Welsh Landscape

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport, 100 Parliament Street

At the age of 17, from December 1939 to February 1940, Lucian Freud stayed in Capel Curig, north Wales, accompanied by his friend David Kentish, and the poet Stephen Spender. They rented rooms in a small house called ‘Haulfryn’ from a retired quarryman, Evan Pritchard, for three pounds and ten shillings a week. While staying there, Freud painted Welsh Landscape, one of several paintings, ink drawings and sketches made during the visit.

The building depicted in this painting is the bothy, or small mountain hut, in which Freud painted alone every day. The same bothy appears in another well-known work by him, 'Box of Apples in Wales' (1939–40). 'Welsh Landscape' is an early example of Freud’s dexterity at applying varied brushstrokes to create different textured surfaces of paint. He would later develop these techniques to more striking effects in his nude portraits. In this painting he used a succession of rapid brushstrokes for the bothy’s walls to create a mosaic-like surface that suggests the rough stone of the building. In contrast, the dappled blends of dark browns, mauve, greens and greys of the landscape and mountains appear more ethereal in treatment, evoking the uneven blend of colourful heather and wild grasses surrounding the bothy.

In the summer of 1939, Freud and Kentish attended the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing, established in Suffolk by the painters Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett-Haines. Greatly influenced by Morris’ love of horticulture, Freud had the opportunity to observe and paint from nature, an activity he preferred to the more staged model classes he had attended at the Central School of Art in London in 1938–39. From Morris he learned the impact of focusing on a particular motif or subject. In 'Welsh Landscape', the bothy is the central focus and there is a palpable sense that the artist held a certain affection for the hut’s familiarity and its solitary location.

Lucian Freud was born in Berlin, the grandson of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. In 1933 when he was 11, the family fled Germany and settled in London. Largely a self-taught artist, since the mid 1940s Freud has contributed to countless solo and mixed exhibitions and is now regarded as Britain’s finest living figurative painter. In 1983 he was created a Companion of Honour and in 1993, awarded the Order of Merit. During 1993–94 a major retrospective opened at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London. In 2002, a critically acclaimed retrospective of his work was held at Tate Britain, London. Recent exhibitions include the Wallace Collection, London (2004); the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2007-08).

Places

Wales, Capel Curig, Gwynedd, Snowdonia

Subjects

topography, landscape C20th, stone/rock, stone wall, bothy, hut

Materials & Techniques

canvas, oil, oil painting

Artist

Lucian Freud (1922 - 2011)

Title

Welsh Landscape

Date

1939-1940

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

height: 64.00 cm, width: 77.50 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Anthony d'Offay, July 1978

Inscription

none

Provenance

James Kirkman (Lambeth Arts) dealer to Lucian Freud; from whom purchased by Anthony d'Offey in 1972; from whom purchased by the Department of the Environment in 1978

GAC number

13902