lucian freud: my mother was ill for eight or nine years. she was in her nineties when she died. she had tried to kill herself when my father died. she did a perfectly good job, but she was found by her sister, who lived next door and brought her back to life when she was virtually dead. after that, even though my mother had amazing health and was really fine, she pretended she was very ill. she was just terribly depressed to be still alive. i started painting her, because she had lost interest in everything, including me. before then, i always avoided her because she was so intuitive that i felt my privacy was rather threatened by her.



"the painter's mother iii",(1972), oil on canvas
"the painter's mother (final version)", (1982), etching