I the late 1940s the publishers MacGibbon & Kee commissioned Lucian Freud to illustrate Rex Warner’s book on classical mythology: Men and Gods. Freud produced four drawings for the book, of which Narcissus (1948) is one. The others Man of Hyacinths, Hercules and Actaeon are in private collections. However, MacGibbon & Kee rejected them as they were thought unsuitable because they were in contemporary dress and the drawings of Elizabeth Corsellis were chosen instead when the book was published in 1950.
Robin Ironside (1912-1965) purchased Narcissus in 1950 when he was an elected buyer for the Contemporary Art Society that year and it was exhibited in its Recent Purchases exhibition in 1951. However, it seems to have been misplaced until the CAS secretary and director Pauline Voglepoel (1926-2002) died and then was ‘bequeathed’ and accepted by the Tate Gallery.
The mythological subject of Narcissus tells the story of a boy who falls in love with a reflection of himself and later dies. In Freud’s meticulously rendered line and dot pencil drawing he is seen, in a woollen jumper, cradling his face gazing down at himself, excluding his own eyes in the mirroring.
