David Dawson: Working with Lucian Freud a Pallant House Exhibition

David Dawson, Ria almost finished, 2007 © David Dawson

Pallant House Gallery  presents ‘David Dawson: Working with Lucian Freud’ , a new exhibition which offers an extraordinary insight into the notoriously private world of the late great painter Lucian Freud  (1922-2011) through the eyes of his model and studio assistant David Dawson (b.1960).  The exhibition will feature key paintings by Lucian Freud, placing them alongside Dawson’s remarkably intimate photographs of the artist at work as well as his own rarely-seen paintings of street scenes and cityscapes.

After graduating from the Painting school of the RCA in 1989 David Dawson began working for Freud’s dealer James Kirkman who took him to Holland Park  to meet Freud in his studio. ‘I was so  excited about this,’ he says. ’I was going to meet a really great painter.’ The studio, he recalls, was ‘the most remarkable room he had ever stepped into’, while Freud was ‘quite small, slim, very light and quick on his feet with fantastically bright sparkling eyes. His good manners and quick wit immediately put me at ease.’

David Dawson, Freud Working at Night © David Dawson

The meeting was to prompt ‘the start of 20 years of a brilliant journey’ as Freud’s assistant, model, friend and witness to the creation of some of the most celebrated paintings of our age. Dawson’s unique access led to the development of a portfolio of strikingly intimate photographs of Freud which have become iconic works in their own right. Recently his image of Freud painting the Queen was chosen by both Nick Clegg and Lord Mandelson for the Whitechapel’s exhibition of works from the Government Art Collection. This exhibition features several of his most evocative photographs including ‘Working at Night’  (2005) and ‘Lucian with Fox Club’  (2005).

David Dawson, Lucian with Fox cub, 2005 © David Dawson

Less well known are Dawson’s own paintings which he would return to every afternoon after his work with Freud was done. His work reflects and records what he sees around him, the cul-de-sac in suburban north-west London where he lives and the shifting skies he witnesses from his studio window in Kensal Rise: ‘Living with my studio in my house, I would use the view out of my studio window as the motif to structure my painting,’ says Dawson. ‘I would always use this as the starting point and the reference to go back to again and again’.

Over the years Dawson was one of Freud’s most consistent models and he is the subject of the artist’s final work  – an unfinished nude portrait with Dawson’s whippet, Eli – which will feature alongside 100 other works spanning 70-year career at the National Portrait Gallery  (9 February to 27 May 2012). Sarah Howgate, curator of ‘Lucan Freud Portraits’  at the National Portrait Gallery in a recent interview with the Guardian said: ‘Freud said that he knew Dawson better than anyone else. He’d been his most consistent model, they shared a mutual understanding, a respect for one another and a love of painting.’ (20 Sept 2011).

Exhibition dates: 28th January 2012 – 20th May 2012

Pallant House Gallery

9 North Pallant

Chichester

West Sussex

PO19 1TJ

Tel: 01243 774557

Opening Hours

Tuesday to Saturday: 10am – 5pm

Thursday: 10am – 8pm

Sunday/Bank Holidays: 11am – 5pm

Mondays: Closed

Open Day: Saturday 11 February 2012