In the spring of 2006, British figurative titan Lucian Freud was to show a small group of new works in a joint exhibition with his friend Frank Auerbach at London's Victoria and Albert Museum.
One morning, as he went to inspect the installation, the 26-year-old art handler Ria Kirby was hanging his pictures. An aspiring painter who studied at Camberwell College of Arts, she couldn't help but approach him and tell him how much she admired his work.
Shortly after, she found herself privileged to be invited by one of the world's greatest artists to pose for one of his paintings. Thinking it was something to tell the grandchildren, she promptly agreed.
What she hadn't foreseen then, was that for the following 16 months, she would arrive in the artist's studio every evening after a day's work at the museum – seven days a week, five hours at a time, culminating in some 2,400 hours' worth of sittings.
This very canvas, Ria, Naked Portrait (2006-2007), had become a highlight of the recent Frieze London as it made its auction debut at Christie's 20th/21st Century: London Evening Sale on 9 October. Eventually, the work achieved a hammer price of £10 million, selling for £11.8 million (US$15.4 million) with fees to become the auction's top lot.
Lot 7 | Lucian Freud (1922-2011) | Ria, Naked Portrait, Oil on canvas
Painted in 2006-2007
87 x 163 cm
Provenance:
- Acquavella Galleries, New York
- Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2008
- Property from an important European Collection
Estimate: £10,000,000 - 15,000,000
Hammer Price: £10,000,000
Sold: £11,810,000 (US$15.4 million)
Back in 2016, Freud, who had just finished several paintings – the ones on the show – happened to be looking for new subjects for his next canvas. "That girl I met," Freud confided to art critic Martin Gayford as they walked out of the museum, "I think I could work from her."
Later, Kirby received a message from V&A's head of painting, asking if she would like to sit for the artist. And so it was arranged. Within 24 hours, Kirby arrived at Freud's studio on Kensington Church Street, being served a cup of tea, and chose a comfortable pose herself – the position she had slept in.
Lucian Freud (left) and Frank Auerbach (right) at the V&A
Photograph taken during the painting session
By Freud's notoriously demanding criteria, Kirby was a perfect sitter: punctual, reliable, and impressively committed.
Each evening, she would dash straight to the studio at 6:30 pm. It was Freud's second scheduled slot of the day, and he was always a stickler for timeliness – he once halted a portrait simply because the model was late for an hour or two. Kirby always arrived on time.
For Freud, it was essential that the model, the most important element in his creative space, remained consistently present – even during the rendering of the background, whether it be an empty space, the drapery, or the floor. An artist attuned to nuances of atmosphere, he insisted the sitter's physical presence would fundamentally alter even the tiniest bit of the picture.
Over the marathon stretch of 16 months, Kirby had only taken four evenings off. Early in the pair's artistic relationship, she had even canceled a holiday to Greece, just so the portrait's progress wouldn't be stalled.
For that period, Kirby went almost everywhere with Freud. A typical evening would include dinner at one of Freud's two favorite restaurants: The Wolseley or Clarke's. Kirby would plow through three courses with wine and dessert, while Freud would hardly eat. After Freud had paid for the meal, they would grab a cab back to the studio. At the end of the night, he would pay for Kirby's taxi home, but Kirby always cycled to her residence in east London.
Sometimes, the pair would watch the Bolshoi Ballet from the royal box and attend parties and private views together. At weekends, Kirby might even turn up with him at his grandchild's birthday party.
"Overnight, I was part of the family. I think they assumed I was his girlfriend," Kirby later recalled. She was aware of the artist's reputation with women – Freud acknowledged fourteen of his children, two from his first marriage and 12 by various mistresses – "but I'm not very flirty or tactile and he was over 80 then," said she.
"To start with it was quite exhausting, because I had only about 10 minutes' break between finishing work and beginning to pose," she remembered. "I went through every possible emotion in my life."
After a month or so, the sessions gradually became therapeutic and meditative. "It became second nature, and felt completely natural. I realised there's no point in trying to be anything. You just have to lie there and be yourself. But in the end I found it quite a release. It was one place where I didn't have anyone phoning me or hassling me. All I had to do was lie still, which I'm quite good at."
As time passed, Freud found the work's end ever more difficult to ascertain. For months, Kirby suspected each sitting might be her last but Freud would continue to find areas to revise, perfect, and fine-tune, until well into the following year.
When the portrait was finally completed, Kirby turned down the opportunity to sit for another one, thinking she wanted her life back. And this painting would be sold by Acquavella Galleries in 2008, later being hung alone in the final room of the National Portrait Gallery’s landmark exhibition Lucian Freud Portraits in 2012, the most popular ticketed exhibition in the gallery's history.
Of the 52 artworks offered at the evening sale, a total of 46 pieces found new homes, achieving a sell-through rate of 88.4% and a sale total of £81.98 million (US$107 million).
Notably, half of the works sold were backed by a third-party guarantee, meaning they would surely sell at the auction. Most of these guaranteed works were hammered just on their low estimates.
Amidst an uncertain global economy, sellers also seemed more willing to lower the reserve. Willem de Kooning's abstract Untitled XVIII (1986), for instance, was sold by legendary guitarist Eric Clapton for a hammer price of £2.85 million against a pre-sale low estimate of £4 million.
Other highlight lots:
Lot 13 | Jeff Koons (b.1955) | Balloon Monkey (Blue), Mirror-polished stainless steel with transparent colour coating
Executed in 2006-2013, this work is one of five unique versions (Red, Yellow, Blue, Magenta, Orange)
381 x 320 x 596.9 cm
Provenance:
- Gagosian Gallery, New York
- Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2007
Estimate: £6,500,000 - 10,000,000
Hammer Price: £6,300,000
Sold: £7,555,000 (US$9.9 million)
Lot 30 | David Hockney (b.1937) | More Woldgate Timber, October 13th 2009, Oil on canvas
Painted in 2009
91.5 x 122 cm
Provenance:
- Annely Juda Fine Art, London
- Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2011
Estimate: £3,800,000 - 5,500,000
Hammer Price: £3,800,000
Sold: £4,638,000 (US$6.1 million)
Lot 15 | Richard Prince (b.1949) | Hurricane Nurse, Acrylic and inkjet on canvas
Executed in 2004
175.5 x 106.8 cm
Provenance:
- Sadie Coles HQ, London
- Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2006
Estimate: £3,500,000 - 5,500,000
Hammer Price: £3,425,000
Sold: £4,184,250 (US$5.5 million)
Lot 12 | Willem de Kooning (1904-1997) | Untitled XVIII, Oil on canvas
Painted in 1986
178 x 203.7 cm
Provenance:
- Xavier Fourcade, Inc., New York
- Estelle Schwartz, New York (acquired circa 1990)
- Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York (acquired in 2004)
- Anon. sale, Christie's New York, 15 November 2006, lot 67
- Private Collection, Europe (acquired at the above sale)
- Anon. sale, Christie's London, 19 October 2008, lot 28
- Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
- Property from the collection of Eric Clapton
Estimate: £4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Hammer Price: £2,850,000
Sold: £3,488,500 (US$4.6 million)
Lot 8 | Lucian Freud (1922-2011) | Head of a Woman, Oil on canvas
Painted in 1992
25.3 x 25.3 cm
Provenance:
- The Artist
- Private Collection (a gift from the artist in 2002)
Estimate: £3,000,000 - 5,000,000
Hammer Price: £2,800,000
Sold: £3,428,000 (US$4.5 million)
Lot 10 | Ed Ruscha (b.1937) | Start Over Please, Oil on canvas
Painted in 2015
162.7 x 183 cm
Provenance:
- Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles
- Private Collection, USA (acquired from the above by the present owner)
- Anon. sale, Phillips New York, 14 November 2019, lot 25
- Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Estimate: £2,000,000 - 3,000,000
Hammer Price: £2,600,000
Sold: £3,186,000 (US$4.2 million)
Lot 6 | Cecily Brown (b.1969) | The Skin of Our Teeth, Oil on linen
Painted in 1999
152.8 x 190.7 cm
Provenance:
- Gagosian Gallery, New York
- Private Collection, New York (acquired from the above in 1999)
- Anon. sale, Sotheby’s London, 26 June 2018, lot 7
- Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
- Property from a distinguished British collection
Estimate: £2,500,000 - 3,500,000
Hammer Price: £2,500,000
Sold: £3,065,000 (US$4 million)
Lot 28 | Le Corbusier (1887-1965) | Deux figures au tronc d'arbre jaune, Oil on canvas
Painted in 1937
130 x 162 cm
Provenance:
- The artist’s estate (no. 251)
- Heidi Weber, Zurich, by whom acquired from the above in 1973
- Private collection, North America, by whom acquired from the above in 1981; sale, Christie’s, London, 27 February 2019, lot 32
- Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Estimate: £2,200,000 - 3,200,000
Hammer Price: £2,100,000
Sold: £2,581,000 (US$3.4 million)
Lot 29 | René Magritte (1898-1967) | Le grand style, Gouache on card
Executed in 1952
17.3 x 14.8 cm
Provenance:
- Donated on 31 October 1954 by the artist to a charity sale organised by the newspaper De Tijd, Amsterdam
- Private collection, The Netherlands, by whom acquired at the above sale, and thence by descent; sale, Christie's, Amsterdam, 8 December 1993, lot 257
- Private collection, by whom acquired at the above sale and until at least 1994
- Anonymous sale, Christie’s, London, 2 July 1998, lot 27
- Waddington Galleries, London, by whom acquired at the above sale
- Private collection, United Kingdom, by whom acquired from the above
- Property from a distinguished British collection
Estimate: £1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Hammer Price: £2,100,000
Sold: £2,581,000 (US$3.4 million)
Lot 11 | Sarah Sze (b.1969) | Spell, Inkjet prints, acrylic polymers, oil, acrylic, string, tape, ink, nails, and printed collage on dibond, in three parts (Auction record for the artist)
Executed in 2023
Overall: 193 x 281.9 x 7.9 cm
Provenance:
- Nina Simone Childhood Home: Benefit Auction, Sotheby's New York, 22 May 2023, lot 8 (donated by the artist)
- Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Estimate: £600,000 - 900,000
Hammer Price: £600,000
Sold: £756,000 (US$988,092)
Auction Details:
Auction House: Christie's London
Sale: 20th/21st Century: London Evening Sale
Date: 9 October 2024
Number of Lots: 52
Sold: 46
Unsold: 6
Sale Rate: 89%
Sale Total: £81,980,050 (US$107 million)