons, I feel like penalizing the book down to 3 stars, but I will split the difference.
While there is a spectacular amount of content, it is hard to get a grip of it. While it is a rather astounding work of social history and the artistic community based in London from the thirties through the sixties, I feel like I've heard a lot of belittling commentary and not a great deal of useful critique. And the damned book is SO hard to READ! Feaver jumps around from quoted material to third-person narrative, mixing comments by Freud and friends, associates, lovers, wives and children to the point that I kept going back to find all the quotation marks and periods and identify the voice.
Those voices create additional problems in that none of them belongs to a "reliable narrator." Certainly LF wasn't a reliable narrator, witness or authority on anything at all. His memory was patchy and all he was ever focused on was himself, his own feelings and his opinions of others--opinions he shared with a kind of omniscient confidence. This really undermines the dependability of the history and leaves the reader trying to navigate quicksand. As an art historian and a teacher, I would be loath to quote anything from this book to my students as factual. I might have them read passages and hold a discussion, but mainly as an exercise in critical thinking and verifying claims.
Feaver also loves his British slang, and liberally lards the text with words that even a reasonably educated American is unlikely to know. While there is a certain charm in that voice, it is irritating as hell to keep referring to the British slang dictionary on my cell phone. Thank heavens for that cell phone. I also used to to find images of paintings, by Freud and by others, not illustrated in the book but nonetheless given significant discussion and import.
Most of all, the cast of characters is insanely large and there is no way to track them all. I think two charts would have changed that.
Chart number one, of course, would be Freud, the mothers of his children and his children. In this diagram, the women would be positioned in the sequence they appeared in his life and their birthdays, and the childrens' birthdates, would be provided. If this only included the fourteen conventionally acknowledged children, it would help. It is believed that Freud fathered as many as forty children; a separate list speculating on those lovers and their issue would have been great, too.
Chart number two could be more of a biographical list identifying key players: models, collectors, fellow artists, assorted friends. And it should include notes about who was married to whom, when.
The result was that "The Lives of Lucian Freud: The Restless Years: 1922-1968" was not nearly as much fun to read as I thought it would be. I have volume two sitting on my "to read" shelf next to the new biography of Francis Bacon by Mark Stevens and Annalynn Swan. That's something of a doorstop, although I like Stevens and Swan's writing very much, so I think I will read something easier and more diverting in the interim.
I have always had mixed feelings about Freud's art, not caring much for the flat, somewhat Surrealist, obsessively detailed paintings of the thirties and forties. I certainly have been overwhelmed by the giant galumphing nudes of the last years of the 20th century and first years of the 21st century. So what was particularly enjoyable in this book--despite my whining--are the portraits. Freud of the fifties and sixties grapples with the problems of portraits, insights, appearances, messages, interpretations, and all the rest of that stuff that is part of the realist project.
I strongly recommend you start with a handful of bookmarks. Mark the color plates, mark the index. I spent a lot of time flipping to both. Then again, I also suggest you keep a cell phone or tablet handy to look up words and idioms you don't know and to find reproductions of images that seem to be important to the writer but are not illustrated, even in black-and-white.
In the end, while I always feel I would like to meet artists, sit in their studios, watch them work, sip at my drink while they sip at theirs and talk with friends, I am not so sure I would have found this gifted but utterly narcissistic personality someone I should get to know.
While there is a spectacular amount of content, it is hard to get a grip of it. While it is a rather astounding work of social history and the artistic community based in London from the thirties through the sixties, I feel like I've heard a lot of belittling commentary and not a great deal of useful critique. And the damned book is SO hard to READ! Feaver jumps around from quoted material to third-person narrative, mixing comments by Freud and friends, associates, lovers, wives and children to the point that I kept going back to find all the quotation marks and periods and identify the voice.
Those voices create additional problems in that none of them belongs to a "reliable narrator." Certainly LF wasn't a reliable narrator, witness or authority on anything at all. His memory was patchy and all he was ever focused on was himself, his own feelings and his opinions of others--opinions he shared with a kind of omniscient confidence. This really undermines the dependability of the history and leaves the reader trying to navigate quicksand. As an art historian and a teacher, I would be loath to quote anything from this book to my students as factual. I might have them read passages and hold a discussion, but mainly as an exercise in critical thinking and verifying claims.
Feaver also loves his British slang, and liberally lards the text with words that even a reasonably educated American is unlikely to know. While there is a certain charm in that voice, it is irritating as hell to keep referring to the British slang dictionary on my cell phone. Thank heavens for that cell phone. I also used to to find images of paintings, by Freud and by others, not illustrated in the book but nonetheless given significant discussion and import.
Most of all, the cast of characters is insanely large and there is no way to track them all. I think two charts would have changed that.
Chart number one, of course, would be Freud, the mothers of his children and his children. In this diagram, the women would be positioned in the sequence they appeared in his life and their birthdays, and the childrens' birthdates, would be provided. If this only included the fourteen conventionally acknowledged children, it would help. It is believed that Freud fathered as many as forty children; a separate list speculating on those lovers and their issue would have been great, too.
Chart number two could be more of a biographical list identifying key players: models, collectors, fellow artists, assorted friends. And it should include notes about who was married to whom, when.
The result was that "The Lives of Lucian Freud: The Restless Years: 1922-1968" was not nearly as much fun to read as I thought it would be. I have volume two sitting on my "to read" shelf next to the new biography of Francis Bacon by Mark Stevens and Annalynn Swan. That's something of a doorstop, although I like Stevens and Swan's writing very much, so I think I will read something easier and more diverting in the interim.
I have always had mixed feelings about Freud's art, not caring much for the flat, somewhat Surrealist, obsessively detailed paintings of the thirties and forties. I certainly have been overwhelmed by the giant galumphing nudes of the last years of the 20th century and first years of the 21st century. So what was particularly enjoyable in this book--despite my whining--are the portraits. Freud of the fifties and sixties grapples with the problems of portraits, insights, appearances, messages, interpretations, and all the rest of that stuff that is part of the realist project.
I strongly recommend you start with a handful of bookmarks. Mark the color plates, mark the index. I spent a lot of time flipping to both. Then again, I also suggest you keep a cell phone or tablet handy to look up words and idioms you don't know and to find reproductions of images that seem to be important to the writer but are not illustrated, even in black-and-white.
In the end, while I always feel I would like to meet artists, sit in their studios, watch them work, sip at my drink while they sip at theirs and talk with friends, I am not so sure I would have found this gifted but utterly narcissistic personality someone I should get to know.
March 23, 2021
Lucian Freud started as a sort of Surrealist or primitive painter, rejecting all schools and techniques except those he created for himself. By doing so, he created a unique niche for himself with a very individual vision, a master at painting from life but with an emotional, deep vision penetration of character, space and texture. He was charismatic and a womanizer, leading an extremely unconventional life in properties that were little more than squats. He was also one of the infamous Francis Bacon's circle of friends. This first volume takes us from his beginnings in wartime London to his mid-life and his ascension as a major figure from wartime London to the end of the 1960's. A conversational, gossipy take of the people, the art and places of the times. - BH.
January 25, 2022
A well-detailed and very thorough account of Freud's life and art - his Berlin childhood, wartime London and the post-war ravaged continent, rambling on through a life of odd friendships, loves, hates and acquaintances, from petty criminals to royals. There is an honesty in the narrative which sort of goes on and on with girls, sitters, gambling and painting, of course. Some might find this a bit tiring after a while, but I suppose his life was just like that, monomaniacal - art, girls and gambling with little lasting regard for anyone else, else serving these desires.
January 12, 2020
Feaver is an excellent researcher and writer, and my giving the book only 3 stars has little to do with him. The problem is that there doesn't seem to be an arc to Freud's life. The result is over 600 pages of Freud painting, discussing art with other notable artists like Francis Bacon and Michael Andrews, and, mostly, Freud sleeping with every girl he meets. All of which is interesting, but it becomes exceedingly repetitive. None of the women seem to mean anything to him, so we don't read about so and so's relationship with him leading to a change in his life or art. He was one of the most selfish people I've ever heard of, which helped him become a great artist. But a 600-plus page book needs a story, and this book lacks one. Also, with such an enormous and glamorous cast, The Restless Years should have included lots of photographs.
September 5, 2021
Embarrassingly obsequious biography, in which Feaver uses huge tracts of verbatim quotation from the grotesque Freud in place of analysis or interpretation. An unpleasant misogyny runs through the book, alongside Feaver’s fascination - shared with Freud - with upper-class English bores. The book is also badly organised. I made my way through the whole poorly-edited thing, to give both author and subject the benefit of the doubt, but I won’t be moving onto another volume of this hagiography of a bully.
January 30, 2021
Good biography of a great artist and a dreadful man.
February 24, 2022
I started this book way back in the first covid lockdown period, and only just finished it now. That’s no reflection on the book, which is terrific. It is just my cup of tea as a biography. Gossipy, full of anecdotes and details of daily life. In painting a picture of the first half of Freud’s life, it also paints a picture of London life in the mid-20th century - or of life for a certain type of Londoner, in any event.
It’s all in there - the daily painting life, the exhibiting, the buying and selling, the gambling, the women, the many children, the many flats and houses, the Freud family. I have seen some readers criticise the book as being crowded and hard to follow, but might I suggest that is because they had the wrong expectations? This is not intended to be a dry, sequential academic biography. Read the book that is in front of you, not the book that you think it ought to be.
It’s all in there - the daily painting life, the exhibiting, the buying and selling, the gambling, the women, the many children, the many flats and houses, the Freud family. I have seen some readers criticise the book as being crowded and hard to follow, but might I suggest that is because they had the wrong expectations? This is not intended to be a dry, sequential academic biography. Read the book that is in front of you, not the book that you think it ought to be.
May 15, 2021
Notable takeaway - Lucian Freud was a success waiting to happen: at multiple times in the book you get the feeling that the edges of the critical establishment he is exposed to in his young life are just waiting for the grandson of the elder Freud to do anything that they could heap praise on. His paintings didn't reach any particular level of sophistication until he was in his mid 30s to early 40s, but he very much put on the mantle of successful artist before he earned it. Enjoyed the book, will get on to the second part soon.
September 15, 2024
WARNING: Contains mild swearing
It is hard to explain my feelings about this book. Partly because I found myself feeling that Freud was a selfish prick who Feaver seems willing to forgive because he's a great artist. That Freud himself felt he could behave as much like an arsehole as he wanted to do because, as he wrote himself, ...a painter must think of everything he sees as being there for his entire use and pleasure.
And I feel that my gradual loathing for Freud - whose art I actually really like - started to reflect on my feelings about this book. I think my major problem with it is that it isn't really a biography. Feaver writes about Freud and then Freud gets to make comments on what Feaver is writing about. As if this book is a DVD and Freud is doing a DVD commentary on it. Feaver, I think, tries to stay distant. Indeed, I think he's trying to make this biography the literary equivalent of a Freud portrait.
It is well-researched and, perhaps, another flaw is that there is too much in it. Too many paragraphs about peripheral parts of Freud's story and not quite enough focus on the artist and the art. So, what you end up with is the biography of a selfish, spoiled, obnoxious prick whose only saving grace is his art - which is a grace. A hard worked for grace.
This is the first part of a two volume biography and I'm not sure I want to read the second volume. This was what Freud was like when he wasn't famous. What kind of an arsehole is he going to turn into when he IS famous.
Now, I realise that I'm reviewing Freud more than the book and that perhaps Feaver deserves praise for writing something so...well...truthful. Warts and all. And perhaps Freud deserves some credit for letting him do it. But then Freud doesn't seem to have many regrets. His story is littered with debt, abortions, adultery, children, divorces, drink, gambling, fights, rudeness, and strong opinions. Maybe I'm becoming a prude in my old age but he seems to have not been above hitting women and (but for the grace of God) forcing himself upon them.
I don't know. Perhaps none of it matters because in the end the art is what will remain. Artists throughout history have behaved in shitty ways and they usually get 'forgiven' because the work is the cover for that.
So, I've given it two stars, which part of me feels is harsh because I know I'm punishing the book for Freud's spoiled prickness. But I do think Feaver over-stuffed some of the Chapters to the point where reading them is like walking through a swamp of names and bad behaviour. So two stars it is. Sorry.
I still like the art though and the bits about the process of painting were the best bits.
It is hard to explain my feelings about this book. Partly because I found myself feeling that Freud was a selfish prick who Feaver seems willing to forgive because he's a great artist. That Freud himself felt he could behave as much like an arsehole as he wanted to do because, as he wrote himself, ...a painter must think of everything he sees as being there for his entire use and pleasure.
And I feel that my gradual loathing for Freud - whose art I actually really like - started to reflect on my feelings about this book. I think my major problem with it is that it isn't really a biography. Feaver writes about Freud and then Freud gets to make comments on what Feaver is writing about. As if this book is a DVD and Freud is doing a DVD commentary on it. Feaver, I think, tries to stay distant. Indeed, I think he's trying to make this biography the literary equivalent of a Freud portrait.
It is well-researched and, perhaps, another flaw is that there is too much in it. Too many paragraphs about peripheral parts of Freud's story and not quite enough focus on the artist and the art. So, what you end up with is the biography of a selfish, spoiled, obnoxious prick whose only saving grace is his art - which is a grace. A hard worked for grace.
This is the first part of a two volume biography and I'm not sure I want to read the second volume. This was what Freud was like when he wasn't famous. What kind of an arsehole is he going to turn into when he IS famous.
Now, I realise that I'm reviewing Freud more than the book and that perhaps Feaver deserves praise for writing something so...well...truthful. Warts and all. And perhaps Freud deserves some credit for letting him do it. But then Freud doesn't seem to have many regrets. His story is littered with debt, abortions, adultery, children, divorces, drink, gambling, fights, rudeness, and strong opinions. Maybe I'm becoming a prude in my old age but he seems to have not been above hitting women and (but for the grace of God) forcing himself upon them.
I don't know. Perhaps none of it matters because in the end the art is what will remain. Artists throughout history have behaved in shitty ways and they usually get 'forgiven' because the work is the cover for that.
So, I've given it two stars, which part of me feels is harsh because I know I'm punishing the book for Freud's spoiled prickness. But I do think Feaver over-stuffed some of the Chapters to the point where reading them is like walking through a swamp of names and bad behaviour. So two stars it is. Sorry.
I still like the art though and the bits about the process of painting were the best bits.
January 27, 2024
This is the first volume of two on the life of artist Lucian Freud. Personally, I don't think I will read the second part as I feel like I got enough information out of this one and I found it to stretch out a little too much from the middle onwards, so I'm concerned that it would be similar with the other book. This one spans until his mid 40s.
I was very pleased when starting to read this, as the writing style wasn't dry, and I felt the information being given was engaging and on topic, but then as we got further into his fame more and more names started appearing (to the point where I couldn't even tell how many children this guy has because he impregnates so hard), many of which didn't feel relevant, and I honestly didn't know who was who near the end yet it made no difference.
There is a nice selection of his works in colour in two sections to reference to and look at in certain points throughout the chronology. It's interesting to see so thoroughly how being grandson to Sigmund Freud pretty much set him for life in the art world. Fame really is about who you know. Worth reading as a biography of Freud himself, but not so much on the context and analysis behind his work.
I was very pleased when starting to read this, as the writing style wasn't dry, and I felt the information being given was engaging and on topic, but then as we got further into his fame more and more names started appearing (to the point where I couldn't even tell how many children this guy has because he impregnates so hard), many of which didn't feel relevant, and I honestly didn't know who was who near the end yet it made no difference.
There is a nice selection of his works in colour in two sections to reference to and look at in certain points throughout the chronology. It's interesting to see so thoroughly how being grandson to Sigmund Freud pretty much set him for life in the art world. Fame really is about who you know. Worth reading as a biography of Freud himself, but not so much on the context and analysis behind his work.
June 22, 2024
Gripping biography: very long, full of anecdote and detail, consistently fascinating, like hanging out with one of Anthony Powell’s deeply unpleasant, energetic and charismatic n’erdowell post war artists in ‘Dance to the Music of Time’. Feaver’s prose style is unusual but works. The name dropping, scene setting and art analysis is all sensational. Like most good art books, could do with many more illustrations, but with the 2002 Tate catalogue (an exhibition where I first ‘discovered’ Freud, and which I now know was curated by Feaver) it works. The web can help too, obviously. As for my view of the paintings themselves…Freud is only really hitting his stride at the end of this first volume, in his late 40s. I find his portraits limited, stylised, very much overlapping from sitter to sitter, cold and often unpleasant. Yet they are also memorable, moving and worthy of constant reappraisal. I’d agree with David Sylvester (one of many art world types excoriated in this fabulously bitchy work) who said that Freud was a painter made, not born. All the better for it.
June 13, 2020
It was a difficult read, not because it is a 680 pg book but with too much detail on daily conversations, repetitions... and you lose your sense of time period and the main message or event. Writer mixing quotes from Lucien with his own words in the same paragraph was also confusing. I read it till the end because I was keen on learning details of Lucien’s life (and all the important people around him such as Bacon, Auerbach, Sutherland.. ) but I have to admit I had to read a lot from other sources and watch youtube videos, while reading the book, to complete the picture :-) At the end I am very happy to read it and I think it will be a good reference book whenever I need details ... This is quoted as the first book of his biography but there is no mention of the second one, when it will published etc. Anybody has any information ?
March 5, 2023
Exhaustively detailed biography, based on the author's regular conversations with Freud. But I came away from it wishing it had been more rigourously edited into something less lengthy and less repetitive. It covers a fascinating period in the British art scene and felt like it should have been much more engaging than it was. As another reviewer mentions, this is also fraught with unreliable narrators, and has only tiny handful of blink and you'll miss it references to Freud's sexual encounters with men and glosses over sexual elements of some of his long term relationships with men (eg Minton). I somewhat got the sense that the author wanted to write something for Freud, rather than about him.
February 11, 2022
This biography of Lucian Freud gives a great insight into his character and the manner he went about doing his painting. Of equal interest to me was the portrait of the art circle in Britain during these years and brings together many connections between society, celebrities and the art world.
Next step is volume 2.
Next step is volume 2.
December 5, 2025
Basically, what other 1 & 2 star reviewers have said - this book suffers seriously from lack of editing. Neither the author nor the editors took the responsibility to arrange the material sensibly. There seems to be a major element of hero-worship at work, blinding the author to the relative importance of Freud's remarks and activities through these years. Every detail is presented with the same degree of emphasis.
Lucian Freud is not an easy character to appreciate, which contributes to the inherent difficulty of writing a "successful" biography. Perhaps that is not the author's goal, but that is MY goal as a reader - to understand and appreciate how the background of the subject influences their work/s, and to understand the historical context in which the subject is operating.
By comparison, two other equally long biographies of 20th century artists managed to compile reams of data, quotations, historical events and timeline items to truly help the reader understand and appreciate the artist. These were "deKooning" and "Francis Bacon: Revelations", both by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan. Organized, interesting and informative biographies are possible!
Lucian Freud is not an easy character to appreciate, which contributes to the inherent difficulty of writing a "successful" biography. Perhaps that is not the author's goal, but that is MY goal as a reader - to understand and appreciate how the background of the subject influences their work/s, and to understand the historical context in which the subject is operating.
By comparison, two other equally long biographies of 20th century artists managed to compile reams of data, quotations, historical events and timeline items to truly help the reader understand and appreciate the artist. These were "deKooning" and "Francis Bacon: Revelations", both by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan. Organized, interesting and informative biographies are possible!
July 18, 2020
Stunning
August 13, 2020
a little slow moving but full of anecdotes and stories that make the pace worthwhile.
March 18, 2021
if you love the paintings you have to love the man
June 4, 2021
It's exhaustive, say that much. It also makes you want to read a biography of Francis Bacon more than a second volume of Freud.
September 25, 2022
Interesting book. Interesting man. Great artist.
November 15, 2022
Some great details of a hedonistic painter in post-war London who is the grandson of Sigmund Freud
November 10, 2023
A great biography, full of interest and personal detail, with so much access to Freud it is almost an autobiography.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews