Stephen Spender

Stephen Spender- the famous poet and critic (1909-95)- joined Freud and his school friend David Kentish at Capel Curig in early 1940. At the time he was associate editor of the literary and artistic review Horizon. It was during the time that the present work was drawn that Spender and Freud also collaborated on compiling an album of private jokes, the odd poem by Spender and numerous drawings by Freud. They called it "The Freud-Schuster Book", parodying a fictitious firm of Jewish solicitors. Freud made about twenty likenesses of Spender at Capel Curig. The present work, showing Spender looking down, rapt with apparent attention and concentration, gives the sense that we are being treated to a private glimpse of the great man at work. The presence of this revealing early portrait in the R.B. Kitaj Collection is all the more appropriate in that it is both a portrait by an artist whom he knew well, and is a portrait of a poet whom he knew. Kitaj himself counted numerous poets amongst his circle of close friends, many of whom, including Spender, wrote on his work.