A letter from 1940 featuring a presumed self-portrait.
Never before seen letters from a teenage Lucian Freud to his friend the poet Stephen Spender come up at Sotheby’s contemporary art day auction in London on July 2. Ten unpublished letters written by the artist to the famous poet and critic Stephen Spender (1909–1995) have emerged from the Spender family collection after 70 years.
Populated by drawings and watercolour paintings, one letter shows a man pulling a miniature horse on a lead, while in another, a figure balances on the head of a flying bird and a small man rides a horse atop an ear.
Dating from 1939-42 while Freud was studying under the tutelage of Cedric Morris at the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing in Essex they are estimated at £28,000-42,000.