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A Painter's Progress: A Portrait Of Lucian Freud
by David Dawson
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For nearly twenty years David Dawson was Lucian Freud’s assistant, companion, and model. Freud moved in rarefied, powerful circles and was tenacious about protecting his privacy. He also carefully avoided distraction. With few exceptions, he wanted only those he knew well, like the late Bruce Bernard, to photograph him. David Dawson, however, was in a unique position, and as Freud became comfortable in the presence of Dawson’s camera, photographing became part of the daily ritual of the studio. These photographs reveal in a most intimate way the subjects and the stages of paintings in progress. Few artists, if any, have had their lives and their work recorded over such a length of time. Despite Freud’s sense of privacy, his circle was wide.…
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"David Dawson, Lucian Freud’s devoted assistant, friend and frequent model for the last 20 years and an artist in his own right, has produced a beautiful tome filled with spellbinding, intimate photographs of the artist, many at work in his squalid, paint-encrusted studio. Particularly fascinating are the portraits juxtaposing Freud’s subjects with his paintings of them, eloquently revealing how they were transformed by his art. We see David Hockney sitting, hands folded, beside his fleshier close-up on the easel, while whippet-thin Freud, in characteristic knotted scarf and untied boots, is caught frozen in the doorway clutching a fistful of brushes, as if at the scene of a crime. Fans of this intense painter — who died in 2011 after a lifetime of stripping his sitters bare, often in every sense — won’t want to miss this."