'Two Plants', Lucian Freud

Artwork details

Artist

Lucian Freud (1922‑2011)

Title

Two Plants

Date 1977-80

MediumOil paint on canvas

Dimensionssupport: 1499 x 1200 mm frame: 1670 x 1365 x 90 mm

Collection

Tate

Acquisition Purchased 1980

Reference

T03105

Not on display

Display caption

In the mid-1960s Freud embarked on a series of paintings of botanical subjects, an interest that was anticipated in an earlier painting, 'Interior in Paddington' 1951. 'Two Plants' is rendered with meticulous precision and is perhaps Freud's most ambitious and most resolved expression of this theme. He began the painting in 1977 and it took three years to complete. Freud recalls that it provided a means of accustoming himself to the light of a new studio. He describes it as 'lots of little portraits of leaves', adding 'I wanted it to have a really biological feeling of things growing and fading and leaves coming up and others dying'.

September 2004