A portrait by Lucian Freud that has been out of public view for more than two decades will be auctioned in London this month. The painting, depicting one of the artist’s daughters, is expected to fetch up to £20 million ($24 million) when it is offered at Sotheby’s next week.
Freud depicted his daughter Isobel Boyt in his 1997 painting Ib Reading, which he completed after a months-long period in which she posed during 70 sittings at the artist’s West London studio. Boyt, who is shown barefoot, is seen reading Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time.
It is one of five paintings Freud produced depicting Boyt, and one of an estimated 30 works in which the artist portrayed his 14 children. Many of these works, according to Sotheby’s statement, were completed after a period of “paternal absence.”
The painting has remained in the same private collection since it was acquired after Freud completed it in the 1990s. It was last shown publicly in an exhibition in New York in 2000.
Freud’s work and his involvements with his models have become the subject of mainstream attention. Earlier this month, a Kate Moss-produced biopic focused on one model’s time posing for the painter in the early 2000s.
In November, Freud’s Large Interior, W11 (After Watteau), which features the artist’s daughter Bella among its sitters, hammered at its estimate, selling for $86 million at Christie’s from the collection of the late tech mogul Paul Allen. The work set a new record for Freud.
Ib Reading is currently on display at Sotheby’s in London, ahead of the auction house’s sale of modern and contemporary art scheduled to take place on March 1.
