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Lot Essay
'I was always excited by birds. If you touch wild birds, it's a marvellous feeling' (Lucian Freud quoted in W. Feaver, Lucian Freud, London, 2002, p. 23).
Joan Bayon was a close friend of Lucian Freud and during the war he would stay with the family in Little Shelford, near Cambridge on the Fens. Joan's father was Dr Peter Bayon, a scientist who performed autopsies on birds, which Freud painted when staying with the family.
The early years of Freud's career were largely devoted to drawing, and the practice of drawing would remain a vital part of the artist's development throughout the 1940s and early 1950s. The 1940s were a period of sustained activity in drawing on the part of Freud, with the artist creating an important series of self-contained works in charcoal, ink, watercolour, coloured crayons, pencil and chalk. Freud had his first solo exhibition at the Lefevre Gallery in London in the winter of 1944, followed by a second show in early 1946, and in both exhibitions a number of drawings were exhibited.
Dead Birds on a Bamboo Table is a delicate and beautifully realised sketch of birds. Lying placidly on the bamboo table, the birds resonate from the paper with its carefully selected and muted palette of greys, muddied pinks and beige white highlighting the many shades of the feathers. In his early work Freud was attracted to animals. As a boy he had drawn 'bird people'. In the late 40s, he kept a pair of sparrow hawks in his studio. Freud always had an interest in birds, perhaps dating back to his early encounters with the works of Albrecht Dürer. Freud's treatments of birds had ranged from the early oil on panel, Landscape with Birds (1940), created when the artist was just eighteen years old to the accomplished Boy with a Pigeon (1944) exploring the human interaction with animals. In Dead Heron (1945), Freud replicates the composition of Dead Bird of 1943 (sold in these Rooms, 28 June 2011, lot 5), except in this instance spreading the body and creating a disordered ruffle of plumage. In Chicken on a Bamboo table (1944) the composition is similar in subject matter and format to the present work, thus it could be construed Dead Birds on a Bamboo Table is a preliminary study for this work.
The present drawing has an intensity equal to that of his human subjects, where dead birds and animals are treated to the same penetrating and psychological scrutiny. With its precise linear clarity akin to the deliberate quality of etching Dead Birds on a Bamboo Table draws out the artist's utterly unrivalled and emphatic engagement with the subject. For Freud, these early works represent a wholly independent discipline, if not the principal concern for him throughout the crucially formative 1940s.
Joan Bayon was a close friend of Lucian Freud and during the war he would stay with the family in Little Shelford, near Cambridge on the Fens. Joan's father was Dr Peter Bayon, a scientist who performed autopsies on birds, which Freud painted when staying with the family.
The early years of Freud's career were largely devoted to drawing, and the practice of drawing would remain a vital part of the artist's development throughout the 1940s and early 1950s. The 1940s were a period of sustained activity in drawing on the part of Freud, with the artist creating an important series of self-contained works in charcoal, ink, watercolour, coloured crayons, pencil and chalk. Freud had his first solo exhibition at the Lefevre Gallery in London in the winter of 1944, followed by a second show in early 1946, and in both exhibitions a number of drawings were exhibited.
Dead Birds on a Bamboo Table is a delicate and beautifully realised sketch of birds. Lying placidly on the bamboo table, the birds resonate from the paper with its carefully selected and muted palette of greys, muddied pinks and beige white highlighting the many shades of the feathers. In his early work Freud was attracted to animals. As a boy he had drawn 'bird people'. In the late 40s, he kept a pair of sparrow hawks in his studio. Freud always had an interest in birds, perhaps dating back to his early encounters with the works of Albrecht Dürer. Freud's treatments of birds had ranged from the early oil on panel, Landscape with Birds (1940), created when the artist was just eighteen years old to the accomplished Boy with a Pigeon (1944) exploring the human interaction with animals. In Dead Heron (1945), Freud replicates the composition of Dead Bird of 1943 (sold in these Rooms, 28 June 2011, lot 5), except in this instance spreading the body and creating a disordered ruffle of plumage. In Chicken on a Bamboo table (1944) the composition is similar in subject matter and format to the present work, thus it could be construed Dead Birds on a Bamboo Table is a preliminary study for this work.
The present drawing has an intensity equal to that of his human subjects, where dead birds and animals are treated to the same penetrating and psychological scrutiny. With its precise linear clarity akin to the deliberate quality of etching Dead Birds on a Bamboo Table draws out the artist's utterly unrivalled and emphatic engagement with the subject. For Freud, these early works represent a wholly independent discipline, if not the principal concern for him throughout the crucially formative 1940s.