Lucien Freud on Gambling.

 

The famous artist, Lucian Freud talks out about a gambling debt that he ran up with the notorious gangland ‘twins’ the Kray’s. The debt exceeded more than half a million pounds, not a good position to be in regarding the Kray’s.

 

One of the UK’s most famous artists alive today, spoke of harassment from the Kray twins and how they forced him to take more and more money in order to fuel his gambling addiction, but the repayments he was able to make would always be small and infrequent.

 

Freud, now 87 years old, even spoke of how he had once felt it necessary to cancel an arts exhibition for fear that the brothers would turn up demanding money off him, particularly as he was beginning to earn from his artwork.

 

The police had even contacted him on one occasion to issue a warning regarding the problem.

 

Freud also speaks of his relationship with super-model Kate Moss, his friendship with Greta Garbo and the night he spent in a police cell for fighting. These revelations are unusual for Lucien Freud who is notorious for protecting his privacy from the public glare.

 

Speaking of Greta Garbo he says of the actress: 'She was the most famous person in the world at that stage. I was very young, she was in her late thirties, the people in the clubs could not believe it.'

 

Regarding Kate Moss, who he came to know through his daughter Bella, a famous fashion designer, he says: 'She was interesting company and full of surprising behaviour,'. In 2002, he painted a nude portrait of the super-model while she was pregnant with her daughter.  

 

He even went on to give details of the portrait sitting, admitting that he was sometimes a little irked with Kate Moss for being late, but 'only in that way that girls are' he says.

 

Freud is not happy with the results of the painting and says that the failure was due largely to the baying photographers who waited outside his house, clearly disturbing his need for privacy.

 

The relationship that Lucien Freud had with the Kray twins, Ronnie and Reggie, has been well documented, Reggie even counted Freud as one of his favourite artists.  

 

Lucien Freud first met the Kray twins during the mid Sixties at the height of the West End nightclub life.

 

The Kray twins owned nightclubs throughout London, and as such mixed with some of the country’s most powerful people, from politicians to entertainers, including many of the greats from that era, including Frank Sinatra, Shirley Bassey, Barbara Windsor and Judy Garland.

 

 

Of his gambling habit, Freud has said in the past: 'I always went all out. The idea of it being a sport seemed to me insane. The thing I liked was risking everything. Losing everything to do with money.'

 

One of Lucien’s most famous picture a self-portrait of Freud sporting a black eye after a fight with a taxi driver went for more than two and a half million at the beginning of 2010; enough to pay the Kray twins five times over, although the gambling debt is long behind him now.  

 

Later in the interview, Freud describes how his gambling habit finally came to an end; 'As I got more money, they wouldn't take the bets and it just became pointless...If I'd been in very high-powered card games with grand, rich people, perhaps, but that wasn't what I did.'

 

Freud also discussed his current work in progress, he is currently painting a portrait of his personal assistant, David Dawson, and another portrait of the co-owners of The Wolseley, a London restaurant at which Freud is a frequent visitor.

 

As you may have guessed from his name, Lucien Freud is the grandson of the founding father of psychology, Sigmund Freud. Lucien was born in Berlin and during his youth he even managed to photograph Adolf Hitler.

 

In 1933 the family made their move to the UK in order to escape the rise of the Nazis, becoming a full British Citizen in 1939. The ease with which they were able to claim citizenship was largely due to an intervention from the Duke of Kent, Freud disclosed.

 

Lucien Freud will go down in history for his painting ‘Benefits Supervisor Sleeping’, which is a life-sized portrait of a jobcentre employee and which fetched nearly £20 million. Setting a new world record as the highest price paid for a piece of art by a still living artist at auction.

 

Despite his age and success, he remains ambitious in his work, describing how he ‘work(s) every day and night. I don't do anything else. There is no point otherwise.'

 

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