Out on 29 May 2025
Book cover for Naked Portrait: A Memoir of Lucian Freud

Naked Portrait: A Memoir of Lucian Freud

Synopsis

Details

29 May 2025
224 pages
9781035024926
Imprint: Picador

Reviews

'One of the compulsive aspects of Boyt’s book is that, as a reader, you get to listen in on her trying to make honest sense of events that go well beyond what any daughter might be expected to fathom. I ended up reading it in one sitting, well into the early hours of the following day.'
I can’t think of an art book with an opening page like it. Lines land like detonations . . . The writing is hypnotic and propulsive . . . It’s so powerful, so horrible, the set-up compelling.
The reader is invited into the innermost intimacies of a private life, not just the scandalous details and long-held secrets, but the long waking hours, the temporal chasms between the more gossip-worthy parts of Boyt’s existence . . . Naked Portrait is a hall of mirrors with the young Boyt at its centre, surveyed from above by her now-66-year-old self. Its events juxtapose, clash and occasionally confuse, painting a portrait of Freud that’s even more revealing than his nude depiction of Rose.