Garden from the Window

One of Britain’s greatest contemporary painters, Lucian Freud always had a love of the natural world. In the 1990s, he settled in Notting Hill, London and created a series of works depicting his garden, including Garden from the Window. Unlike classical paintings of gardens, Freud did not emphasise horticultural skills or suggest spiritual communion with nature. Rather, he wanted the plants to follow their natural cycle of maturing, withering, decay, or miraculous regeneration. He observed the process of their growth with a botanist’s eye, depicting them with detailed accuracy. The branches and leaves of the buddleia in the picture intertwine with each other and grow recklessly, and Freud’s rough strokes highlight their innate wildness and freedom from pruning and repression, harking back to a primal and mysterious state.