Name: Blonde Girl
Brand: Lucian Freud
Rating: 5 (231 reviews)

Track auction value trend

The value of Lucian Freud's Blonde Girl (signed) is estimated to be worth between £11,500 and £18,000. This etching, created in 1985, has shown consistent value growth, with an average annual growth rate of 5%. This work has an auction history of eight total sales since its entry to the market in April 2016. In the past 12 months, the average selling price was £12,000 across one sale. Over the past five years, the hammer price has ranged from £12,000 in December 2023 to £22,096 in May 2023. The average return to the seller over this period was £14,491. Blonde Girl is part of a limited edition of 50.

Auction Date

Auction House

Location

Hammer Price

Return to Seller

Buyer Paid

December 2023

Bonhams New Bond Street

United Kingdom

May 2023

Dorotheum, Vienna

Austria

December 2018

Bonhams New Bond Street

United Kingdom

October 2017

Phillips New York

United States

September 2017

Sotheby's London

United Kingdom

March 2017

Sotheby's New York

United States

February 2017

Sotheby's London

United Kingdom

Meaning & Analysis

This etching was produced by Lucian Freud in 1985, and pictures a nude woman stretched across the composition, her figure languidly leaning to the right. Though he has not detailed her surroundings, this blond woman appears to be sat on a chair with her legs cropped underneath the knee, and her hand resting on the negative space to the right of the work. With rounded lines and calculated hatching, Freud pronounces the feminine curvature of her body.

Though he was not always an avid depicter of nudes, Lucian Freud increasingly turned his attention to what he referred to as Naked Portraits from the mid-1960s. These works are less grounded in a voyeuristic perception of the female nude, but more-so in Freud's view that every single facet of the sitter's body was as important as their face in a portrait. In Blond Girl, Freud has built intense tonality around the sitter's face, highlighting her pensive expression. This detailing of expression is extended to her body, as he pays particular attention to the way her arm rests on an invisible surface.

Though the identity of this unnamed sitter is unknown, we can observe in Blond Girl a psychological bond between sitter and artist so typical of Freud's work. By observing his subjects for sometimes hundreds of hours, Freud truly understood the behaviour of his sitters and connected with them through conversation and his unwavering gaze.