WANDER FEEDS

I have encountered Lucian Freud’s Girl with a Kitten (1947) for the first time in Moscow, at the Pushkin’s museum (ГМИИ им. А.С. Пушкина) back in 2019. In collaboration with TATE, the cultural establishment has managed to bring Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and the iconic London’s school of artists. A collection of 80 masterpieces that expressed a deeply personal, sensual and intense experience of life. A civilised collaboration nearly impossible to be imagining today.   

I recall Girl with a Kitten gathered quite a crowd, some taking photos, others reading the inscribed text on the wall, and a few attempting to see the unseen. The young woman pictured is Lucien Freud’s first wife Kathleen Eleonora Garman (1926 - 2011), whom also went by the nickname ‘Kitty’ among her friends and acquaintances. Before meeting Garman in London in 1947, Freud traveled to Paris and Greece. His early paintings influenced by German Expressionism (which the artist tended to deny) and Surrealism, which slightly echoes in the Girl With a Kitten. After the end of the war, Freud’s work acquires the admired muted colours and a touch of sorrow.  

One can find the artwork unsettling, others quite realistic. Notice with what outstanding and immaculate technique the eyelashes and the hair are drawn, and yet it strips the sitter of her own self-possession. The only one in attendance is the kitten. Freud, as it happens with many male artists, found his wife an interesting subject to decode under his own gaze, without much flatter, honestly, brutally. Scrutinising in a way that only a family member can. Garman dutifully gave presence to Freud’s four oil paintings and two etchings, two daughters and four years of perplexed marriage.

Felines are often associated with female sexuality. It is no wonder, as the nature of women is dual, complex and intriguing. In heterosexual relationships it is directed into diverse but related course: towards the relationship and towards reproduction. Unlike male sexuality, ours is affected by a pool of factors: biological (body image), social (nationality, family and religious influence), psychological, economical and political (you may continue the list). 

At the time of writing this article I was re-reading Women In Love (1921) by beloved D.H.Lawrence. In chapter six, one of the key characters, Gerald, meets a young woman Minette, a girl that animates my vision with each read. She strikes as mysterious yet straightforward, lovely and vicious, flirtatious and cold. In a span of one evening she manages to put a few men in a state of uneasiness. At some point Gerald asks as to why she is called Minette, is it 'because you're like a cat?'. She rouses a curious exultance, loathed and praised all at once. By the end of the chapter Minette runs out of patience with all of her men, her face looking 'sullen' and 'vindictive' , 'I know you want to catch me out', she declares 'But I don't care'. Minette's independence is striking, feared for. Her inner feline refuses to yield. 

Garman strangles the kitten, her knuckles are white as she tightens the grip. There are apparent similarities in their features. Is she suppressing her sex in the context? Is she slaughtering her own wild nature? Sexually awakened women are shifted in their behaviour. Graham was only a young woman in the society where male norms are governing. Her spirit, perhaps problematic and deviant. Often in marriage women obey, men dominate (in 1947 when the painting was introduced to the world that is). In a creative, heterosexual marriage, men may deem their women as muses, levelling up their talent at their partner’s expense. At the time of the portrait Garman was only 21 years old, maturing under the careful eye of her husband. 

Kathleen Eleonora Garman also took pleasure in painting and drawing, a fact that is rarely discussed. An exhibition of her work was held at the Walsall gallery in 2004. She passed away in 2011.

Girl with a Kitten was first exhibited at the London Gallery in October 1947 in a show titled Lucian Freud and John Craxton. In 1950 it made an appearance at the group exhibition London/Paris: New Trends in Painting and Sculpture (also London). In 1954 it was shown at the Venice Biennale (curiously enough, there it was called Girl with Cat). 

The painting belonged to Freud’s elder brother and later acquired by collector Simon Sainsbury. In 2006 it became part of the Simon Sainsbury Bequest, in which eighteen works were donated to Tate and the National Gallery, Girl with a Kitten among them. A story of a portrait that never belonged to the seater, and yet never gave in to submission. 

By Marie Nova

If you have trouble loading the documentary Lucian Freud a Painted Life from your phone, you can watch it here. Skip to 35th minute to learn more about the artists’ partner Kathleen Eleonora Garman.