A painting by the grandson of the famed psychologist Sigmund Freud featuring a naked London clerk sold for a mind-bending $39 million at auction Wednesday, June 24, and the plus-sized model has expressed her joy.
“Mona Lisa wasn’t alive when she became famous — but I am,” Sue Tilley, 69, told the Wall Street Journal after the drawing of her called “Sleeping by the Lion Carpet” by Lucian Freud sold at Sotheby’s London.
The portrait, painted between 1995 and 1996, depicts a then 35-year-old Sue Tilley sleeping in a chair with no stitch of clothing.
It was one of four portraits the British socialite Lucian Freud painted of her.
Tilley was working as a supervisor at an employment office and part-timing as a London nightclub clerk when Freud, then 70, asked her to join his roster of friends and paramours that sat for his portraits.
Asked why she agreed to pose naked, Tilly told the Wall Street Journal: “He was funny and bought us nice food.”
Freud, who died in 2011, paid her 20 pounds a day — around $85 in today’s money — to pose for him.
He later increased the pay to 35 pounds as he asked her to keep coming back for more paintings, each of which took months to complete.
Connoisseurs consider “Sleeping by the Lion Carpet” — which features Tilley lounging in a chair with an embroidered tiger in the background — to be the greatest work of the series, which has previously fetched $129 million together, according to the Journal.
“I figure I’m probably worth about £100 million,” Tilly jokingly told the outlet, even though she gets no money from the sale of the portrait.
