Sotheby’s Auction June 24 Lucian Freud’s “Sleeping by the Lion Carpet” Featuring Sue Tilley

Sue Tilley, who met Lucian Freud while working in an unemployment office, is now the subject of “Sleeping by the Lion Carpet,” which is going up for sale at Sotheby’s on June 24 with a presale estimate of 25 million pounds to 35 million pounds ($33 million to $47 million).

“Lucian Freud’s final and most ambitious portrait of Sue Tilley (AKA’ the benefits supervisor’), completed in 1995 after nine months of sittings in his Holland Park studio, is to be offered at Sotheby’s”

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The Associated Press reports that Tilley sat for Freud in the 1990s and that “Sleeping by the Lion Carpet,” painted in 1996, is the last of Freud’s four monumental portraits of her reclining, resting or dozing.

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Tilley told The Associated Press, “It did change my life,” as she sat in front of the 7 ½-foot (2.3-meter)-high nude image of herself in the auction house showroom.

The Associated Press also notes that “Benefits Supervisor Sleeping” sold at auction in 2008 for $33.6 million, and that “Benefits Supervisor Resting” was auctioned in 2015 for $56.2 million.

By the time of his death aged 88 in 2011, Freud was described as the most acclaimed British portrait painter of the 20th century, and the AP says his reputation has only grown since.

Speaking to the Press Association, Tilley described Freud as a “perfectionist” who would “stab his leg with a brush when things went wrong,” as the portrait goes up for auction for an estimated £35 million.

Tilley said she was “told off half way through” the painting process after she got sunburned while visiting an exhibition in the south of France, and she recalled Freud “stormed out the room” when he saw she was red upon her return to work.

Associated Press

She added that there was a break of about three months painting it while her chest subsided, and she said Freud “took it very seriously, and he just stared.”

Tilley told the Press Association that if it went wrong, Freud would get the paint brush and “swear continuously the F word,” and she said it wasn’t her fault because he was angry with himself.

She also said the portrait shows “all those skinny girls that big girls can do well as well,” and she framed it as an example for big women to “show themselves off.”

The auction is tied to a broader Sotheby’s sale from the collection of British billionaire Joe Lewis, the former majority owner of Premier League soccer team Tottenham Hotspur, which is still owned by his family.

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The Associated Press says “Sleeping by the Lion Carpet” is part of a June 24-25 sale and that works by Henri Matisse, Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and others are collectively valued at more than 150 million pounds ($201 million).

Sotheby’s Europe chairman Oliver Barker described the painting as Freud’s “magnum opus,” saying, “This is a painting that during his lifetime was very much described by Lucian as being the apogee of everything that he was trying to achieve as a painter.”

The Sentinel Colorado reports that Barker said, “The market knows, and it’s very savvy, it wants to go for the best of the best — and this is it.”

Tilley, meanwhile, told the Associated Press she hasn’t seen any of the millions the portraits have fetched at auction, but she said, “Who would have thought I’d be in Sotheby’s?”