Woman Smiling, Freud's 'turning point' 1959 painting of former lover Suzy Boyt, up for auction at Christie's in June
A portrait by Lucian Freud of a contentedly smiling woman, regarded as a turning point in the development of the style that made him one of the most instantly recognisable and expensive contemporary painters, is expected to fetch up to £4.5m when it is auctioned by Christie's in June.
The estimate is an indicator of the meteoric rise of Freud's prices: the last time Christie's sold the painting in 1973 on behalf of Ann Fleming, wife of James Bond creator Ian Fleming, it fetched £5,040.
Woman Smiling is an exceptionally cheerful portrait for Freud, of Suzy Boyt, an artist herself. She was a pupil of Freud's at the Slade art school before she became his lover for a decade, a friend for much longer, and mother of five of his many children, including the novelist Susie Boyt.
Freud had already been married twice when they met, and had painted both his previous wives many times. At a major retrospective at Tate Britain in 2001 many visitors were struck by their air of impenetrable gloom. Caroline Blackwood, his second wife, said of one of her portraits that she didn't mind being made to look so miserable, but she did mind looking "so distressingly old". Girl With White Dog shows his first wife, Kitty Garman, cradling an equally unhappy bull terrier.
By comparison Boyt looks downright cheerful. The portrait was described by the critic Robert Hughes as "the turning point" in Freud's work.
Francis Outred, head of postwar art at Christie's, said: "This is the work that pioneered the style of painting for which he is most praised and recognised, using thick, expressionist brushstrokes and swaths of impasto to build a human physicality. Freud has here literally sculpted in paint the flickering smile into an enigmatic, fleeting presence."
Christie's regards the painting as the most important work by the artist to come up for auction since Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, his painting of a monumental nude usually known as Big Sue, which made a world record for a living artist of $33.6m (£21m) in New York in May 2008 . It is believed to have been bought by the Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich.