A memoir of sitting for a Lucian Freud portrait

I don’t remember where I first heard about Man with a Blue Scarf (2010) by Martin Gayford, but it had been on my mental tbr list for a good while before I stumbled across a copy in Hay-on-Wye. It’s such an unusual perspective, which the subtitle explains: ‘On sitting for a portrait by Lucian Freud’. And that is the premise of the memoir. Martin Gayford, a friend of Freud’s, spent many hours sitting for the portrait that ends up on the cover and in the title. I love reading books about art and artists, particularly those which have plenty of paintings featured in the book – and this edition doesn’t stint on those. Along the way, there are colour prints of many of Freud’s artworks from across his career, but also reproductions of lots of artists that are referenced – whether inspirations, or simply creators that Freud admires. God bless whoever did the rights management for this book. Freud is notorious for being extremely slow in doing his painting, always from the flesh, and working…