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Talk about a Freudian slip.
A painting by the grandson of the famed psychologist Sigmund Freud featuring a London clerk in the buff sold for a mind-bending $39 million at auction Wednesday — and the curvaceous model couldn’t be happier.
“Mona Lisa wasn’t alive when she became famous — but I am,” Sue Tilley, 69, told the Wall Street Journal after “Sleeping by the Lion Carpet” by Lucian Freud sold at Sotheby’s London.
The portrait, painted between 1995 and 1996, depicts a then 35-year-old Tilley sleeping in a chair with nothing left to the imagination — one of four portraits the British socialite, nepo baby painted of her.
Tilley was working as a supervisor at an employment office and part-timing as a London nightclub clerk when Freud, then 70, asked her to join his roster of friends and paramours that sat for his portraits.
Why did she agree?
“He was funny and bought us nice food,” she told the Journal.
Freud, who died in 2011, paid her 20 pounds a day — around $85 in today’s money — to pose for him.
He later bumped the pay to 35 pounds as he asked her to keep coming back for more paintings, each of which took months to complete.
Connoisseurs consider “Sleeping by the Lion Carpet” — which features Tilley lounging in a chair with an embroidered tiger in the background — to be the magnum opus of the series, which has previously fetched $129 million together, according to the Journal.
“I figure I’m probably worth about £100 million,” she told the outlet.
English (US)