Only an artist named Freud would have his drawings from childhood archived. Grandson of Sigmund Freud, world-renowned painter Lucian Freud saved some of his earliest sketches like “Birds in Trees” which he drew when 8 years old. It was first exhibited in a 1938 show of “child art” at Peggy Guggenheim’s London gallery and then, 74 years later, at the Acquavella Galleries in New York, this spring.
It’s rumored that Lucian Freud fathered 40 children, but only fourteen have been identified, two from his first marriage and 12 by various mistresses. (Three daughters were born in the same year.) Two of the 12 out-of-wedlock children are artists: Jane McAdam Freud (b. 1958) who is now showing gigantic earthstone triptych sculptures of her father’s head (at London’s Freud Museum, the former house of her great-grandfather), and his youngest (on the record) Frank Paul (b. 1984) who favors drawing with ballpoint pens.