Lucian Freud painting becomes the most valuable work by the artist sold in London

One of Lucian Freud’s last great nudes, Portrait on a White Cover sold hours ago in Sotheby’s London’s saleroom for £22.5million / $29.8 million, making it the most valuable painting by the artist ever sold in London. The previous highest price for a London auction of the artist’s work was £16.1 million set by Pregnant Girl at Sotheby’s in February 2016. A late masterpiece, Portrait on a White Cover, painted when the artist was 80 years old, represents the culmination of Freud’s lifelong engagement with the reclining nude. Alongside the self-portrait, the reclining nude was the defining leitmotif of Freud’s career. Across sixty years of painting, innumerable mutations of painterly style, and a multitude of sitters, he returned to this challenging subject time and again. Portrait on a White Cover sits at the pinnacle of this endeavour. Portrait on a White Cover depicts Sophie Lawrence, who worked fo