‘To astonish, disturb, seduce, convince’: Lucian Freud, warts and all

It’s 100 years since Britain’s greatest portrait painter was born. William Cook looks at what made the controversial painter who he was

Freud was born in Berlin but spent most of his life in London (Getty)

In a sunlit drawing room at Chatsworth, one of Britain’s grandest stately homes, the 12th Duke of Devonshire, “Stoker” Cavendish, tells me about his family’s close friendship with Britain’s greatest portrait painter, Lucian Freud. Freud was a friend of Stoker’s father, the 11th Duke. He was a frequent guest at Chatsworth. Over the course of 20 years, he painted six members of the Cavendish family, including the man I’ve come to see today.

The Duke of Devonshire was 18 when he sat for Freud, in his London studio. “He was the best company,” recalls Stoker. “He didn’t talk down to you at all. He just made everything great fun.” Freud’s erratic lifestyle was a world away from the Duke’s comfortable upbringing. “We had to wait until the electric meter man went, having been knocking on the door for half an hour, because the meter wasn’t paid. I wasn’t used to that sort of life at all, and it was thrilling. Lucian was completely unabashed by it. He probably had enough money, but he had a horse to back in the afternoon, so he couldn’t possibly give it to the electric meter man.”

Sixty years on, to mark Lucian Freud’s centenary, the Duke of Devonshire is mounting an exhibition of Freud’s paintings, drawn from his collection here at Chatsworth. The highlight of this absorbing show is Freud’s penetrating portrait of Stoker’s mother, Deborah, the youngest of the Mitford sisters. The Duke has called it “probably the most beautiful thing at Chatsworth.” For a man whose art collection includes several Rembrandts, that’s quite a compliment.