Freud's Denied 1939 Portrait Authenticated, Goes on Display
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- 'Man in a Black Scarf' was authenticated as a Lucian Freud work after experts proved he painted it in 1939 while a student at the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing in Hadleigh, Suffolk; the sitter is believed to be John Jameson, a friend of Freud's and scion of the whiskey family.
- Freud repeatedly denied painting the work before his 2011 death; Christie's identified it as his in 1985 but reversed its attribution after Freud said he had not painted it.
- Jon Lys Turner inherited the painting from Denis Wirth-Miller, who bequeathed it on the condition he authenticate and sell it 'in order to infuriate Lucian'; Turner spent 19 years pursuing that authentication.
- Denis Wirth-Miller kept a list from their school days titled '13 Reasons to Hate Lucian,' and designer Jon Lys Turner says 'he was the golden boy, he was a star even then and there was jealousy' — a feud that the source identifies as the root of Freud's denial.
- The BBC's 'Fake or Fortune?' (2016) first publicly examined the case, and two years later Tate Britain archive records — student work logs showing Freud was painting Jameson in 1939 — provided the breakthrough evidence.
- The portrait will be shown at the Garden Museum in London (June 2 – September 20, 2026) in 'Benton End: A Paradise of Pollen and Paint,' named after the Suffolk farmhouse that hosted the art school.
- Turner says the exhibition will establish the 'overlooked connection' between Freud and his teacher Cedric Morris, whose stylistic influence Turner sees in the portrait's 'confrontational gaze' and thick, roughly handled paint; the work was speculated to be worth more than £300,000 in 2016, while Freud's auction record is $86m.
Why it matters: The authentication ends a 19-year quest rooted in a personal schoolboy feud, giving Turner a newly attributed Freud work speculated to be worth over £300,000. The exhibition reframes Freud's artistic lineage by spotlighting his overlooked debt to teacher Cedric Morris, and lands weeks before Sotheby's auctions 'Sleeping by the Lion Carpet' with a £25m–£35m estimate — putting an early-period Freud in dialogue with his record-priced late works.
Ask SkimNews
