William Acquavella on Lucian Freud’s Legacy and the Painting He Never Sold to Mick Jagger — vogue.com

David Dawson, Lucian Freud, and William Acquavella with Eli, 2011 Photo: © David Dawson / Bridgeman Images After nearly six decades in the business, only the rarest piece of news gives William Acquavella pause. The artist Lucian Freud ringing up the normally unflappable dealer to say, “Bill, the painting’s had a sex change,” however, managed to do the trick. It was 1998 and Freud was well into painting Large Interior, Notting Hill—a group portrait that pictured the artist’s whippet Pluto lying at the feet of writer Francis Wyndham while Jerry Hall nursed her infant son Gabriel Luke in the background—when Hall failed to appear for two of Freud’s exasperatingly thorough sittings. She had, after all, already visited the artist nearly every day for weeks. Without hesitation, Freud simply replaced Hall’s head with that of his longtime assistant David Dawson, who sat in while Hall was truant. In the final painting, Dawson is disturbingly depicted nursing her baby. What’s more, Acquavella had presold Large Interior, Notting Hill to Hall’s husband, Mick Jagger.

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