Annabel

The present watercolour depicts Annabel, one of Lucian Freud's daughters with his second wife Kitty Garman. Freud rarely worked in watercolour, but Annabel is among a small group of watercolours depicting his children, which he made when on a trip to Greece with them in 1961. These include Annie Reading, Child Resting and Child Reading, as well as Sleeping Girl (Garman Ryan Collection, The New Art Centre, Walsall). Each shows them in varying states of repose, and allows us an insight into very private and tender moments with his children. It is particularly poignant that this painting was previously owned by Lady Epstein, Annabel's maternal grandmother.

Freud's use of watercolour, by its nature fluid and spontaneous, lends this series of pictures an informal and intimate quality. His use of the medium coincided with the looser style that he was introducing into his work at the time. Sebastian Smee explains, 'Far from buttoning down the freedoms he was battling to achieve in paint, the ensuing works loosened things up further - which was of course their point. These images, splayed diagonally across the page in an array of subtle flesh tints, blues and greys, recall the watercolours of Rodin, and, as with Rodin, the faces and full bodies they depict seem untethered from any supports' (S. Smee (intro.), Lucian Freud on Paper, London, 2008, p. 11).