LuciAn Freud departed this world surrounded by family.
Since he was reputedly a man of wit as well as genius, the irony can’t have escaped him. For in the pantheon of lousy fathers, he surely rates a mention.
Did even he know how many children he had? Estimates range from 13 to an outlandish 30. Some he was kind to, others he ignored but the degree to which he was involved seems to have derived from their mothers’ inclination to keep in touch with him.
Freud had two children with his first wife, Kitty (daughter of the artist Jacob Epstein). He had four with Katherine McAdam; two with Bernadine Coverley and five with Suzy Boyt. There were many other lovers.
He seems to have been a passive father: not seeking out the children who didn’t seek him.
The four McAdam children didn’t even rate a mention in his Who’s Who entry. Their existence was not publicly acknowledged until they broke cover in 2004.
Nor were the others overly indulged. There was a scene in Hideous Kinky, (written by his daughter Esther) in which a Christmas parcel arrives for the two small girls who are travelling in Morocco with their hippy mother.
It’s from absent daddy and causes much excitement. But when they open it they find football kit. It’s clearly intended for one of his other families.
To create a child only to ignore it is a feckless act; how much more-so when multiplied by 13 or more?
But can we judge Freud as we would ordinary mortals?
He was probably the greatest British portrait painter since the Second World War.
His work places him high up the slopes of Mount Olympus. We need to view his life through the same prism as that of Picasso, Gauguin; Byron even.
Freud, who reputedly slept with many of his subjects, painted humanity stripped bare. He showed us ourselves as we are, not as we want to be. I love his work. I like what I read about his feline inclination to walk the world alone, giving little and crucially asking nothing. I would love to have met him but I would hate to have had him as a father.
Art critic and friend William Feaver wrote of him with affection: “The first thing I will miss about Lucian is the phone ringing and the voice saying, ‘Hello William’. This would happen two or three times a day.’
He wrote of time they spent at exhibitions, leisurely lunches, a trip to Paris. Imagine reading that if you were his daughter, Lucy, who entered his home for the first time when she was 53 years old and he was on his deathbed.
He was a dreadful father and genius is no excuse. And yet he died forgiven – at least by Lucy. He said to her, “I want you to know I’m a very selfish man”. How could she ever have thought otherwise? Yet the visit brought her peace and reconciliation. She came away “thinking we understood and loved each other”.
Those who are abandoned as children seem capable of almost superhuman forgiveness. Perhaps it is a measure of their need for parental love.
Max Bygraves has an unacknowledged daughter who at the age of 55 is asking for a meeting of reconciliation.
Her last contact with her father was when she was 19 and queued for hours backstage to meet him. He tried to avoid her then stared at the ground while they spoke. She said: “One thing he did say which I have treasured was, ‘I just want you to know, I was once very much in love with your mother’.”
It’s crumbs. But the abandoned make much of little.
This week a woman on the radio talked about an empty scent bottle that stands on her dressing table. It was given to her mother by her war-time American lover. He went back to the States, leaving her with a child he knew about but never contacted. Yet she loved him all her life. She kept his scent bottle and now her daughter does too. More crumbs.
Bygraves never boasted the sort of talent that is used as an excuse for such callousness. But did that talent make Freud any better? Not much, if you look at it from a child’s perspective.
Lucy Freud’s mother left the artist when his infidelity became unbearable. She brought their children up in a council flat in a Roehampton high-rise.
When Lucy was in her 20s her half-sister Esther set up a father-daughter reunion. She hoped it would lead to more meetings. It didn’t. She invited her father to her wedding. He didn’t reply. When her marriage ended she took up painting and discovered her brush strokes resembled his. So he did give her something, though unwittingly.
Bygraves’s daughter, Beverly Sass, craves one visit a year.
Surely even a man with 30 love children could manage that: even a man with a genius to feed could manage that?
Academics tell us boys who are abandoned by their father can develop gender issues. Girls may perform below their ability level at school. They are prone to low self-esteem and are more likely to have a teen pregnancy. They lack a sense of protection.
And yet artists of both genders sometimes do abandon their children. Muriel Spark left her son in Africa when she returned to Britain during the war. Doris Lessing brought only her youngest son with her when she came to England to write.
I know Cyril Connolly famously said: “There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.” But isn’t a child a work of art? Doesn’t this living creation deserve at least as much attention, focus and input as a canvas or a manuscript?
I once had a conversation about precisely this with the esteemed literary critic David Daiches. His view was that an artist who abandons a child because of their art had better be certain their talent is out of the top drawer.
Lucian Freud’s talent was out of the top drawer. He had genius and his dedication to his art matched it.
Does that make up for the hurt dealt to those of his children who didn’t get the chance of a death-bed reconciliation? Not in my book.
I think he could have done better. He could have excelled as a painter and as a father. He could, should have done both.
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