Model Jerry Hall will auction some of her art collection next week, including a famous portrait by Lucian Freud that shows her nude when she was eight months pregnant. The auction will also include works by Andy Warhol, Damien Hirst, David Bailey and other prominent artists collected by Hall, ex-wife of Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger. The works will be sold Oct. 15-16 as part of a larger contemporary art sale, Sotheby’s spokesman Simon Warren said. Sotheby’s specialist Oliver Barker said the Lucian Freud portrait called Eight Months Gone is the centerpiece of the auction and is expected to fetch more than 300,000 pounds ($460,000).
“It’s a wonderful painting,” he said. “It was exhibited shortly after it was done at the Tate Gallery. He’s always been interested in maternity. It’s a very tender, loving painting.”
He said Hall was willing to sell part of her collection because she has entered a new phase in her life.
“She’s turning a new leaf,” he said. “She’s not afraid of change, she’s happy to let them leave and have other art lovers enjoy them.”
Hall said the unusually intimate painting came about after she and Freud were seated at a dinner together when she was eight months pregnant with her son Gabriel. The artist asked her if she would pose for him and said they had to begin immediately because she was so close to giving birth.
The collection also includes two other works by Freud, often acclaimed as one of the world’s greatest living painters.
Hall has worked in the theater since her separation from Jagger in 1999. Several of her daughters have followed her into modeling, becoming prominent in England.
Image:US model and actress Jerry Hall poses for the photographers with Francesco Clemente’s 1997 oil on canvas entitled ‘Jerry Hall’ from her personal collection, in a central London auction house, Thursday Oct. 7, 2010. The artworks will be offered in Sotheby’s auction house’s Contemporary Art Sales on Oct. 15 and 16. Combined the 14 artworks are estimated to fetch in excess of 1.5 million British pounds ($2.4 million). AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis.
By: Gregory Katz, Associated Press Writer
