Lucian Freud - paintings of plants and gardens

Lucian Freud painted plants and gardens as well as people and animals.

I was reminded of this last Friday when I saw Two Plants at Tate Britain.

Two Plants Lucian Freud

Today I decided to review the paintings of plants and gardens by Lucian Freud as I'd never looked at them all.

Below you can find an inventory - in a timeline - with

• notes about their context and location
• links to where you can see them and 
• quotes by people - including Freud himself - about his paintings of plants and why he did them.

In between are my photos of the above painting after I gave it my usual nose to canvas inspection..... I found the way in which he applied paint to very interesting.

All we need now is an exhibition dedicated to his paintings of plants and trees. There's certainly a lot of paintings to pick from!

Paintings of plants and gardens by Lucian Freud

"The subject matter has always been dictated by the way my life has gone. I noticed that when I was under particular strain, I didn't feel so like staring at people or bodies all day." It was at times like these that the palm, the Egyptian Book, thistles, cyclamens, buttercups, substituted for sitters. Seeing through the skin

You can see his plant paintings in The Lucian Freud Archive.

The links below are to

• either Bridgeman Images which represent his work for licensing purposes.
• or where paintings can be viewed in Galleries (if possible)

All are oil paintings unless otherwise indicated

The ones I know about are:

• 1939 - Still Life with Cactus and Flowerpots - two cacti
• 1944 - Palm Tree - a drawing - pastel chalk and ink on paper
• 1944 - The Painter's room - features what looks like a yucca
• 1944 - Quinces - sold at auction by Sotheby's but not in the Lucian Freud Archive
• 1946 - Daffodils and celery
• 1946 - Man with a Thistle (Tate) - a self portrait with a thistle stem
• 1946 - Unripe Tangerine (Pallant House Gallery) - not included in the archive
• 1947 - Lemon Sprig - two lemons and a sprig leaves
• 1947 - Small Zimmerlinde - foliage
• 1947 - Quince - Drawing conté, coloured pencil, pencil and ink on paper
• 1947 - Still Life with Green Lemon a leaf, a lemon and a slice of a Freud profile
• 1950 - Strawberries - in a box with some leaves
• 1951 - Balcony Still Life - Looks like a very dry neglected yucca; maybe the plant from the Painter's Room putting in a reappearance?
• 1951 - Interior in Paddington (Walker Art Gallery) - includes the figure of Harry Diamond (1924 - 2009); the yucca is now bigger and older and makes sense of the slightly odd appearance in Balcony Still Life (See article about the painting)

"one of the most memorable potted plants in the history of modern art"Lawreence Gowring about the Yucca which appears in Freud's paintings

• 1953 - Bananas (Southampton City Art Gallery) 
• 1953 - Plants in Jamaica - meticulous observation of exotic Caribbean vegetation at the Goldeneye villa of Ian and Ann Fleming on Jamaica, where Freud stayed during a visit in 1952-1953. Sold for £481K in 2011

For Freud, Jamaica's relaxed and vibrant island culture represented a welcome escape from the turmoil surrounding his private life back in London. This was reflected in the two paintings that he produced whilst he was there, Bananas(Collection of Southampton City Art Gallery) and Plants in Jamaica; both of which were conspicuously devoid of any human presence. "I noticed I switched away from people when my life was under particular strain," recalled Freud. "I preferred working in complete isolation. Not using people is like taking a deep breath of fresh air" (the artist cited in: Exhibition Catalogue, Venice, Museo Correr, Lucian Freud, 2005, p. 35).

The tropical beauty of the verdant Caribbean landscape provided Freud with a fresh and fertile source of inspiration for his painting. Perhaps more importantly, the painting en plein air that it required brought to his work an unprecedented immediacy and technical vitality that Freud developed over the course of the next ten years into an altogether more fluid approach to both subject and technique. 
Sotheby's Catalogue note for Plants in Jamaica | Auction 2011

Intimately observed down to its smallest, naturalistic detail, the all over composition of Plants in Jamaica is delicately articulated in modulating tones of radiant greens and browns. Using the finest sable brushes, in this work, Freud provides a mesmerizing visual manifestation of his renowned proclamation that: "The picture in order to move us must never merely remind us of life, but must acquire a life of its own, precisely in order to reflect life." (Lucian Freud, Some Thoughts on Painting, July 1954)

• 1955 Cyclamen - a stem, a flower and three leaves on a wall at Coombe Priory bought by and his second wife, Caroline Blackwood as a place where she could stay when he was in town. One of only two Freud murals now in existence (see Wall Flower and next item)