Naked Female Portrait Sells For $33.6 Million

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The 1995 painting, life sized of Jobcentre supervisor, Sue Tilley, was sold at Christies in New York this week for a staggering $33.6 million, largely beating the previous record holder of Jeff Koon's works entitled, Hanging Heart which sold last year for a subtle $23.5 million. The works by Freud, entitled, "Benefits Supervisor Sleeping," despite being very English in both subject and title, still caught the eye of our friends over across the pond and has now been handed the world record for works by a living artist sold for the highest price.

The large than life subject was Sue Tiley, a supervisor for those in need of seeking employment, asleep on an average sofa. Experts at Christie's spoke of the works as being "bold and imposing example of the stark power of Freud's realism". Ms Tiley said that she had "felt weird" posing nude for the picture.

The 85-year-old artist was captured by the size of Ms Tiley, or rather, "Big Sue" which she is more commonly known, when he was introduced to her by Leigh Bowery, a performance artist from Australia.

Speaking in an interview for the BBC's Five Live programme on Radio Five, she said that it had been a very strange experience to sit completely nude for the aging artist.

She said,

"The first couple of times, I was a bit embarrassed but you get used to it. It's a bit weird to think that a picture of me could be worth so much money. You don't have to sit still the whole time. It's two or three days a week and you have breaks. When we were painting it we didn't sit there going: 'I bet this'll be the biggest selling painting in the world'. It was just like one of his other pictures."

I guess the feeling of embarrassment somehow loses it's importance after around $30 million....