Annie Freud FRSL (born 1948) is an English poet and artist. She is the eldest child of the artist Lucian Freud, [1] and his first wife Kitty Garman. [2] Earlier in her career, she was a civil servant. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2024. [3]
Freud's childhood has been described as being bohemian and very much within her father's circle. [1] In 1963, [4] aged 14, she posed naked for one of her father's pictures. [5] Lucian Freud's biographer, Geordie Greig, has written of this event that her father asked her to "remove her clothes and teenage inhibitions". This was, Grieg said, "a momentous and controversial event in Annie’s life. Many felt it was reprehensible, if not downright immoral. Lucian did not care. The question of whether it would damage his daughter simply did not occur to him". [4] Freud herself later stated that the sitting had been a "wonderful time" for her and that the resulting work,—Naked Child Laughing—was "the picture of me by Dad that I most admire". [4] [note 1] On another occasion, however, she has been described as finding it an "unsettling experience", and one in which "It was all very well for Dad to say it was all right. No one else felt that it was." [5] She would pose for Freud on other occasions—"11 or 12 times" [6] —throughout her childhood. [4]
I write my poems as little films. I see it as a visual thing, in front of my eyes, and that tells me what the poem might be about...a mixture of one nature with another. It made me feel those were things that mattered to me. [7]
The first works of art she produced were on fabric and clothes, before moving on to board and paper. [8] She was named by the Poetry Book Society as one of its Next Generation Poets for 2014 for her collection The Mirabelles; at 66 years old, Freud was the eldest contender. [9] [10]
The Arts Desk has described Freud as being "one of the very few" artists who are also poets, and vice versa. [8] Freud's style of poetry has been described as "dramatic", "shocking" and "outspoken". [11] Her first collection of poetry was published by Picador in 2006; [12] two others were published by them subsequently. [8]
Dame Carol Ann Duffy is a Scottish poet and playwright. She is a professor of contemporary poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed Poet Laureate in May 2009, and her term expired in 2019. She was the first female poet, the first Scottish-born poet and the first openly lesbian poet to hold the Poet Laureate position.
Lucian Michael Freud was a British painter and draughtsman, specialising in figurative art, and is known as one of the foremost 20th-century English portraitists. He was born in Berlin, the son of Jewish architect Ernst L. Freud and the grandson of Sigmund Freud. Freud got his first name "Lucian" from his mother in memory of the ancient writer Lucian of Samosata. His family moved to England in 1933, when he was 10 years old, to escape the rise of Nazism. He became a British naturalized citizen in 1939. From 1942 to 1943 he attended Goldsmiths' College, London. He served at sea with the British Merchant Navy during the Second World War.
Sir Clement Raphael Freud was a German-born British broadcaster, writer, politician and chef. The son of Ernst L. Freud and grandson of Sigmund Freud, Clement moved to the United Kingdom from Nazi Germany as a child and later worked as a prominent chef and food writer. He became known to a wider audience as a television and radio personality. Freud was the longest serving panellist on the BBC Radio 4 panel show Just a Minute, appearing in each of the first 143 episodes, and making subsequent regular appearances up until his death in 2009.
Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was an American poet, author, and teacher. Her work often dealt with the personal celebrations and struggles of ordinary people in her community. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry on May 1, 1950, for Annie Allen, making her the first African American to receive a Pulitzer Prize.
Leigh Bowery was an Australian performance artist, club promoter, and fashion designer. Bowery was known for his conceptual, flamboyant, and outlandish costumes and makeup, as well as his live performances.
Ntozake Shange was an American playwright and poet. As a Black feminist, she addressed issues relating to race and Black power in much of her work. She is best known for her Obie Award–winning play, for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf (1975). She also penned novels including Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo (1982), Liliane (1994), and Betsey Brown (1985), about an African-American girl run away from home.
Anthony Joseph FRSL is a British/Trinidadian poet, novelist, musician and academic. In 2023, he was awarded the T. S. Eliot Prize for his book Sonnets for Albert.
Imtiaz Dharker is a Pakistani-born British poet, artist, and video film maker. She won the Queen's Gold Medal for her English poetry and was appointed Chancellor of Newcastle University from January 2020.
Susie Boyt is a British novelist.
Annie Finch is an American poet, critic, editor, translator, playwright, and performer and the editor of the first major anthology of literature about abortion. Her poetry is known for its often incantatory use of rhythm, meter, and poetic form and for its themes of feminism, witchcraft, goddesses, and earth-based spirituality. Her books include The Poetry Witch Little Book of Spells, Spells: New and Selected Poems, The Body of Poetry: Essays on Women, Form, and the Poetic Self, A Poet's Craft, Calendars, and Among the Goddesses.
The nude, as a form of visual art that focuses on the unclothed human figure, is an enduring tradition in Western art. It was a preoccupation of Ancient Greek art, and after a semi-dormant period in the Middle Ages returned to a central position with the Renaissance. Unclothed figures often also play a part in other types of art, such as history painting, including allegorical and religious art, portraiture, or the decorative arts. From prehistory to the earliest civilizations, nude female figures were generally understood to be symbols of fertility or well-being.
Bettina Shaw-Lawrence, also known as Betty Shaw-Lawrence, was an English figurative artist. Shaw studied painting and drawing under Fernand Léger, Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett-Haines, though she was mainly self-taught and worked professionally until the early 1980s.
Benefits Supervisor Sleeping is a 1995 oil on canvas painting by the British artist Lucian Freud depicting a naked woman lying on a couch. It is a portrait of Sue Tilley, a Jobcentre supervisor.
Sue Tilley, also known as Big Sue, is a British artist's model and writer. She modelled for painter Lucian Freud.
Celia Paul is an Indian-born British painter. Paul's mainly known for her impressionistic work, which she developed during her education at the Slade School of Fine Art. Paul lives and works in London, England.
Portrait of Kitty is a painting by Lucian Freud of Kitty Garman, his wife and the eldest daughter of the sculptor Jacob Epstein and Kathleen Garman. Completed between 1948 and 1949, this oil on board measures 35 by 24 centimetres.
Next Generation poets (2014) are a list of poets named in 2014 by a panel for the Poetry Book Society, which once every ten years selects 20 poets "expected to dominate the poetry landscape of the coming decade." The accolade highlights emerging poets in the UK and Ireland who published a first collection of poetry within the previous decade.
An Evening with Lucian Freud is a 2015 play written by Laura-Jane Foley. It is a one-woman show with video cameos based on a real life encounter the playwright had with the artist Lucian Freud. The play made its world premiere on 19 May 2015 at the West End's Leicester Square Theatre where it ran until 6 June 2015.
William Feaver is a British art critic, curator, artist and lecturer. From 1975–1998 he was the chief art critic of the Observer, and from 1994 a visiting professor at Nottingham Trent University. His book The Pitmen Painters inspired the play of the same name by Lee Hall.
Sarah Howe is a Chinese–British poet, editor and researcher in English literature. Her first full poetry collection, Loop of Jade (2015), won the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Sunday Times / Peters Fraser & Dunlop Young Writer of The Year Award. It is the first time that the T. S. Eliot Prize has been given to a debut collection. She is currently a Leverhulme Fellow in English at University College London, as well as a trustee of The Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry.
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