Trust Lucian Freud to look at his own infant child with the same rigorous eye he turned on his paintings of adults. The baby’s head is huge – a bulbous punch of brown, cream and grey – in his 1961 portrait of Bella Freud. In fact, it is big enough to loom at you down a long gallery at Chatsworth House and draw you magnetically towards it to get a look at how the ridged, rucked and scrunched up features are rendered larger than life as Bella sleeps on a sofa, fists formidably clenched. Her left eyelid is very slightly open, revealing a yellow eyeball.
Unsentimental it may be, but Bella is a ball of mighty life. You sense the artist is amazed by the autonomy, energy and will this little creature exhibits. She is a giant in his eyes. Babyhood, toddlerdom, childhood, adolescence – they slip away so fast, as we try to catch the ever-changing miracle of a growing person. Picturing Childhood, the title of Chatsworth’s eye-opening show scattered through its immense baroque halls and chambers, is something we mostly do today with our phones. How lucky to be a Freud, able to portray your child with such monumental profundity.
